Psychonauts 2 - Nitro Rad

[Music] every video game begins as an idea before it's a level or mechanic character or a story before the miracle of video game development brings it to life the game lies right here between the folds [Music] psychonauts it's probably one of the biggest cult classics of the 3d platforming universe it unfortunately released a very little fanfare being widely considered a commercial failure back when it first launched on xbox but it's mind bending levels badass psychic moveset and brilliantly written characters would be experienced for years to come thanks to the availability and affordability of the pc version but despite that upswing it still felt like psychonauts 2 was doomed to remain a mere idea the water that seed needs is big bucks boyo and trying to fund a game like psychonauts 2 in a climate where every company wants the absolute maximum return out of their games chasing trends and churning a profit from their software in any microscopic way possible good luck this wasn't 2003 where companies like ea and activision would actually throw money at stuff like thai the tasmanian tiger anymore now this was no longer an era of big publishers actually producing stuff other than the same few things that make them the most money i mean even sony's doing that now but then it happened the 2015 game awards i watched the impossible unfold before my very eyes send in the psychonauts i didn't believe it like how in the hell did shafer get a company on board with funding the sequel to a commercial flop well he didn't dude it was 2015 crowd funding was bigger than ever and that did seem like the logical way we could finally let a vocal minority vote with their dollar the campaign succeeded getting just 16 over its goal it was like a miracle all of this untapped potential all of those narrative seeds planted at every turn we would finally see psychonauts 2 become more than just an idea but not before they did a weird vr spin-off psychonauts in the rhombus of ruin you'll need these yeah that's uh that's a good way to steer people away tell them they need an expensive headset to play the thing imagine being out of the loop and you go to the game store and you see this on the shelf a brand new psychonauts game sitting right there and you pick it up and it's like oh oh it's just like a weird vr thing why'd they make this well i guess psvr was brands bank anew at the time so it was like a new thing you were able to jump on and they would have had those new models prepared for that trailer right so i guess they're like hey we got like a budget now and these new models why don't we make a quick little side thing we can sell to help secure more budget for the second game sort of thing that's how i saw it at least i know three million dollars sounds like a lot of money but video games are really expensive to make you're paying a full team of developers to do it full time over the course of many many years right you can tell that shaffer and crew learned a lot from that broken age campaign running out of funds and having to sell half the game a year early to fund the rest of it so uh you know as weird as this vr thing is i do find it really interesting seeing how schaefer considered that this time and then thought to do a side hustle to secure more budget and yeah i remember a lot of people who really didn't like how that whole broken age thing was handled back then but you do at least have to give the guy credit for learning from the experience we're not looking at psychonauts 2 part 1 or an incomplete version of what this game could have been no we're looking at the full ass vision here that said i also know people aren't really a big fan of psychonauts content being locked behind and expensive vr headsets so before we get into the second game why don't we see if there's anything here that's more than just like you know we put some models in a vr room and made something starts in the rambaroo picks up directly where stance one left off departing the campground and the psychonauts jet we're embarking on a mission to rescue lily's father truman who is the grand head of the psychonauts so if you played anything that's like point and click in vr like a derecine or accounting plus then you more or less know what to expect here you're warping between fixed points you're interacting with the environment in simple ways solving simple puzzles and of course beating your favorite character senseless with whatever you got lying around this is not the moment razz you know all the usual suspects of an early vr game it's kind of fun using raz's psychic abilities in vr clairvoyance is what you'll use to warp around seeing through the eyes of all these different characters the whole game pretty much revolves around doing that you can also grab stuff with telekinesis set things ablaze with pyrokinesis and of course shoot stuff with your cyblast it's a pretty short experience only took me about two hours to finish and it is okay one or two of the puzzles are pretty cool but there's not really a ton going on here you do get a little bit more backstory and lubato which is really cool and i do really like getting to hear all the extra banter between the characters i didn't know you like this kind of music uh that's not mine hey get away from my stuff but as a vr advocate i'm gonna be honest there's much better vr stuff out there it's one of those things that i guess would make for a great introduction to vr being