Series Psychonauts has a complex creative destiny. Debut project Double Fine Productions has earned cult status, but sales have failed to live up to the hopes placed on it. Psychonauts 2 she ended up in a production hell, in which the brainchild Tim Schaefer almost got hit by the crash Starbreeze…
However, the epic is coming to an end, and Double Fine is now under wing. Microsoft… Last week GameMAG.ru editions the opportunity was given to get acquainted with the preview version of the game.
Psychonauts 2 events start right after the final of the VR quest Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin… The plane of the main characters arrives at the headquarters Psychonautsto deliver the captive Dr. Loboto and the leader of the organization Truman Zanotto, who, after being rescued from captivity, needs medical assistance.
On the spot, it turns out that the headquarters were not aware of the incident with the abduction of Zanotto. Everything indicates that a spy has turned up among the Psychonauts, who is secretly sabotaging special operations.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Loboto’s mental barriers could not be completely broken. However, from there it turned out to fish out the silhouette of the mysterious employer and the mention of the villain Maligulydefeated a long time ago by the six founding fathers of the Psychonauts. The main character Razputinu (Time) Aquato to reveal the secret, to reveal the spy and find out the secret of the family curse.
The trick is that the developers decided to deceive the expectations of the players by altering the ending of Psychonauts. At the headquarters of Razu they say that he is not a psychonaut, since the founder of the organization who accepted him into the squad Ford Kruller is not an active agent. Instead, the young man is sent to vegetate among the interns, who first steal his clothes.
Even the character of the protagonist has changed, which from a purposeful and cheerful enthusiast has turned into an insecure bastard. At the same time, Raza for some reason ignores Lily Zanotto, which in the first part was constantly glued to him. However, such changes can be explained by a change in the situation: the protagonist’s dream collapsed, and the worried Lily devotes the main attention to her sick father.
Despite the above metamorphoses, the story and characters remain Double Fine’s trump card. Local scenes and dialogues are interesting to watch, and even the minor characters turned out to be very memorable. The atmosphere itself has changed – this is a mixture of classic LucasArts quests from Tim Schaefer and dark jerk in style Tim Burton… But in the sequel, the element of surreal horror still gave way to an acid adventure.
The basics of the gameplay have remained unchanged – this is a three-dimensional platformer-colectotone with quest elements. Once allowed to explore the hub location – the headquarters of the Psychonauts and its surroundings. From here he will be promoted on missions, most of which take place in the heads of other people.
As you progress through the story, new areas of the headquarters and abilities will become available, which will allow you to gain access to previously inaccessible places. In addition, players are encouraged to replay the old levels, since some places cannot be reached without certain abilities.
Various collectibles are scattered throughout the levels, including emotional baggage, secret safes, cards, cannonballs, and more. Collecting all this, Raz increases his level. But in the sequel, there was more variability in character development.
For points gained when leveling up, a player can pump abilities by adding additional effects. For example, a ball of levitation begins to inflict damage when it collides with an enemy, when you roll, you can immediately strike, and so on.
The scourge of the first part of Psychonauts was control, which was especially felt when jumping (constant undershooting). A separate point was the battles in which the main enemies were the camera angle, auto-aiming and the implementation of telekinesis. In addition, the interface turned out to be very cumbersome, which forced you to constantly dig through several menus in search of the desired item.
Psychonauts 2 tried to solve the problem, but the result was twofold. On the one hand, the layout of the controls and the interface have been implemented at a completely different level, making the game much more comfortable to play. And when jumping, Raz is now controlled much better, which is especially noticeable in the segments with reels on the rails.
But at the same time, about Double Fine for some reason limited the ability to fly in a hot air balloon to just a few seconds. And in side-scrolling segments, some of the functions stop working altogether, which is confusing.
Combat has been heavily reworked in style Alice: Madness Returns… Now, each type of enemy requires an individual approach: someone must first be set on fire, others are recommended to be stunned with a throw of an object, and the third must be ripped out of their hands, and so on. In addition, a new type of opponents has appeared, strengthening their allies. Because of this, an orgy periodically arises when Raza cannot adequately respond to attacks.
Basic abilities have been carried over from the first game in a modified form. For example, telekinesis now resembles the ability of a Jedi: there are many interactive objects scattered around the locations with which you can interact. However, auto-aiming fails, which starts to fail in battles with a large number of enemies.
