Psychonauts 2 is good, you'd like it :)

all right i'm just gonna be real this isn't the video i wanted to make after three and a half months of silence but you boys got deadlines and it was either this or i skipped sleep for a week which is tempting but i see enough goblins anyway have you played psychonauts 2 i have and if halo infinite turns out to be bad which it better not so help me god 343 i will mail myself to your office and i will take steps to intervene this will be my game of the year hands down to be clear i say this is someone with no nostalgic connection to the original and you're gonna want to publicly stone me for this i wasn't even that into it when i first played it back in 2014 jesus christ i was 16 and quite stupid but now i am 23 and quite stupid real quick you don't need to play the first game in order to play the second but if major spoilers for the first game and minor for the second things like level designs or game mechanics or things you're stingy about there's the door or you know replaying the game what i found is that it's not that i don't like it because i do like it quite a lot the world the story the characters that fucking art direction simultaneously it is one of the most unique and memorable experiences of its generation and one of the most mid-2000s nickelodeon cartoon ass things possible being welcomed into someone's twisted mind and seeing an abstract depiction of their funny mental disorder is grounds for some truly inspired design one minute you'll be exploring the smart cube next you'll enjoy a platforming disco then the red scare like it's not just environmental storytelling the environment and by extension the way you interact with it is the story honestly it's kind of genius a perfect marriage of gameplay and narrative and a beautiful way of letting players learn more about its wonderful lineup of brainoids who i only wish i had more chances to see interact with one another like i said it's not that i don't like it it's that i like everything about it except for the part where i i have to actually play the video game yeah the gameplay kind of aged like milk don't get me wrong it's competent the game is like 15 hours long and in that time it becomes impossible to ignore the half-fake combat the obnoxious roadblocks the fact that half your powers are either boring or useless or the clunky platforming at the end especially i say all this not because i enjoy being doc but to highlight the kinds of things that gamists were so much more tolerant of back in the day a remarkably short list this kind of thing just does not fly anymore and so in the year of our lord 2021 it wouldn't be enough for double vine to just make another psychonauts game in order for people to enjoy a sequel today as much as they enjoyed the original 10 15 years ago they would have to make a significantly better psychonauts game and for a good long while it did not seem like that was gonna happen i think it's fair to say that double fine's history is uneven for those unaware the studio is spearheaded by tim schaefer widely considered one of the best creatives in gaming due to him having lead production on full throttle and grim fandango two of the best point-and-click adventure games more recently though him and his company have become somewhat controversial figures for a couple reasons firstly tim lost a lot of gamer cred when he said some stuff during the height of gamergate i know absolutely nothing about gamergate and i intend to keep it that way so i'm just gonna stop there and say that i think everyone should be treated equally except for gamers who don't deserve a voice more importantly double fine has picked up a cool habit in recent years where they would raise a lot of money to make a video game but then almost not make the video game problems with managing finance and scope have been an issue long before double fine started involving the public though psychonauts was their first game and it was plagued with development issues they got working on it in 2001 right before the original xbox hit the shelves and were funded by microsoft to be an xbox exclusive then three years went by ask microsoft and they'll tell you the double fund was being difficult to work with and taking too long ask double fine and they'll say yeah fair point but also microsoft wasn't exactly helping things but in any case shit eventually just got so wacky that microsoft dropped all funding forcing double fine to see cash flow elsewhere at the last second by the time it came out in 2005 microsoft was gearing up for the launch of the 360. psychonauts had effectively taken an entire console generation to be developed also it sold so poorly at launch that the publisher immediately left the console gaming space it's ironically fitting then that two decades later the long-awaited sequel would face almost the exact same problems again the game was given a massive budget out of the gate in part thanks to another crowdfunding campaign again development took years and years longer than expected again they almost completely ran out of money and again they only got the funding they needed from a new publisher at the last second funny thing is the people who ended up saving double fine are the same ones who almost doomed them 20 years ago xbox of all people were the ones who scooped up the studio and get this told them to take as long as they need spend as much dollar as they need and all they gotta do in return is make the game they wanted to make with no compromises microsoft said that something is wrong oh yeah they also made a vr game in 2017 but i'm not going to talk about it because it's not very good what you don't believe me it was made for the psvr either you know what i'm talking about and