so simple and totally absent of locomotion like more intense games it feels more like a packing title sort of thing i don't even really necessarily think the game had to be in vr though like it's not like astrobot where you physically interact with the character and they get a lot out of the 3d head tracking no you're just kind of like pointing and clicking so while the vr is fine and cool and all i think it should have been an optional way to play instead of the only way to play i'd only bother with it if a you're a huge psychonauts fan and you want the side stuff and b if you already have a vr it is not worth buying the entire thing for and the way that games like super hot and beat saber are now if you're wondering how integral the plot of this thing is for psychonauts 2 well it is meant to bridge the gap between the two games but what happens can really just be boiled down to one sentence they go to the rhombus of ruin and save lily's dad that's really it that's all you gotta know you're missing out on some funny looking fish guys making some funny sounds but nothing really critical to the story that you're not just gonna see in the recap so don't worry about missing anything important here you'll still follow along just fine yeah it really does just feel like something to maul the fans over until the second game came out at least the fans had a vr headset yeah i don't know it's a really weird thing even weirder is that like it got a physical print while the actual psychonauts 2 didn't available digital only at least as of this video what a shame too the game's key artwork is incredible looking what a sick homage to the original 2d illustration man it would have looked amazing on a game case maybe it had something to do with the 2019 microsoft acquisition that was something i sure as hell didn't see coming but you know with sony flaunting just how many aaa studios they own these days it looks like xbox wants to play ketchup i mean hell they even bought bethesda of all things being owned by a really big company is certainly a double-edged sword on one hand you got funding but on the other they now control everything you make but i mean hey if it meant they would have the proper budget to smoothly finish psychonauts 2 and fully craft it into the aaa brain busting super experience it deserves to be then i mean hey can you really complain microsoft giving money to smaller weirder projects just might be this generation's one saving grace but uh let's not get ahead of ourselves psychonauts 2 is out baby i got it installed on my ps4 pro 79 canadian dollars is it worth the wait worth the full price worth selling double fines bone marrow to phil spencer i don't know yet but i'm pretty damn excited to find out okay you know a company is great at writing when even the new version of their logo kind of tells a story xbox helping to launch the game right i thought it was really clever oh that's cool i kind of miss the interactivity the original title screen had but this is wicked cool each option being a brain in a jar the original title screen i think is a lot more creative but hey i'll take it my name is razz and today is my first official day on the job okay so instead of opening to the hub world having you walk up to the first level psychonauts 2 instead cold opens right into the first mission and the entire sequence is so brilliant so genius the way it has you slowly clueing into okay it's not going to have the same effect if i spoil it so i'm going gonna let it be a surprise but take my word for it it is such a cool freaking intro so uh skipping by spoilers we eventually land inside lobato's mind as the first real level and this is where it starts to sink in just how high the production value here is the characters look unbelievably clean now the animation is top freaking notch too they are more expressive than ever before i was a little bit worried how the art style would translate into hd but no they did an amazing job they almost feel like dolls are puppets for a stop-motion film you know like the materials you see their clothes and skin made out of it almost feels like a henry selick film almost it's a really good example of how photorealistic textures can be used to craft non-realistic characters i know a lot of people still aren't fond of the art direction though i got a ton of comments last time confirming that if you weren't a fan of the visuals to begin with then not much is going to change here but hey for those that do love the weirder art direction of psychonauts you guys are in for a treat that janky asymmetry you see when you look at the moon or those whimsical swirls you see baked into rock formations all of the visual quirks that inspired adventure in the first game are all back in full force and they are more incredible looking than ever before lobato's mind does a great job of reeling us in i thought the way each power was tutorialized in the first game was a little annoying but no here it's all seamless they never pause the experience to teach you something it just gives you the series of obstacles that call for each one like it should this place is bananas looking man i totally understand the dead the phobia warning though so apologies the footage kind of grosses you out but man holy crap i thought the inside of loboto's mind would be twisted but wow gums and teeth wrapping around the environment like scaffolding you're plucking out teeth like a gross red and stimpy episode and