Pyromania somehow got worse. Now Raz creates a large ball of fire, which must be activated, standing almost at close range to the enemy. Because of this, the main character can set himself on fire.
But psi-shots are now much more convenient to perform, since to fix on the target you no longer need to run up to the enemies almost at close range. In addition, the ability recharges automatically.
Clairvoyance has also become more useful, because with its help, secrets can be found in locations. Yes, the ability is implemented quite hilariously, since the characters perceive Raz differently. For some, he is a suspicious spy, but for others, he is a hindrance that prevents them from dreaming of fried bacon.
There are also a bunch of new abilities. So, Raz will be allowed to “slow down the enemy”, as well as create a paper double, which is able to penetrate on command into hard-to-reach places and distract opponents.
In the demo, we went through the first few hours from the start of the game, as well as two missions that will become available a little later. And they all turned out to be quite diverse.
The game begins in the minds of Loboto, which is a dentist’s nightmare: many teeth, mouths, medical items, and so on. However, the mind of the deputy head of the Psychonauts is much more interesting. Hollis Forsyth, which is a hypertrophied parody of the image of a strong and independent female manager, accustomed to keeping everything under control.
To convince Forsyth to send the interns on a mission, Raz decides to delve into her brains. Here the developers present the main innovation – Mental connections… At the level, there are floating points and clouds with words, and moving between them, you can create associations. For example, between risk and money. Such actions lead to the fact that the ex-medic Forsyth becomes a gambler, and her inner world turns into a casino hospital with pachinko and a tote, in which rich skeletons walk around, and jars of tests and syringes accept bets.
Later levels are also highlighted. One of them is a library location inhabited by flat characters torn from books. The hero has to find several clues, traveling through the paper pages. This brings to mind the famous “Milkman’s Conspiracy” level from Psychonauts.
The second additional level is a culinary show crossed with an obstacle course, in which you need to cook several dishes in a limited time, running between a saucepan, frying pan, blender and knife. The problem is that there are too many objects scattered around the location that try to injure the player.
It was at this point that we decided to try out the strangest idea of the developers. At any time, the player can enter the menu and increase the power of the attacks of Raz, remove damage from falls, or make the character completely invulnerable. Yes, Double Fine has literally legalized cheat codes.
The function turned out to be a little crooked, since in some places the character, due to invulnerability, can fall through the textures and get stuck. Only rebooting from checkpoints, which are scattered quite far from each other, can help.
While there were some rough edges left in Psychonauts’ gameplay, Double Fine managed to retain the unique vibe of the original that outweighs everything else. Strange characters are the main decoration of Psychonauts 2. Particularly successful is the group of interns-hooligans who will gradually change their attitude towards Razputin.
The design of the environment is also great, because the studio actively combines 3D and 2D objects in one scene and is not afraid to experiment and break symmetry. Because of this, Psychonauts 2 turned out to be a very original and exciting project in the style LucasArts, from which it is very difficult to break away. Therefore, we are looking forward to the release version of the adventure.
The game works on Unreal Engine 4however, developers do not use all the graphics technologies available to them. On the one hand, this is a reasonable distribution of the budget, because the emphasis is on design. On the other hand, Psychonauts 2 lacks a bit of interactivity.
GameMAG.ru editors were able to test the preview version on PC and Xbox One. On a weak laptop, the game produces a fairly stable 60 frames per second, and the settings were quite flexible.
On legacy consoles, performance will be limited to 30 frames per second, and on the Xbox One, the game looks quite good, although it seems that dynamic resolution is used.
On next-gen consoles, you should expect a fair 60 frames per second. Moreover, Xbox Series X | S supports a mode that produces 120 frames per second.
But the owners of PS5 turned out to be outsiders – they will not receive a separate version of Psychonauts 2. Instead, the PS4 Pro version will run backwards at 1440p / 60 frames per second, while the Xbox Series X outputs 4K resolution.
Psychonauts 2 launches on August 25 on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, PS4 and PS5. Xbox Game Pass subscribers will have access to the game on release day…
See also: Kotaku are unhappy with the immortality mode in Psychonauts 2 and require a button to “skip bosses”
