Ultimately, they stuck to their very weird guns, and the studio survived long enough to find new life in the digital-distribution era through lower-priced gems like Costume Quest, Stacking, and Iron Brigade. The studio arguably made its biggest splash in the modern era with Broken Age, one of the first video game pitches to break Kickstarter records. Yet the game's creators at Double Fine, the studio founded by LucasArts design legend Tim Schafer, kept their boat afloat after Psychonauts' commercial shortcomings. (As a point of trivia: the project's prerelease woes nearly doomed the game before launch until SimCity creator Will Wright invested his own cash to save it.) The result was a commercial failure, critical darling.
Psychonauts review full#
Sadly, that year's console marketplace was much more interested in shooters like Halo than a subversive, whimsical summer camp full of kids with psychic powers. The 2005 original arrived on PlayStation 2 and Xbox with loud nods to the game industry's best 3D platformers. If you've never heard of Psychonauts, you're not alone. (Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.) Context, from commercial dud to crowdfunded return
Yet, whether you want a breezy, kid-friendly platformer bathed in incredible artistic direction, or if you're more eager to double-jump and speed-bounce to a 3D level's tastefully hidden secrets, Psychonauts 2 scales to your expectations-and it delivers for anyone who's playing or watching. And while this sequel massively improves upon the original game's control suite, it errs on the side of simplicity.
Psychonauts review series#
Psychonauts 2 doesn't unseat the classic Banjo-Kazooie series in terms of level complexity and mechanical balance, for instance. That doesn't mean it'll be everyone's ideal platformer. It's been buzzing through me the entire time I've spent inside Psychonauts 2's minds-within-minds. If that sounds like you, play this new game-of-the-year contender as soon as possible.Īny conversation about Psychonauts 2 could start in so many other directions, but I'd rather open with that "contender for game of the year" spirit. Links: Official website | Xbox | PSN | Steam Psychonauts 2 is the imperfect, astounding, hilarious, memorable, beautiful, long, drama-filled interactive cartoon for anyone who yearns for a certain era of 3D-gaming nostalgia. Price: $60 (included with Xbox Game Pass on Windows 10, Xbox) Platform: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows (reviewed), Mac, Linux
0 kommentar(er)
