A lighthearted, dazzling adventure and a worthy successor

Psychonauts was released 16 years ago. At the time, it gave us a fresh and exciting twist on the collectathon platforming subgenre, which was already brimming with great entries from the late 90s/early 00s, such as Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, or Spyro 2. Much like them, it was filled with dry humour and had an easily identifiable visual and musical identity. On top of that, Psychonauts had the added variety of psychokinetic powers (allowing for more complex combat and traversal), and showcased the emotional depth of its multitude of loveable characters by (literally) exploring them through clever level design.

Fast forward to today, and we've been presented with a sequel which has all the same charm, all the same strengths, a few extra bells and whistles, and a more delicate approach to discussions around mental health. It still has the same bizarre sense of humour we've all been craving, and it delivers it through a diverse range of levels - each of which is brimming with figments, emotional baggage, and other bits and bobs to stuff into your mental inventory.

Unlike the original game, Psychonauts 2 has a more complex narrative to explore, where it discusses topics such as love, loyalty, and kinship, and balances them within the roles of the psychic agents and their navigation of the human psyche.

As with many narrative-driven games, Psychonauts 2 struggles to walk the line between seamless storytelling and allowing the player to explore the world at their own pace, in a manner of their choosing. Some levels are disjointed, and have their action sporadically cut with pre-rendered scenes to progress the story. Others allow you to bounce around and potentially fall to your doom while they attempt to narrate the story to the player. It works well for the most part, but when the completionist itch takes hold, it can feel frustrating to stumble into a temporary point of no return, to have your groove broken, and to know that there are collectables you'll have to leave behind for the time being.

This awkward sense of simultaneous freedom and constraint is a cornerstone of Psychonauts' game design. Levels are typically linear, forcing the character to navigate their way through a clearly predetermined path so that they will only discover what is necessary to further the plot. Through this limitation, Psychonauts 2 avoids feeling messy or sprawling, but can often leave the player feeling powerless - there's no sense of achievement in the navigation. If an obstacle appears impassable, that is because it is intended to be just that.

In a game genre defined by the player's ability to move between platforms, it feels somewhat counterproductive that self expression through movement would be discouraged, though if the alternative is sequence-broken storytelling, then perhaps it's a design choice for the better.

So, is Psychonauts 2 an old-fashioned game? Probably. It's the most "modern" collectathon we've seen in recent years - with other contenders being messy, joyless games like Yooka-Laylee (for which I was an early backer and couldn't bring myself to finish after the fourth level or so), or the sprawling indie game A Hat in Time, which lacked that triple-A polish which could have propelled it from “Great” into “Classic”.

Despite having the constraint to avoid feeling messy, and a high level of polish thanks to its big, Microsoft budget, Psychonauts 2 remains seated firmly in the middle of a genre rooted in early 3D gaming, and does little to set itself apart from its predecessors. Of course, compared to Donkey Kong 64, Spyro 2 or even Banjo Kazooie, Psychonauts 2 is a less frustrating and generally more enjoyable experience. As one would expect from the last 20 years of videogame development, there are a range of quality of life and mechanical updates to propel the game into current day - however, several of these changes weren’t implemented without their own flaws.

It attempts to offer more intricate combat, but does so by introducing a system with several poorly thought out mechanics: melee combos that can easily lock you in without the ability to cancel out, a dodge with few i-frames and short range (meaning you often roll “away” and land within the range of the same enemy attack) and, as a result, enemy attacks which rely on simply giving them a wide berth if you hope to avoid them.

Most fights in Psychonauts 2 are finished by turtling away from your enemies as your psi-power cooldowns reset, and firing off your few favourite moves whenever they become available again. Many enemies have a particular psi-power weakness, but due to the immersion-breaking and slow method of re-selecting your four current psi-powers, it tends to be quickest and simplest to just power through (forgive the pun) with whatever you have on-hand.

There's a new system with "pins" which allows you to purchase new passive abilities, but these are also a little awkward to re-select (the menu doesn't always navigate the way you'd expect it to), and with only three available slots, these tended to be filled with whatever would get me out of combat the fastest.

I realise all this makes it sound as though I found no joy in Psychonauts 2. I did - it’s a vibrant, hilarious game which has clearly been crafted lovingly from beginning to end. Perhaps the characters were a little more shallow than I would have liked. And maybe I found some of the execution in level design lacking (don’t get me started on the area where you have to roll a boulder over tight passageways). However, all these issues I’ve listed weren’t enough to detract from the game overall. Psychonauts 2 is a lighthearted, dazzling adventure which offers the player well-crafted, intriguing worlds to explore, and I would absolutely recommend it to someone looking for an upbeat, if not occasionally frustrating, platforming romp.

It's not the best game in recent memory, but Psychonauts 2 remains a very good game, and a worthy successor to one of the best collectathons from the subgenre's prime.

Slime Rancher is a great concept for a game: exploration, progression, resource management, slime poops - it's got it all, neatly wrapped in cutesy, family-friendly packaging. But the question is, does it all come together for a satisfying, slimy whole?

The game starts off promisingly: setting you off to collect your first slimes, to then bring them home to a newly built corral and feed them from your garden. The braver Slime Ranchers may dare to stray further afield, from the cutesy instrumentals of the ranch's surrounding areas, to the ominous themes of map's far edge - avoiding danger where they can, and collecting rarer slime types before they transform into frightful abominations.

And by having you explore, collect and feed slimes, then sell their "plorts", the game establishes its main gameplay loop. Eventually you'll expand your ranch, find rarer and more valuable slimes, grow enough in your gardens to feed the large, stationary ''gordo" slimes dotted around the map (who reward you with keys to progress from area to area), and crash the plort market by selling more poops than the consumer base could ever demand.

From here, the intricacies of Slime Rancher appear. Decreasing returns from selling the same poops will have you storing them instead for research, while searching the far reaches of the map for more, rarer slimes. Eventually, you'll have stored enough resources to easily build "extractors", to collect rare, scientific materials from around the world; you'll automate your ranch, create shortcuts between it and the world outside, and have enough spare resources to start decorating to your heart's content.

Though once you've reached this point, the promise of the game begins to falter. There are no new worlds to discover, no new slimes to see, and only far-off financial goals attainable through a plort market that sneers at the thought of even the rarest poops you can find.

So, if you're keen to play for a few hours (around 20) and get lost in a slimy world where people are desperate to take poops off your hands (...until they aren't), Slime Rancher is a fun game with a lot of love and attention to detail... which just happens to fall flat at its final hurdle.