I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but I'm not sure what that means considering I wanted to like a game called Psychonauts 2 more than I would my future children.
Psychonauts was art in its purest form, something that was felt, something driven entirely by emotion, and consequently the big revival of a beloved cult classic is always going to lead to nerdlingers like me having Opinions. I am slightly mature enough to understand when I'm being unfair in this regard, the reality is that anything I could come up with for a hypothetical Psychonauts 2 wouldn't deserve to exist because fans don't have a say in where a story goes, let alone one told 16 years later.
So right out of the gate, which I went into mercifully short detail when I started, the very beginning of Psychonauts 2 felt really wrong to me. It was really sterile, kinda twee, it didn't sound like Psychonauts. I knew about the plot points of Rhombus of Ruin so starting out with Loboto captured by the Psychonauts wasn't really a problem (and also I was stupid enough to think the shitty office setting was actual Psychonauts HQ until Loboto showed up), but the vibe I was getting didn't feel like Psychonauts, I just felt like I was watching some really blunt and direct cartoon. This was not at all helped by the constant, intrusive tutorial dialogue that would make Ratchet & Clank 2016 blush, and R&C ended up being kind of a point of comparison for me in this period: the characters were softer, the writing more into making the characters chipper and the new ones felt pretty stock, and it lacked the pointed edge of Psychonauts' writing.
Those feelings got exacerbated with the interns and their stock high school hazing, but then come Hollis' Hot Streak I came to a bit of an epiphany: this still isn't Psychonauts, but that's okay because it was going in a new and interesting direction by having Raz screw Hollis' mind up and face the consequences of that, and that's something I never really considered because of course I didn't, I am a fan, not a professional writer.
Suddenly this new avenue of Psychonauts has opened up: the reality of having the power to alter minds, on the job action in a psychic spy thriller, Raz just not being able to shape up for it and doing something of grave consequence, and that's really cool! Raz was a bit of a wunderkind in Psychonauts, complex and interesting still, but he did make kind of a pisstake of the entire scenario by solving a world conquest plot in a day, so this idea that he bullrushes into a scenario like a kid and uses powers with gross irresponsibility on his first day on the job, I was really happy. It was the moment that the game kind of crystalized for me as Psychonauts 2, and not the sequel to Psychonauts I've been dreaming of over a decade.
And then that shifted real hard which was super weird.
Once Hollis' mind is over that part about the professional aspects of being a Psychonaut is just gone from the plot, and it becomes focused on the Psychic Six. Compton and Helmut's worlds feel more in line with the bombastic and more animated aesthetic from Hollis and Loboto's worlds (another thing I will get into) but once you're piecing Ford back together the game starts shifting back towards the moody colour palette and visual storytelling of Psychonauts with a story driven entirely by really sad, broken people finding healing and redemption. I need to be clear that I adore the Psychic Six, Bob's Bottles is maybe the singular peak of Psychonauts as a series because the visual and character storytelling are so phenomenal (I absolutely wigged out when I realized all the water drowning the area was booze) and on the whole they've proven to be the most compelling characters in the Psychonauts universe, I just don't know if I really wanted this story to be about them at the expense of Raz. He doesn't really feel like a mover and driver of the plot, he's just getting the band of oldies back together and then that ties into the overarching villain plot since it's also about redeeming her as one of the gang.
I don't know how to word that, I suppose. I loved every second of it while, simultaneously, disliking how they ate the plot? I didn't feel like it really mattered to Raz as a character the way his desperate drive to earn all his merit badges and solve a world-threatening crisis before his dad shows up to pick him up was the whole point of the first game. Not that he, personally, would not care about a Psychonauts crisis involving his not-grandma, I mean that it didn't really feel like it mattered that Raz was the protagonist.
That segues into my biggest problem with Psychonauts 2 (other than the fucking tutorial dialogue); there are way too many characters in here. Orbiting around Raz are the interns, the adults and Lili, the Aquatos, and the Psychic Six. That is over 20 major characters, or at least characters I want to spend time with, competing with each other, and the Psychic Six eat so much of the screen time that everyone else falls to the wayside. The interns are just there for one world and that's it. There's this big triumphant return in the finale for them but I don't care because I don't know them, they don't matter, which is more than can be said for Lili, Sasha, Milla, Oleander and Loboto, who might as well not even exist.
The campers were numerous too, but they didn't really matter. You don't actually have to care about Elton to beat the game, but Elton's life is going on with or without your input. Meanwhile Raz's entire family is right there and it's rife for character drama that just never happens. Meeting the Aquatos, characters who were born out of an in-game poster, is completely secondary. Raz's brother is a dick and for the payoff you need to have a single conversation with him in the postgame.
That's a bit of a bummer, even if what we've got are six really interesting, really complex characters who carry the whole game themselves, but it's not really the Psychic Six's game, it's Raz's where he finally gets to go to Psychonauts HQ, and I never really felt that like I should.
I need to stress in writing this that all of this is coming from a fan, which is to say a dumpster full of drugs and rotten food and maybe a dead body. I'm not gonna say there was no way I was gonna like it, because I like NieR way more than I do Psychonauts and NieR's remake that came out this year took a game that was in my Top 3 favourite games and rocketed it to the top, but I don't think there was any way I was going to approach it on its own merits, nor am I really interested in doing so. Psychonauts is art, it's driven by emotion, and consequently the emotions it made me feel are its legacy for me. It's not really about the game itself, it's about what it makes me feel.
Everything I haven't brought up is something where you can just put a big stamp labeled "glowing praise" over it so: the more dynamic and action-oriented combat is fun but I think the punches have too little impact, otherwise it's great. The visual splendor of every single inch of Psychonauts is just joyous to behold that I can't really think of a way to convey that other than pointing at every individual chunk of level and go "THIS IS SO GOOD OMG." Compton's level is kind of bland I guess, it doesn't pop the way the others do, but the sea of alcohol and broken dreams? The tutorial level where Loboto destroys the office setting with his own dental obsession? Cassie's papercraft city? Ford's splintered levels representing his most tragic memories? The visual storytelling of the final level being a pastiche of It's A Small World to sell to the player the rampant entitlement and immaturity of the true villain? It's fucking bellissimo, no other way to put it.
This isn't really praise or criticism, just an observation: I found Psychonauts to be driven by character writing, whereas I feel Psychonauts 2 was more into thematic writing. Compton's story is about crippling anxiety and Helmut's is about his sensory issues, whereas I found, say, Gloria or Edgar's levels to about them specifically, how they as people have been impacted by their mental illnesses as opposed to how Compton's is about how we, the audience, can be more informed and supportive of those with crippling anxiety, and I think this filtered into the aesthetic design of their worlds. Sasha's world is how he perceives it; compact, tightly organized, in control, and while on paper that's the same with Bob, a fractured mess of islands drowned in alcohol where all his memories are hidden at the bottom of another bottle, I think Psychonauts 2 capitalized more on the visual metaphor as a piece of fantasy instead of how these people, specifically, view their reality. Neither is better or worse than the other, that's just the impression I got.
And... that's it, I guess. Psychonauts 2 happened and now it's done. Never thought I'd see the day so I don't know how to process that ending.