chucking it out guys it is a little bit stomach churning but in the most fun way possible once you're done with the first level we're then introduced to the new hub world time to say farewell to whispering rock and hello to the mother lobe the psychonauts hq you'll initially just have access to the interior where not a whole lot's going on but you'll later get to explore the quarry outdoors and the neighboring park the questionable area where every sign is unsure this is hands down my favorite chunk of the hub world it does a really great job of capturing the same feeling the campground for the first game did but it also does a really good job of standing out as its own thing too we opened this run down parking lot with this abandoned pancake house next to a national park with all these fun little attractions like a backwards waterfall the sasquatch cave the environments are really endearing here you're swinging off a dinosaur bones you're up in the trees you get to fix the slow-ass funicular and ride it all the way up for 30 minutes it kind of feels like they wanted to pack everything you'd expect from the campground into a smaller and flatter more digestible zone and i think it was a really great way to call back to the environments of the first game but while still feeling unique from them and while having brand new types of settings as well as much as the mother lobe does pale in comparison to the outdoor locations there are a lot of fun little things to find here as well though i do wish more of the collectibles were tucked away better i feel like half of these are just sitting out in the open getting a talk to the characters between missions i think is where the mother lobe shines most though there's a lot of great optional dialogue with characters like oleander that you should definitely keep an eye out for send her out to get some nunya what's nunya none your business and of course the psychonauts hub world would not be complete without a wicked good fast travel system so like the first game you won't be wasting any time at all running between areas all right so structurally speaking psychonauts 2 is pretty much the same as before you'll bounce between the hub area and all these different levels that take place inside the minds of various characters and along the way you'll climb up through the ranks earning new abilities and strengthening your existing ones since raz is already a fully fledged side cadet at this time we're working up the ranks as a true psychonaut intern don't be late for orientation sorry buddy but you're still too young to join the big boys like mia and sasha so this time around radz is going to spend his time learning with his fellow classmates even picking up a few new moves along the way oh looks like i can choose where to focus my energy and upgrade my powers in the first game you would just unlock whatever ability you got at that level but now you'll learn ability points you can freely spend on the abilities you want giving you way more control over developing your character which i thought was a really cool change i loved being able to prioritize the abilities that i thought sounded more fun to use so instead of all those weird little kids at camp our peers this time around are a bunch of teenagers learning to become psychonauts of the motherlobe i really like norma and i think dogan's sister sam's gonna be a really big fan favorite where'd you learn how to make pancakes prison but overall i felt kinda underwhelmed by them this time i mean don't get me wrong they're not bad designs and the dialogue you do get from these characters is really fun i especially love morris and his pirate radio station relax morris i'm not a narc exactly what a narc would say but the kids at whispering rock were just so much more weird and i really loved that as sam manages to harness some of that quirkiness you'd expect from those characters but i feel like they're really holding back with most of these new guys i don't know maybe it makes the game easier to look at for everybody that hated the art style before but i really don't think it was worth it they should have pushed further they should have made them all look and act like they crawled out of a dumpster full of nails norma is a really good character though because you know we previously saw rats completely immune to bullying right so it was kind of cool seeing a totally different kind of bully that actually can get under raz's skin this is embarrassing in so many ways so despite the safer designs i do applaud the writing for finding different sorts of characters that are able to get brand new reactions out of raz instead of just doing the same old song and dance again as for the new adult characters though i do like a lot of these designs a lot uh like forsyth one of the higher ups at the psychonauts hq i love the sharp shoulders the asymmetry the uh football head most of the nbc's walking around just kind of look like muppets but as for the major characters i think they did a really good job of creating designs that really nails each different personality now tell us again how you ended up outside in your underwear oh otto he's another one of my favorites one of the old psychic six someday my brain will live here and yours too what should have read that nba more carefully he's a great character kind as a teddy bear but lacking in a moral compass for sure all right now that we're walking around why don't we uh see what we got for