Psychonauts 2

Only played through the first level but really does feel like Psychonauts with the budget and scope and technology the ideas deserved. The way the level twists and contorts in all sorts of Inception-esque but playful dream logic is a delight to behold.

I think a good hub area is one of the most underappreciated pleasures of video games.

This game has more than one. All in.

Well Feast of the Senses is straight-up one of the best levels in any game I've ever played.

Finished it tonight and it really is a delight through to the end, with new ideas - visual, level design, narrative - right up to the final level. There’s a lot to be said about a game that throws this many varied and distinct art styles at the player and yet still emerges as an entirely visually coherent whole. It might not be the kind of game we talk about when it comes to ‘great graphics’, but I was endlessly impressed both the artistry and technical chops of the thing. From the comically grotesque character design to the plethora of materials used to visualise these worlds, it’s always a feast for the eyes.

The combat is limited (although thankfully there’s not too much of it) and one or two levels towards the end maybe could’ve been edited down. But it’s a big, generous, impressively focused game on the whole. While it perhaps might not have the cynical, cheeky edge of a lot of Double Fine games, it does offer instead an abundance of genuine warmth and heart - this game does entirely right by its extremely large cast of speaking characters, and more importantly does right by its tricky themes and conceits. Without going into spoilers, this game has a far more nuanced and adorable take on the ethics of body swapping than a recent major blockbuster (Wonder Woman) does.

I was actually kind of thrilled for Double Fine throughout. They raised a few million in Fig funding for this thing, which is a tiny amount of development money for a game of this scale. But despite a tricky development (with complications such as the implosion of their publisher and being bought up by Microsoft) they’ve made their fullest, greatest game yet - by a large margin, I’d argue. It doesn’t feel compromised the way Broken Age did, and is sprawling where many of their games have been small and often limited in scope. After all these years, this small studio finally made the truly great game they always had in them - and we’re lucky enough to get to play it. This sequel is the promise of the original Psychonauts truly delivered on.