HEAD TRIP

Double Fine takes our brains to another dimension in the psychedelic Psychonauts 2

- Chris Schilling

The shock of the new is important to Tim Schafer. “The challenge when making a Psychonauts level is coming up with something that makes you feel like you haven’t seen it in a game before,” he says. In that regard, we’d say what we’ve played is a qualified success. It begins at a music festival called Feast For The Senses, and that’s a tacit promise on which Double Fine fully delivers. Via a kaleidoscopic transition, we’re transported to a woozy, substance-fuelled brain space that makes us feel lightheaded. With a psychedelic rock-inspired soundtrack noodling away in the background and shrewd use of chromatic aberration giving the world’s angular lines and edges a fuzzy, soft-focus feel, it’s a trip in more ways than one. But though we might not have been here before, at the same time there’s an undercurrent of homecoming: a strange, comforting sensation that steadily washes over us. Now we feel transported in a different way, back in time to 15 years ago, and another game that took us to places where real-world rules no longer apply. Psychonauts 2 certainly does offer something new, but it also gives us something equally precious: more Psychonauts.

A degree of continuity is exactly what Tim Schafer and Double Fine are aiming for. Not least since the story begins pretty much where we left off – or exactly where it left off, if you played two-hour VR adventure