you've heard all you need to hear or you haven't played the vr yet and you should really grow up like the quest only costs 300 in your privacy maybe even less if you use honey the very cool and free and paying me browser extension that find you promo codes and slap them onto your product consumption cart that sounds convenient but how does it work you ask expecting me to elaborate saliva dripping from your slack jaw well since you keep asking simply install the thing that's just click your mouse twice then go buy other products and you will likely see honey inform you that you could be doing better allow it to do better for you and then spend less money if a code is found this is unprecedented how have they done it don't ask use the honey for whatever you want from food to gaming food and gaming what else do you need acquire at joinhoney.com noodle today it is free and it will spend you less money you're still drooling i'm going to say one more time for you that's jointhoney.com noodle thank you to honey for paying me and for tolerating me i was supposed to do an ad for them like three months ago oops anyway i could talk a lot of shit on the first game and i probably will but if there's one thing that they didn't need to improve upon it's the amount of fresh creative ideas present all throughout the first game and the fucked up thing is that they did anyway yet start right game introduces itself with one of the coolest opening sequences i think i've ever played it's so good like everything great about the game the gameplay the looks the polish the art direction the humor i could go on it is proudly on display here and it just keeps getting better level starts out as a boring office space transforms into a nightmare of teeth not that kind though it's different it's a different teeth stream remember how i said before that levels themselves to a lot of the story yeah basically every single thing about this opening stage from the enemies you face to the pictures on the wall to even the color palettes can all tell you something about dr labrino and what he's thinking it is fantastic and you know the really fucked up part is that this isn't even close to the best level we're just getting started from this point on it is just non-stop one great idea after another back to back to back the game is so excited to introduce to you the next interesting character the next hub world the next quirky little cranium that if you don't go out of your way to seek out all the side content you might end up missing some of the best moments where'd you get the milk from the goats oh yeah that would have been easier hey it brought us closer friend and these little muppet people are so expressive now in terms of animation this game is on a different fucking planet from the first which makes sense most 3d video games kind of remind me of reboot until like the mid to late 2000's psychonauts one is no exception but the sequel like i know computers are good now but there is so much custom animation of such a stupidly high quality that you'd be forgiven for seeing the clip out of context and thinking it was from a feature film characters are expressive detailed they even squashed and stretch which is pretty hard to do in 3d and look they even made the old people shaky which i find humorous because i find old people funny rasputin i'm going to show you a picture that's her the game never dwells on this for too long but it's impossible not to just take a step back and marvel at how far these guys have come since 2005. i'm not just talking graphics here scott campbell the guy who designed raz is also the guy who came back to design among others razz i love how these guys are designed and i don't know about you but i think raz's new drip does a better job of showing off his personality than the old fit also the colors are way better the voice talent is all back from the first game and you can just hear how much fun everyone's having i'm not an employee of the [Music] i'm the greatest dentist of our century [Music] audio in general is just on a whole other level listen to how good peter mcconnell is back as the lead composer he has improved so much at writing it it's kind it's kind of insane like listen listen to this casino theme [Music] there is no fucking reason for it to go that hard that this is so fucked up also the quiet moments those are just [Music] did i mention it's all adaptive i don't know if you know i'm kind of a fan of that [Music] i could listen to this track forever but we gotta move on you wanna hear the rest you can hear it when you play the game now i gotta talk about the star of the show here the actual levels whereas basically any other video game is abysmal at handling abstract space psychonauts 2 is a game that revels in its surrealism i swear to god everyone at double fine has brains shaped like dodecahedrons they'll introduce the dumbest fucking idea i've ever heard in my life like what if the world but hair create the most gorgeous depiction of the hair dimension imaginable slap you right down in the center of it and say fix it and then you're like you know what maybe i will maybe i want to fuck around and fix hair world you ever thought of that and then and then then you do you you go out you you fuck around you fix the hair world and you find out and that process of actually the fixing of hair world is so much fun for starters raz controls effortlessly his core moves it had a lot of potential before but double fine has tightened it up and polished it to a mirror shine and while on the one hand this dude in the mirror is really starting to piss me off on the other levels are noticeably better suited to razz's expanded moveset hell even something as basic as his jump has been measurably