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Psychonauts 2 – Zero Punctuation

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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Psychonauts 2.

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Transcript

Ah, Psychonauts, what a great game that was. I hope your fingers are still smarting from the last time I had to bring that across. Sure, the platforming physics were a bit jank and all the characters looked like their concept art had been scanned in by someone with Parkinson’s disease, but it was funny and well written and weird because it was a Tim Schafer game from that wonderful golden age of the PS2 era when games could be weird and culty I SAID CULTY because they weren’t expected to make enough money to pay for the CEO’s moon expedition. Unfortunately they were still expected to make some amount of money and that’s where Psychonauts 1 fell short on initial release, and why I had to start breaking fingers. Fortunately the Double Fine have managed to cling to driftwood long enough to wait for the inevitable twenty year nostalgia wave to come around and can now surf that driftwood all the way to sex island with Psychonauts 2. Yes, they’ve pulled what’s now technically known as the Shenmue gambit. And you know, slipping on those old familiar Psychonauts trousers I could almost think no time had passed at all. I mean, in the game world, it literally hasn’t, but nevertheless. Very little about the look and feel of the world seems to have changed much. Here’s all those clashing colour schemes we remember so fondly, and all the old characters exactly as we remember, still designed like plasticine models after they’ve been peeled out of a waffle iron.


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Author
Image of Yahtzee Croshaw
Yahtzee Croshaw
Yahtzee is the Escapist’s longest standing talent, having been writing and producing its award winning flagship series, Zero Punctuation, since 2007. Before that he had a smattering of writing credits on various sites and print magazines, and has almost two decades of experience in game journalism as well as a lifelong interest in video games as an artistic medium, especially narrative-focused. He also has a foot in solo game development - he was a big figure in the indie adventure game scene in the early 2000s - and writes novels. He has six novels published at time of writing with a seventh on the way, all in the genres of comedic sci-fi and urban fantasy. He was born in the UK, emigrated to Australia in 2003, and emigrated again to California in 2016, where he lives with his wife and daughters. His hobbies include walking the dog and emigrating to places.