a move set here this time okay okay a good blend of old and new but uh in that perfect way where the old feels new firstly everything is way snappier the jump's got this spring to it now you pop faster into a gentler arc getting you up into the air quicker while giving you more control over the air time it feels really good the double jumps quicker the climbing animations are snappier getting up on those ropes is faster everything's been tweaked and tightened up and it feels incredible if you thought razz felt good to control in psychonauts one oh you're gonna have a field day here dude though i'm really not a fan of how they change swinging on poles maybe hitting a button to turn around was something people found too clunky now you just push the stick in the direction you want them to swing and yeah it kinda does it all for you but i found myself falling off these things way more often in this game it's because if you get out of here it's because if you try jumping before the swing really starts going you fall but now that i'm only hitting a stick my brain expects me to go right away if that makes any sense maybe speeding up the turnaround animation having more immediacy to when he can jump i think that would improve the game feel here a lot there's also this brand new dive move now too i didn't really find a whole lot of use for it at first with its uh sharp downward arc but by the end of the game there were plenty of times i saved my ass with it one really weird thing i found is that you can turn off the fall damage very strange that's a choice i think fall damage is very contextual it makes sense in some games and not at all in others and i'm gonna argue it does not make sense in this game so i think you should turn it off and here's why so fall damage only really makes sense if you want to be up here and not down here like you know take away some health as punishment for making the error of falling but if being up here is equally as valuable as being down here like in an open world game like mario odyssey if there's stuff to do up here and you just want to get down faster to do the stuff down there why punish the player for that right so since that doesn't make any sense they actually decided to not have fall damage in that game it's pretty much the same deal here anytime you should be punished for falling they just use a bottomless pit so turning this off only makes it easier to get down faster and there's no real point in punishing the player for that now the one move i definitely have the most mixed feeling towards is the brand new wall jump yeah resign wall jump now wild right wall jumps are a very tricky thing i've only played like five games total that have really good wall jumps and i think they're all mario most games just do that really basic magnetic thing where you can really only interact with the obstacle in one single fixed way you're just hitting the jump button and you're not really doing anything it's pretty rare that you get nuanced wall jumping you know like full control over the angle and speed and trajectory you could throw mario at the same wall again and again and again and get totally different results each and every time so with that control it's now on me to get up there instead of being on the level to get me up there if that makes sense this one somewhere in between it's it's okay it's far from giving you the freedom that mario games and uh blue fire do if you played that but it does feel like a small step away from that strict magnetism the snappiness of it is kind of weird though you gotta wait for raz to enter that wall sliding animation to wall jump and that is normally the smoothest way to do it but i do find sometimes it takes rads a little bit too long to stick to the walls so i end up hitting the button a bit early and i just fall off i think the feel of it needs a bit of work but hey it's still better than most wall jumps i've seen well there's all the physical moves as for the psychic abilities not all of them returned but the ones that do have been tweaked quite a bit let's start with the levitation so we can wrap up the platforming moves i loved how this felt in psychonauts 1. it was floaty it was bouncy it was fun and smooth as butter to control but it was a bit overpowered pretty easy to just soar over everything and skip a lot of stuff i mean it is a really fun way to break the game but i'm not going to pretend like granting the player the ability to trivialize all of your level design is good game design as fun as it can be so with all that considered levitation's got some limitations this time firstly you no longer jump really high in the air it's more of a long jump than an everything jump this time and the floating move will only last a couple of seconds now so you can't rely on it nearly as much for overly precise landings you can still get a lot of speed and distance out of this thing though it's just as fun to pop into for a quick launch or as a quick way to get around but now it feels a little bit more earned when i'm breezing through platforms on this thing i feel like having it all reeled back just a bit it's now requiring a little bit more thought and care than it did in the first game and by extension i felt a lot more engaged by the movement here and since it's dialed back i also felt more compelled to actually string it into other moves making the platforming way more freeform this time you can still jump really high on it but that's now