At this juncture it’s only fair to point out that you really should play Psychonauts 2 with as little foreknowledge of these levels as possible. Fittingly for a game fixated on exploring the power of the mind, Schafer and his creative team have crafted a magical mystery tour de force and discovering where their collective imaginations will take you next is a joy that should not be spoiled in advance.
In a genre in which risk taking often amounts to including a lava level as well as an arctic-themed one, Psychonauts 2’s twisted takes on less well-travelled tropes like TV game shows, animatronic amusement park rides and ‘70s acid rock festivals stand out like psychedelic thumbs. And the hits keep on coming throughout. Each environment is more enthralling than the last, and the anticipation for what comes next lasts right up until the point the end credits roll.
It’s also an artistic achievement which could only exist as a video game. Psychonauts 2 deliriously deconstructs the medium at every turn, treating perspective, scale, and interactivity as yet more variables to be adjusted to add arrhythmical emphasis to story beats. It’s delightfully disorientating yet seldom gratuitous, the fluctuations in form and function serving the narrative’s needs in a manner reminiscent of the peerless What Remains of Edith Finch.
Don’t be fooled by the game’s child-friendly, Saturday morning TV aesthetic, either; this is cartoon-like in the same way as The Amazing World of Gumball, Regular Show, or Adventure Time are. Psychonauts 2 is sharply scripted, assuredly self-aware, and not afraid to delve into darkness when need be.
Amid the plentiful laughs are surprisingly nuanced explorations of mental health conditions including addiction, anxiety and PTSD – albeit with a degree of flippancy in the form of anthropomorphised enemies including Panic Attacks, Bad Moods, and Enablers. Criticisms that the first game took such things a touch too flippantly appear to have been taken on board and there’s less emphasis on neatly ‘fixing’ characters’ problems in favour of more open-ended outcomes (although the maligned ‘emotional baggage’ collectibles return).
