Rafiki wrote:

but I'm too lazy / can't make it work, so here's some additional bullet points I've had sitting in a txt file:


BIG PLOT/ENDING SPOILERS INCLUDED

• The game has the pieces to put together a fun and inventive platformer. The outdoor areas prove they can put together fun arenas to bounce around in, the game has the literal world bending like The Milkman Conspiracy level of the first one, and it also includes portals like Prey where a small room can open up into a stadium or you can be running along and it will seamlessly transition between two disconnected areas. Check out about 10-15 seconds of this clip to see what I mean. However, rather than using all of these pieces to create really mind-bending and exciting levels, most levels are just hallways. Sometimes literally. The levels twist and turn but you ultimately just walk in a straight line. The fundamental problem is that the levels don't exist to serve the game to make it more fun, they exist to serve the story in order to connect all of the cutscenes together.


• The Psi-power system needed to be overhauled. It keeps the selection wheel of the first game and you can assign powers to each of the 4 shoulder buttons, but you'll always keep levitate on because it's the only means of fast-travel and you'll likely keep psi-blast on because it's a convenient ranged attack. This means you'll probably have two buttons left over, and you CONSTANTLY have to switch between powers. This just leads to more interruptions as you keep bringing up the interface to swap powers.


• Figments and baggage should have been removed. Since the game is just a series of corridors, the figments don't encourage you to branch out into risky platforming for more fun, they just exist as a time sink to pad the game length and because the first game had them.


• This game overall takes a more serious tone. That doesn't make it bad, and, hey, it's Double Fine's prerogative if they want to take it in that direction. But it's sometimes just so painfully earnest to the point of seeming like parody (spoiler, but you probably won't really understand what you're looking at as long as you don't rewind to the beginning). It was moments like this where I kept waiting for the humor of the old game to suddenly kick in to tell me this game has just been fucking with me the whole time.
  


• The interns helping in the finale feels unearned. You meet them in a cutscene, then in level 2 or 3 they go on a mission with you and help you at the very end, and then they disappear for the entire rest of the game as passive NPCs. They're hanging around the world and you can speak to them, and a few of them give you optional sidequests, but it's entirely possible to avoid them completely and forget they're even there. Then in the finale they jump in to help again, and in the final cutscene the spelled-out moral is that sometimes it's ok to need help from others. Sure, fine, but the build-up to the finale wasn't there. They should have been more actively involved throughout the game, perhaps one intern helping per level, instead of going away for 10 hours and suddenly appearing at the end.


• The ending of this game misses the mark, I think. The big moral lesson is that everyone, even people and institutions we look up to, makes mistakes and deserves a second chance. I'm not summarizing, a character actually states exactly that message. The problem here is that the mistake of the villain is "genocide." It's simply brushed off and she goes to live in the woods with her former boyfriend. If you're thinking that it's not fair to criticize because in the first game Coach Oleander stole childrens' brains in a world domination plot and it was just hand-waved away in the end, I don't think it compares. The first game wasn't even trying to be taken seriously. The whole story was just one big joke, and Oleander getting off with a, "ha ha, well, no harm, no foul!" in the end was itself a gag. It worked in the context of comedy. It doesn't work in the context of something trying to be serious with Important Messages. And in taking a more serious tone, what the game completely fails to acknowledge in making mistakes is accountability. In the first game, Oleander's actions only affected the campers, Sasha, and Milla. At the end, all of the harm he caused is undone and he's standing in front of all of them explaining himself and apologizing. Even though it doesn't actually show anyone sounding off on him, if you wanted you could assume they implicitly had the opportunity to at least confront him. In Psychonauts 2, the villain's victims (or their families, at this point) never get accountability and the harm isn't undone. She just gets to go live happily ever after now that her inner demons are under control. What the fuck? The game itself references Oleander as a way to wink and nudge it's way out of this, but it was just a really poorly thought-out ending.