a separate move entirely hold the button to push down and let go to launch upward really good for clearing tall objects but now in a way that can't be used to just skip everything man having this many moves and this many new ways i can string together a different series of movements to solve the environment in different ways it's not quite that mario 64 magical feeling but it's kinda close i found myself stringing together all these moves all the time in all sorts of tricky different ways and that is what it's all about having a wide arsenal of moves that challenges you to take on the environment in a way that you thought of yourself and the first game is great for that with puzzle solving but at this time it feels like they went the extra mile considering that even more for the platforming i don't think the level design always manages to take advantage of these new moves but it is still an awesome moveset that i had a freaking blast using the open-ended areas definitely make the most out of it now the other psychic abilities like the cyblast and the pyrokinesis they can all be used pretty much at the same time now it is unbelievably smooth you're going to be rolling and blasting and firing it up all simultaneously the game does not make you wait for one or the other now the freedom to switch between powers at such a breakneck pace this time it feels amazing i love the way they change the pyrokinesis instead of staying still as a statue as you pray a meter fills up before you take damage you now generate this expanding bubble that you can aim around on the fly igniting everything inside when you let go of the button and you can still move and jump and dodge and shoot you can still do everything during the charge there's even some new uses for it too like making updrafts you can use levitation on throwing objects with telekinesis has also been streamlined it'll now just launch whichever direction you're facing when you let go with a button you know instead of using a stick to make that arc now it's just grab launch grab launch it's so much faster clairvoyance more or less works the same way as the first one letting you see through different people's eyes but uh and now you can use it to spot hidden caches of titanium so there's more incentive to look through these people's eyes than just seeing how they see you but let's be real that was already enough incentive as it was it's just so goofy sam see she was a squirrel squirrel sees they did so freaking many of these the extra cash was nice and all but no the effort they put into this alone was enough for me that's what we have for returning abilities it is amazing how streamlined these all feel now but that's not all we also have a couple of brand new psychic abilities as well the first one's a grapple move mental connection rez can use this to grapple up to these straight thoughts that float around in the world grapple moves are always a ton of fun there's a bunch of different ways to do them too you won't be swinging off into the air or anything here it'll just bring you to a fixed point i kind of prefer grapples to give you air time to play with but i would be lying if i didn't say that i loved how this thing felt it's like the perfect marriage between the hook shot from zelda and that high energy spamminess the homing attack and older 3d sonic games had when you see those bubbles and you mash through it with this visceral energy each sound increasing in pitch as you go go go go it's like the psychonauts equivalent of the loop-de-loop you know like it kind of does itself but you don't care because a it's really fun and b they sprinkle it around here and there so it's not like they're relying on it it's just like a little treat every now and then though i do think the mental connection shines the most when you're using it for solving puzzles carefully plotting a path between each point to link two thoughts together which creates an idea what if my husband starts wearing socks with sandals could i still love him you can also find straight thoughts up in the overworld if you get one of otto's gadgets it's kind of like a metal detector but it detects these grapple points that lead up to these secret areas it adds a lot to the exploration people might think this spot tuner looks dorky but i think it's cool as for the other new moves there's a time bubble that slows down platforms and mental projection it's kind of like an imaginary friend that pulls switches and stuff for you sup clone ah that's cute my clone thinks he's real i kind of wish we got something a little more creative than just slowing down time though like i was hoping for something that felt more like like a psychic power right like brain control or reading minds or something like that but this this is just something i've seen other platformers do already the game is still very good about getting the most out of your abilities so it did at least have me actively thinking about the environment i was in as since you always have it in your toolbox instead of just being given it when you need it the little buddy is definitely the one move they don't get a ton of use out of this time it is great in the one level that has emphasis on it and it also has a lot of implication in the combat too but i never really found myself using him a whole lot later on you really only needed to open these doors here and that's about it so with three new moves that omits three from the first game that is no more