Psychonauts 2 Xbox Series X Review

I started my gaming journey in the middle of the Original Xbox console lifespan. Beginning with games like Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, Jet Set Radio: Future, Fusion Frenzy, and of course, Halo. However, the first game that I picked out from the store myself was a game my dad hadn’t even heard of at the time. Psychonauts from the minds of Tim Schafer and Double Fine. 

Fast forward a decade and a half until finally, Psychonauts 2 is upon us. The newest entry in Double Fine’s psychodyssey takes place just a few days after the end of the original Psychonauts, and almost immediately after the VR spin-off, Psychonauts: Rhombus in Ruin.  

The 3D action platformer is back with a whole new mind-bending story. This time, there’s a mole in the Psychonauts, and Razputin is enlisted by Grand Head of the Psychonauts, Truman Zanatto to restore the mind of Agent Cruller. Quite the load to take on during your first day of an internship program! 

There’s so much more to story than this, Psychonauts 2 is chock full of important messages. At its core, Pscyhonauts 2 is a story of healing, moving on from the regrets of your life, and finding peace and happiness. The minds you enter throughout the game are various degrees of damaged, and Raz’s goal is to help ease the burdens of the minds he explores, helping bring them back to reality. By using different art direction for every level of the game, Double Fine once again managed to tie the story directly to the visuals. With worlds being how the character directly views their own reality, it assists in showcasing the trauma, emotional baggage, and even details such as their history, they allowed for a more personal direction to be created which made the impact left by each segment so much greater. 

The writing isn’t just a serious spy-thriller however. Much like the original Psychonauts, the sequel is filled to the brim with humorous writing, abilities, and interactions. Raz is constantly dropping jokes, or responding with an ample amount of sass. Abilities such as Projection, or the rainbow fists pin, and so on even incorporate the essence of humor into the very gameplay. It’s hard not to love how cohesive of a title Psychonauts 2 is. Each aspect is capable of building upon another in some way. The story is one of the best I’ve experienced in any form of media in the past few years. Specifically speaking, the last game that made feel quite as much would have to be Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.  

Much like the story, the gameplay leaves little to be desired. While the basic controls are fairly simple. You possess an ample arsenal of psychic abilities that deepen each encounter, and offer plenty of unique ways to take down your foes. Each ability also has a few upgrades, allowing you to do new moves with them, increase the range and duration, and so on. Plus, with an equipment item called Pins, there’s even more ways to differentiate your powers. This direction creates a thrilling combat experience. Being overwhelmed by the diverse set of enemy types offered a good challenge that left a sense of accomplishment, with boss fights especially being some of the most unique I’ve seen in a game, even by Psychonauts standards.  

There is more to the gameplay of course than just the combat. As a 3D platformer, how it feels to traverse the world is of upmost importance to the overall experience. Thankfully, Psychonauts 2 also offers a smooth, fast paced traversal system that oozes with fun. Swinging around branches, grinding rails, gliding with a psychic thought bubble, rolling around on top of a psychic thought bubble, slowing down time, to even being able to travel between thoughts themselves. The many different ways of getting around allows players to go about the world as they see fit. Many sections even allow you to complete the platforming in different ways, allowing for a sense of freedom and a break from the linear structure it often takes. The Hub World is the perfect place to get a grip on all of your platforming skills as well. Composed of four different locations, there’s plenty to explore even when not inside minds.  

With a plethora of collectibles to be found, you’ll be searching every crevice of the Hub World to find everything. While doing so you’ll find yourself encountering your many classmates, and other important characters spread throughout the world. Then you have the collectibles both inside minds, and outside of them in the Hub world, all of which are addictively fun to find. Almost all of the different types of collectibles offer actual benefits to you as well. By finding Psi Challenge Markers or Nuggets of Wisdom you are able to increase your Intern Rank by one. Or by finding five pieces of Emotional Baggage, you can work to increase that Rank as well, which opens up new psychic upgrades for you, and allots more skill points to go towards them. The only collectible that could at times be frustrating to find is the Figments. They’re little pieces of art found within the minds of everyone you enter, finding them offers no benefit to you, and some levels have over 200 of them to find. Now, the number of Figments in a level isn’t the main issue, but the fact that certain art styles, most notably in the Psi King’s Sensorium, cause these figments to blend in completely with the environment. Even simple Figments just along your path could be easily missed because of this, and the time it could take to find them can be high.  

The art direction otherwise is some of the best in a video game not just this year, but ever. Lisette Titre-Montgomery, the art director for Psychonauts 2 was able to perfectly capture the essence of the original game in this aspect. Giving each world its entirely personal style helps maintain a visually engaging experience for the players. On top of that, by maintaining the real-world art style for Raz, and any other real people inside of the mind, it helps distinguish what is real and what is a creation of the psyche. This direction also ties into one of the main themes of the narrative, which is that reality can manifest itself in different ways between individual people. Doesn’t hurt that every art style is also beautiful, managing to create some truly breathtaking scenes throughout the adventure.  

Even the audio design and music direction capture the charm that makes Psychonauts 2 what it is. With so many unique art styles, there’s also a diverse range of assets that require their own audio. There’s not a whole lot of asset reuse in the game, everything is designed as an individual object. This helps with important aspects of one’s time with a video game such as immersion. If you’re constantly reusing sound assets when everything else about each area is unique, then there’s a chance that players will pick up on this. Fortunately, Double Fine avoids this with their intense attention to detail. Combining a distinct set of audio assets in each area with music that also manages to compliment the levels. The music is designed in a way that expresses how the character who’s mind you’re in is feeling. These details can be easy to miss, but with the amount of leitmotifs that occur between tracks, it is clear that the intentions behind the music design was to tie in a personal connection between the player, Raz, and the mind you’re exploring. 

This attention to detail also assisted with the level design being so interconnected with the art style which in turn deepened the distinctive feel of each world. As the adventures goes on, there’s no telling what items or structures you’ll be throwing yourself across to move on. We’re talking rivers full of teeth platforms, a city of germs that you traverse using a massive bowling ball, and even a library so full of books, that even the boats you use are made out of paper.  The level design by itself is immaculate, creating a smooth, fun, and challenging experience that’s consistent throughout the entire game can be rather difficult. Not only did Double Fine accomplish this, they did so while engraining the very story and art direction into the level design, a feat that’s not seen too often within the gaming industry. 

Psychonauts 2 simply oozes charm in every facet of its design, and watching how these complex interworking’s of design manage to complement one another was one of the best aspects of my experience with the game. I even tested out playing the game with xCloud and Touch Controls. While it ran at a slightly lower resolution, the charm was left intact, and the experience was smooth. 

Overall, Psychonauts 2 is the most unique game I’ve played that’s come out this year. The story is an engrossing tale of mental health, loving yourself, and beginning to heal. Something so personal being paired with such distinctive art styles, one of a kind level design, and a combat system that allows for you to shape each fight as you see fit, is one great formula for creating a game unlike any other, even its own predecessor. 

Price: $59.99 

Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS4, PS5 (through backwards compatibility) 

Developer: Double Fine Productions 

Publisher: Xbox Game Studios