Yesterday I did a writeup about how I thought Psychonauts 2 was a pretty fantastic story-driven action adventure platformer game that has captivated me lately even though the game itself is extremely casual to the point that I think many would consider it to be too easy.
I think perhaps this low difficulty level was intentional so that they could get a wide range of people interested and based on sales numbers it appears to have worked. The voice acting is top notch and I have read that Jack Black worked on it with his voice although I am yet to encounter that and be aware of it.
There are a lot of really inventive things in this game and in my mind that is extremely rare these days since there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of games released every year and doing something original is likely extremely difficult to do.
There was one particular section of this game that really stood out to me thus far as being exceptionally creative and is worth "the price of admission" on its own.
one of the main things that your character does in the game is to enter people's minds to fix traumatic events that have happened to them and make them "act right" again. In this particular event you are entering the mind of Compton Boole, who has information to help you move forward in your quest but he is traumatized by an event on a game show of sorts that he doesn't like to talk about.
In the game show there are these other-worldly looking hosts and the entire thing has a sort of Price is Right feel to it with the music and the commentary.
The judges that are leading the shows are food judges and their attitude is a lot like Gordon Ramsay or some of the other judges in various modern cooking shows where they seem nonplussed by anything you present them. In order to prepare the dishes they want you to make you have to pick up members of the audience, who are food items.
Once you pick them up you have to carry them to various cooking stations which are a boiling bath, a blender, a chopping block, and a frying pan station. It's not just as simple as walking to these places though as there are many dangers in your way that you have to platform your way though.
There are many ways to go about doing this and your various skills can be used to sky skate, or warp jump to certain points but this can prove difficult because you have to hold down the button to be carrying the food item audience member the entire time you are walking as well. You can and will take damage during this and you need to watch your health because if you "die" you have to start the entire thing over.
I found out after annoyingly dying a few times that there are some destructible items in the area such as cameras that if you break them, a health point drops out. That would have come in handy earlier and I only figured it out by accident.
The entire time that you are doing this a rather funny and silly commentary is happening over the crowd's cheers and jeers.
The various cooking stations have their own different dangers and some of them are easier to avoid than others so most people will probably figure out some sort of express in and out that involves skating on the rails or using the warp points. That's what I started doing eventually anyway.
There are a bunch of collectibles in this arena as well, but these are all optional and I didn't bother to get most of them because I am not a completionist sort of person when it comes to gaming.
Once you do, I think it was 3 dishes and the judges are quite rude about how the end results are saying things like "mildly pleasing" and "passable as edible food" you end up going into a showdown versus all three of them as a boss fight.
if you were just watching this on a stream or even when you first get in there this can seem quite daunting because there is so much going on all at once but because there are so many healing items that are randomly dropped on the playfield it is actually really easy to get past this. It's just kind of funny because their offensive weapons they use on them is their own vomit because they are ill from the food you fed them.
This all still has a gameshow appeal to it because you can't deal direct damage to them, but instead you have to find certain ingredients that they are barfing up and throw them into a nearby receptacle in order to harm them. It's all very surreal and extremely creative on the parts of the developers. Also, the controls remain very tight and polished and at no point in time was I feeling as though hitboxes were shitty or that controls were non responsive or delayed. That is one things I will say that this game absolutely nailed: The controls are absolutely outstanding.
The host of the show is of course rude to you the entire time the battle is going on. No matter how quickly you find the ingredients in the sludge it was "too long." This had me chuckling the entire time.
This is just one of the sections of the game also although all of the major checkpoints in the game follow a similar pattern. You have to enter a person's mind to figure out their trauma and correct it and at the end it always results in some sort of boss battle and thus far anyway, the fights have all been different and inventive in a way that you never really can predict what you are going to get. You know you are going to be on a platform, but that is about it.
This happens about halfway through the game and thus far it has been my favorite part of the entire journey. Psychonauts 2 is a fantastic game that I think will appeal to almost anyone unless they are the kind of person that requires extreme difficulty in their gaming experience in order to enjoy it. I am the opposite of that so for me, this game is absolutely wonderful.
It is free as part of a PS-Plus subscription for now and likely months into the future as well.