shield no more confusion grenades and no more invisibility don't really miss the confusion grenades at all but man invisibility was cool you could have done so much more with it too every puzzle in the first game was just turn invisible and walk by but now that you can use multiple psi powers together like imagine if you went invisible and then used your telekinesis to sabotage something i'm not gonna lose sleep over it but it would have been really cool i can live without the shield though especially since this game's combat has a way higher focus on the movement i don't think i ever saw myself saying this but this is actually really good combat i mean like really good combat and that's coming from somebody who spent years of his life criticizing combat and platformers i just i think it's something that's like so easy to do wrong if you create this thing that feels like a totally separate experience from the core gameplay that you actually bought the game for and when i say combat i don't mean mario punching a goomba or spyro running a guy over those are more like obstacles when i say combat i mean like engaging with the guy there's not a whole lot of platformers that i think do that well the rayman 2 and 3 are pretty good but even then they're kind of basic and it does take a back seat ratchet and clank has amazing combat but barely any actual platforming they're more or less combat games made with platforming movesets and there are other examples of good platform in combat but nothing that ever really felt to me like it was truly getting as much out of the core moveset as the platforming and exploration would if you could turn all of this into fighting without sacrificing the focus on jumping and moving only then could you completely unionize it to now with all of that said the combat in psychonauts 1 was decent it did take advantage of most of your core moves and it did have a lot of movement involved too but it was really easy to trivialize by just dodging and cyblasting and there wasn't really a whole lot of enemy variety either and then i played this i got to a fight in psychonauts 2 and like a tidal wave it hit me this thing that i've been thinking was impossible for years completely figured out and polished to a tee side last for peppered in the bee stings your pyro for the aoe grapple get over here telekinesis rip off this guy and throw it at that guy you're gonna be doing two of these things at once while dodging and wild jumping because this is hands down the best combat i've ever played in a platformer dude i really mean that like this is the one that figures it out it re-contextualizes all the abilities you've already been using the whole game has a new way to move that combat forward even clairvoyance has a combat use now with these guys they're called bad moods you gotta use clairvoyance to see their weak points you run over and take care of it in the midst of the chaos this is one of the many new enemy types i added to really get the most out of the move set in the combat here we got bad ideas judgment doubts regrets and they're all based on different negative mental habits and they'll all require a different string of moves to effectively deal with too i thought the enablers were just pure genius these guys will catch shields on all the other enemies so it's kind of like they're enabling the bad habits i thought that was really clever these guys will become priority targets that you'll have to take out first knowing how much influence schaefer takes from the rayman series i really wouldn't be surprised if they just straight up stole this enemy from rayman 3 but i mean that's just how it's done right you gotta take ideas from the very best and make them even better and that's exactly how it feels like here it feels like they're taking that exact same enemy and throwing it into a context that works even better for it and then we got panic attacks oh when these boys show up you know it's going to be a fun ass fight they're fast as lightning so you got to whip out these moves that slow them down and close the gap oh and speaking of closing the gap you ever hit the attack button in the game and you're too far away from the enemy so you just swing at the air like an idiot they got that ironed out here if you're a little bit far off razzle just launched himself forward to close the distance it's snappy it's chaotic and it's finally something that has that same level of variety and freedom that you'd expect from the puzzles and platforming there is such a wide array of really fun enemies that all have multiple viable strategies that all bounce off of the different combinations of your side powers we are breaking into that same toolbox to solve what's in front of us in a similar manner we're not stopping mario for mortal kombat we're not stopping sonic for street fighter we're stopping psychonauts for more psychonauts well i can't exactly say i ever saw myself going on an excited spiel about combat in a platforming game it's not that i don't like combat i just like good combat and you usually only find good combat in combat games like god of war bloodborne not usually a platformer like this but psychonauts 2 just does it in a way i've never really seen before and i think it should be a shining example of how you can effectively bring these two things together and make something really freaking fun out of it instead of being like time to punch the guy for five minutes and then go back to what