improved there's also been a gamer's dozen of quality of life improvements like how they streamline the fast travel system or how the emotional baggage cutscenes now respect your time my favorite change is how now instead of the game halting all forward momentum until you've grinded through enough scavenger hunts to be allowed access to the special key that unlocks melvin's brain cage you can now acquire everything you need to progress through the campaign organically by obtaining new psy powers directly from the characters whose brains you're already jacked into you'll never be told that you haven't found enough rocks to unlock brain blast or whatever now upgrading your rank is completely optional and can be done from a variety of places throughout the map instead of just the one no longer are psy powers upgraded when and how the game decides is best now each rank up gives you a point you can spin towards upgrading whichever power you want to which combined with all the other shit i just talked about made leveling up something i actually wanted to do rather than something i had to do it's crazy how even though the core gameplay loop of finding collectibles increasing a rank and upgrading psi powers has remained relatively unchanged the way it's presented to me still had such a profoundly positive influence on the way i chose to engage with it like there was a lot of improvements made to psy powers in general the best powers from the first game are all back and improved and the shit ones are gone replaced with better ones think fuck you got one that can slow down time one that zips you around in midair both of which are great fun in and out of combat as well as projection which is the only one that matters i've decided doodle razz is a little man with a little plan i look at him i'm a big fan not every power is a winner clairvoyance an ability that lets you see through the eyes of other people has been greatly improved in that it's funnier now but the benefit of it having an actual purpose in the open world is dampened a bit by the game telegraphing to you exactly which npcs you should be using the power on rather than encouraging you to fuck around and find out for yourself how does the brain ball see me at least it actually serves a purpose in exploration unlike in combat where it is completely useless outside of a single enemy which is impossible to defeat without using clairvoyance that may sound like a contradiction to the grass-fed cats among you but forcing players to fight an enemy that can only be defeated in one specific way as opposed to every other enemy kind of goes against the whole player freedom and expression that double fine have otherwise done such a good job of encouraging here like all the other enemies do this right there's always a best way to fuck him up but never an only way to fuck him up like i ain't gonna send you a bomb just because you tell me what to do but then also telling me how to do it is not why i play video games you have minutes to live and you know while i'm crying and coming about a fake toy for children it boggles my mind that despite all the brilliant streamlining and removal of antiquated bullshit design y'all still elected to keep the awkward hot swap weapon wheeled thing from the first game like a big part of what makes the combat fun is the experimentation part you know finding new ways to defeat enemies but when you can only use four of your eight side powers at once and pausing the entire game to select any of the new ones adds about as much excitement to any given experience as would a trip to the fucking dmv a lot of players are just gonna pick the four they like and stick to him not not me though i i wouldn't i wouldn't do that you could have done the classic slow the game down until the player has selected their violence of choice type beat but i'm going to take it a step further and argue that you could have and maybe should have just made the menu entirely optional like sure you could make the argument that there aren't no buttons on the goddamn controller for all light powers maybe try using your little poorly drawn eyes next time to which i'd respond by saying that's really insensitive i'm actually very self-conscious about my little eyes also you're dumb and stupid because unless you're arguing that photo mode thought tuner toggle ui and manual are all things that you need to have during combat i don't buy that at all rearrange the layout a bit and make these accessible in the pause menu bad idea all right how about optional button combos like holding down both triggers or both bumpers for unique actions why not go the modifier route of holding down one button to change the binding of some others like an early ass creed hell even if you're adamant that no the controller can only do four no more i'm playing with a damn keyboard here tim there's a few buttons here like i count more than four that we aren't using we we can't bind things to these we have the technology look i'm sure there's a good reason for them choosing to do it this way i do love to complain but in case it's not obvious i still think the combat system is really good in spite of these problems even during moments of frustration i was happy to press on to see more of what this game had in store whether it be a new song a new ability a new cut scene no no that's not it but the old wax in the basket and the egg in the ocean you put the egg in the basket and the old egg in the box and the box in the ocean simple and if you tell anyone about me anyone at all you'll have to deal with her no not her please don't make me look at her this game's writing is so good old characters are brought back all of them just as great as before and new characters are introduced