Psychonauts 2 is a delightfully anachronistic sequel to a game released 16 years ago about exploring other people’s minds and retrieving their personal belongings.
It’s a message from the days when video games were largely focused on a linear progression of running, leaping, and collecting objects in a fantasy world with cartoonish visuals, and when every studio was attempting to discover new and interesting methods to make those activities feel fresh and exciting.
This game is amusing, unapologetically odd, and a lot of fun for no good reason other than that it’s different. Although the concepts and analogies in Psychonauts 2 aren’t always as obvious as I anticipated them to be, the game still manages to touch on some mental health concerns that may be triggering for some people.
something i drew while i was playing psychonauts 2 🙂 pic.twitter.com/qqNXlyMWbM
— raine :o) (@juicysnoop) December 8, 2022
As the player, you take control of Razputin, a ten-year-old psychic who escaped his family of circus acrobats to join a group of skilled mind-hopping spies. Surprisingly, the acrobatics are just as entertaining as the psi abilities: lifting objects with telekinesis and zapping figments of the imagination with mind-lasers is cool, but Raz is so nimble and light that leaping him around people’s freaky mental architecture is joyful in and of itself, even when it’s fiddly.
Doodle page of the best game ever, Psychonauts 2 by @doublefine! #Psychonauts #psychonauts2 pic.twitter.com/XJDi1VGuQi
— Nathan (@nateobiteart) December 11, 2022
We do our running around the Motherlode, the Psychonauts’ headquarters, and the nearby campsites, woodlands, and quarries outside of people’s heads. We delve into the psyches of our protagonists and antagonists, encountering surreal settings that poke fun at their compulsions, inclinations, and mistakes. One person’s head is a casino/hospital hybrid, while another’s is a city-sized obstacle course packed with diseases and bowling balls. I’d go into greater detail, but finding them is half the fun.
The aesthetic of Psychonauts is trippy, bizarre, and occasionally unsettling. If it were a kids’ movie, it wouldn’t be made by Pixar or DreamWorks, but rather the slightly odd French one you vaguely remember seeing on TV while on vacation, in which the main character occasionally gets chased by witches made of bees or has to fight a puking hand-puppet.
Nothing else comes to mind; the figures’ odd proportions and asymmetrical faces recall Tim Burton’s bizarre aesthetic after being filtered through Picasso’s Instagram account. Every mental landscape is a whole new universe, with its own unique aesthetic and boundless, unbridled creativity. To Psychonauts 2’s credit, I can declare without a doubt that, despite having played video games for the better part of 25 years, I had no idea what to expect from it.
The actors’ deadpan delivery adds to the unselfconscious atmosphere created by the screenplay, which is humorous but also not happy with itself. Razputin’s mother nonchalantly remarks, “Every time you lie, you cut a day off your mother’s life,” when he tells her he’s leaving to practice his acrobatics.
Tiffany Lamps… #Psychonauts #Psychonauts2 #sashanein pic.twitter.com/vE36RnUrUA
— ✨Madi✨ (@MadiMuffin75) December 9, 2022
In the vein of Monty Python and The Mighty Boosh, the game carelessly uses bizarre setups, off-the-cuff comments, and self-referential gags, and doesn’t give a hoot if you don’t get them. It’s a refreshing change from the forced sarcasm that infects so many comic video games, especially those made in the United States.
As a player, I rarely see something that is so unafraid to be itself. Every single hour brings a brand-new psychological playground full of surprises and a brand-new cast of interesting characters.
[ #Psychonauts2 ] Gisu should be allowed to have electrokinesis but she should only use it for evil (being mean to her friends) pic.twitter.com/wCcO8LiznE
— 🎠🤖 OTTO/FOZZIE 🤖🎠 (@Quigleyyy_) December 13, 2022
A few aspects feel dated, such as the emphasis on collecting and the unnecessary upgrade tree that only serves to muddle the wide variety of psychic abilities. This game, however, stands out from the crowd and helps us remember why 3D platformers were once the most played type of video game.
Frequently asked questions
Is Psychonauts 2 a good game?
Although it does retain some of the platforming’s clunkiness from the middle of the 2000s, Psychonauts 2 is everything I could have asked for and more in a sequel to the original.
Is Psychonauts 2 selling well?
That Double Fine has created its “highest-rated and best-selling game to date” with Psychonauts 2 is an understatement. The tweets of the company’s former art director suggest sales of at least $1.7 million. If you want to know which game has received the most praise and sold the most copies from Double Fine, it’s Psychonauts 2.
Is Psychonauts 2 about mental health?
Overall, Psychonauts 2 finds a middle ground between the serious and humorous treatment of trauma. The game starts with well-worded mental health advice that warns players the game deals with important issues, albeit often in a humorous way.
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