i actually want to do you know so uh now that we actually have really good combat the pacing here just becomes each level is rich with obstacles that'll all test your abilities but now we get these visceral bursts of exciting chaos to break up each sequence and they never throw too many fights at you either so there's always plenty of time to soak in each gorgeous environment that's something i was doing a lot in this game because oh my god the art direction in this game certainly lives up to expectations there is such a great variety of truly unique levels here like we got the mind of a doctor with a gambling addiction so they create this level that combines the hospital theme with the neon poker chip aesthetic that you'd expect from a bustling casino that is something they're really good with here stacking these totally different themes into something new for example we got this level about a writer so you know we have the obvious library aesthetic but they don't stop there they explore different parts of this person's life using that same visual language so you get these incredible environments like a harbor made from books and letters the water's all ink and the crescent moons even a lowercase c elements from the most out there of psychonauts 1 levels become the norm here environments warp and twist way more frequently with all these impossible 3d spaces to remind you how far we are from reality i'm sure those new solid state drives of high-end pcs and new consoles and stuff make short work of those load times but i was still really impressed seeing how freaking seamless they got these things working on ps4 too like when you go in this giant bottle and it just becomes a hallway that unravels into an entire memory from this guy's past oh my wow this right here was my favorite level in the entire game bob's bottles oh my god dude like you're sailing around this little planet going from island to island and it's really cute and fun but it is the story here that really got me uh no spoilers but you got the sweet old gardener guy who's you know he's experienced loss and he has trouble socializing now and you got to help him understand that growing relationships like yeah it's hard but it's equally as important it's like complicated seeds you just you gotta find out how to water them you know really didn't expect the psychonauts 2 arc to bring me to tears yet uh here i am like i'll go bob dude i just i can't i don't maybe talk about uncle i can't talk about uncle paul right i can't do this i think the fan favorite level this time is going to be cy king censorium i mean look at this place it certainly is a feast for the senses a kind of like an old beatles music video except in playable form razz even looks a little cel-shaded here it all looks so unbelievably different from the rest of the game and you know it would also be one thing to just use the acid trip aesthetic because they thought it looked cool but i feel like there's a better story reason for it here this is a nearly dead human brain that was in a jar for 20 years with absolutely zero stimulation in that time so what happens if we take that brain and put it in a body that gives it senses what happens if we allow that thing to feel the world again i'm here everything's here too many things are here you're experiencing a sensory overload that's why the level looks like this it's such a fun freaking idea they also use that idea of being cut off from the world as a way to explore this really cool theme of reconnection you get this guy's old band back together but each band member is another sense that we're reconnecting some characters even have multiple levels in their mind like our old buddy ford crawler you thought his fracture mine looks strange from the outside imagine how it looks in there and as you put the pieces back together you might just start learning some things about ford that razz wasn't ready to see i tell you this game's plot has everything it's got comedy drama mystery betrayal all of those little seeds they planted in the first game yeah this is where they all come into play the relationships between the characters are all explored so much further and we get to see so much more of the psychonauts universe the psychic six razz's family but what does a psychonauts hq look like what do people do there what does sasha do in his lap how did this all come to be you know a bunch of hippies in the woods with psychic powers exploring the capabilities and limits of the human mind in a in a really weird time before they could even figure out what was really ethical and not and finding how to get there so they can get funding from the government and stuff like that it is all so interesting hearing about all of it and it had me glued to that controller until i absorbed every last detail if you were in love with the story of the first game and you had really high hopes for the sequel exploring it all even further good god do they deliver on it so freaking hard even the world's smallest pony that raz escaped on they remember that and it even has a name now hey i sent sugarcube back home as soon as i got to the train tracks stuff like that you know like the writing is the brush and schaefer knows how to paint a smile but those words wouldn't be anything if it weren't for the incredible delivery from the voice telling here those subtle vocal touches like when horvitz squeezes out just the most genuine little giggle well i ought to let you