that play off the existing cast very well probably tell you what i mean by that would be to spoil large sections of the game so i'll just say that the story does a great job of raising the stakes while also making the conflict a lot more personal to raz we get to see new sides of the people we know and we get to see new people that we don't know such as jack black who sings the song or elijah wood who is actually a psychic gamer in real life this is where i get to pat myself in the back i've actually made the the controller float and without touching anything i've managed to play the game it's only happened a few times but the writing hasn't just gotten better though there's also been an interesting shift in tone a sort of difference in how the characters view and approach the altering of someone's funny brain and for a game pretty explicitly about trauma and mental health psychonauts 1 can sometimes do a pretty shit job of handling its subject matter tactfully like milkman mccarthyism everyone's favorite part of the game is a level you complete by unleashing the most unhinged and delusional aspect of a tortured mind specifically so they stop doing their job he lights things on fire now rez i know you're only 10 but have you heard of mk ultra because i think you might have just created the fucking unibombers oh no it's happening again spontaneous combustion from the government lsd tests to be fair it could be worse a ten-year-old boy downsampling some poor man's brain just to open a door is pretty funny and in the end the game just sort of shrugs it off and tells you that it worked out okay but i don't know i i think it was pretty wise of them to consult an actual mental health professional while writing the sequel the result is a game that while still pretty upbeat and quirky from start to finish manages to far more thoughtfully broach difficult topics for depths like ptsd anxiety delusions gay people addiction i would genuinely say that this game has some of the best gay representation i've seen in a video game but i i don't think i'm smart enough or gay enough to say that with any confidence i recommend talking to a gay person just generally tell them i said hi it's pretty telling that in the old game you would interact with squirrels by lighting them on fire with your brain see in hell whereas in the new game you interact with them by petting them see i'm nice now i think both of these are funny i'm all for edgy humor i censor the hell out of myself for youtube and to be fair cruel jokes at the expense of animals still exist here but they tend to be more this is a dysfunctional relationship unless that innocent creature is in hell now what i'm trying to say is that psychonauts 1 is not the most mature of games and while that's completely fine for lighthearted gags i'm not entirely sure how i feel about it when it tries to navigate something as heavy as how to help the mentally ill compare this to psychonauts 2. each level is an abstract but brutally honest and sometimes much more explicit depiction of a mental dysfunction this time around razz doesn't fix anyone's problems outright he helps them process their trauma so they can better deal with it on their own he's more solution oriented he's as much concerned with solving everyone else's problems as he is with solving his own it's a bit subtle but after learning a certain lesson in the casino level not once throughout the rest of the game will raz ever enter someone's mind without asking first or if it's an emergency there is no way that was not intentional i thought to myself so i checked while writing this and sure enough there you go maybe this is a bit of an overreaction but it's a really positive change overall and it's one that can be felt throughout the game both in the way it's written and the way it's designed didn't play the old games unfortunate here's a recap video and a little kiss on the cheek next time do better compared motor functions or just really bad at video games first level doubles as a sneaky little tutorial for newcomers but if that ain't doing it for you here's three different assist features just make the game as easy as you want no more excuses got a funny case of ptsd here's a comprehensive list of content warnings fuck you and have fun my point here isn't just that the game is good because it's based and health pilled and everyone working on it has 15 or so extra years of experience under their belt my point is that the game is good because it takes so many positive steps to benefit and accommodate everyone it possibly can from those with a lack of experience in gaming to impaired vision to mental illness like not every game has to be designed like this but holy shit we need more games designed like this i love this goddamn game it's a charming experience that tackles some very heavy subjects with the exact same levity and a newfound respect it's as much a game about mental health empathy loss and healing as it is about pretty colors brain funnels hand puppets and silly animal abuse at its worst it feels like a more streamlined fleshed out better playing psychonauts one and at its best it feels like watching a tier animated movie one that i have the privilege of being allowed to take part in video games are cool [Music] hey did i ever tell you about the time that my friends and i slept in a liminal space that was also probably a porn set and also witches were involved i'm not exaggerating i was on a podcast with him where we talked about the experience it was an absolute journey you should give a listen or don't whatever you're bald

Channel: Noodle

Views: 1,084,962

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Id: dnbb5pcaSr4

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021