get back to work rez remains just the sweetest little protagonist ever like i'll be damned if i ever play as a more likable character watching him geek out in the presence of every psychic big cool guy would you sign my copy of mine swarm and struggling to socialize with his new peers what are you doing weirdo and whipping out the hot takes when he gets adorably opinionated please missy would totally win because nessie is real everything is written with purpose subplots that seemingly meant nothing always find a clever way to wriggle back into the main plot and the collectibles they do an even better job of conveying the memories of each host seeing all of these brand new figments and huge hd quality and now with more animation on them and the way they provide more context to the environments and that it does when you get one god i'm still having a really weird time getting over the fact that we're finally looking at like a super graphics version of all this i didn't have as bad a time finding a figments this time they're a lot bigger and they also stand out a little better in general and after you play through the whole level the rooms you're left to warp back to are pretty manageable however i really don't know why i can't see how many i have per room anymore every area in snot's one had its own total screen and yeah while was annoying as hell that you had to go to each area to see what you had there i did at least like seeing what i had there i did like knowing when i had everything here before i moved on now if you're missing a single figment in a level you don't even know what room it's in the total screen only shows the level overall making the needle in a haystack problem well i don't want to say even worse because i actually didn't have as bad a time finding them overall i thought 100 was actually a little bit smoother this time but this is still an annoyance the first game was lacking though they did improve the total screen overall you now have an easily comprehensible list of levels that you can browse through and check up on at any time you like so you at least don't have to go all the way back out to the collective unconscious to look at every single door anymore yeah getting the final few figments is still a pretty big pain in the ass but the hub worlds are worth collecting things really shine for me i had an absolute blast looking for every little nook and cranny here and the scavenger hunt it is just as fun as before and there it is 100 platinum trophy buddy i could not put the goddamn game down even after finishing it i still had no reason to stop all of the optional dialogue and flavor text that remains after the credits roll asking each character what they thought of the plot twists and what they'll do after the story's done what a cherry on a cake psychonauts 2 is an incredible video game it is one of the best platformers i've ever played and it is mind-boggling to me that after what hell this project went through it is now this it's a game that completely understands all of the strengths of the original while realizing all of this narrative brilliance that they planted in the first game without you even knowing but not only that but it also does a really good job of expanding on the platforming and the combat making them into some of the best the entire genre can offer mind you it's not a perfect video game like i said i wish the levels did get a little bit more out of those extra moves i wish some of the character designs were generally less tame and there's a lot of minor graphical hiccups and some pretty bad long load times at least on ps4 and ps4 pro i can't speak for more powerful hardware like the ps5 and xbox series x and good pcs i don't i don't have any of that but if you're stuck in last gen like i am don't worry it's all small fry in the grand scope of things really it's nothing bad enough to stay away from the ps4 version or anything like that i mean it's bananas it runs at all because this is a sequel that shouldn't have even happened but despite all odds it found a way to exist not in a form that's good enough or had to be rushed or had compromises made or content cut but in a form that made sure to be everything it wanted to be while it had that one in a million chance and it will never happen again if you boneheads don't buy it this time so please don't let it flop like the first time microsoft's gotta look at a really big number if they're gonna make more cool stuff like this but uh even if it does never happen again i'm always gonna be thankful for this thing finally getting made it is a miracle this thing got finished and it's equally as inspiring the fight that was fought to get it there so thanks tim thank you for fighting that fight until psychonauts 2 was more than just an idea hey what's up thanks for watching my video about psychonauts 2. i really hope this review convinced you to buy the game it is an incredible game and i really want to see it do well and uh hey if you're watching this video when it's still new we've got another t-shirt up at the yeti.com until october 15th 2021 i'll have a link down below for anybody that wants to put on kevin's latest masterpiece he also drew the move set for this video so huge shout out to kevin

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 275,777

Keywords: nitro rad, review, psychonauts, psychonauts 2, double fine, platformer, ps4

Id: i3g-YOUWxs4

Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021