Psychonauts 2 is worth the wait – Weekly roundup

Psychonauts 2 is worth the wait – Weekly roundup

27th August 2021
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Image provided by: Double Fine

Psychonauts 2 reviews are a long time coming

A couple of weeks back, the eagerly anticipated sequel to the cult classic Xbox original Psychonauts turned ‘gold’. Uncover the meaning behind this esoteric industry-speak here, but there’s one last crucial, nerve-racking step before the game eventually graces players’ hands – reviews.

Thankfully, they’re overwhelming positive, easily surpassing the 2005 original. On the commonly referenced review aggregator sites like OpenCritic, Psychonauts 2 has excitingly received top marks and near-perfect scores across the board. With a whopping 97% recommendation based on over 100 critic reviews, this firmly secures Psychonauts 2 as one of the most highly reviewed games of 2021 thus far.

Psychonauts 2 has endured many lengthy, drawn-out and arduous development challenges since its surprising debut back in 2015 as a crowd-funded project, so these fantastic results are all the sweeter. Before turning to crowd funding, Tim Schafer – critically acclaimed game designer and director of Double Fine studios – desperately wanted to raise money for a full-blown sequel for many, many years.

Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson blatantly offered over a public social media post, to single-handedly fund Psychonauts 2 out of his own pocket in 2012. This was a couple years too early, before Microsoft’s all-out acquisition of Minecraft in 2014. Notch was ‘only’ a measly multi-millionaire at the time and even he couldn’t foot the eye-watering $18 million proposed bill.

Years later, Psychonauts 2 re-emerged spontaneously with a defiant announcement at the 2015 Video Game Awards, alongside a simultaneous crowd-funding launch which successfully surpassed their initial $3.3 million goal, reaching nearly $4 million by the campaign’s closure.

Of course, this was only a small slither of a bigger but necessary budget. Double Fine was previously independent and produced enough upfront funds themselves, with an external investment partner covering the rest for a release originally intended for 2018.

Well, obviously these plans didn’t pan out perfectly, as a couple of key hurdles significantly impacted production. Most importantly, Microsoft fully acquired Double Fine in 2019. The studio went from endlessly wrestling with budgetary constraints to practically waving a blank cheque from one of the wealthiest companies.

The implications were startling but ultimately game-changing for Double Fine. Full-on boss battle scenarios were being liberally cut to better balance the tight budget, but the acquisition helped reinstate them. This pushed back released even further to 2020 and inevitably 2021 due in part to the world-wide pandemic which firmly uprooted the collaborative effort necessary for game development.

It’s finally happening, though. Psychonauts 2 released on August 25th on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Now technically under the umbrella of Xbox-owned studios, it arrived day one on Xbox Game Pass, so you’ve got no excuse to at least try out this weird and wonderfully unique game!

Minecraft Dungeons coming to Steam

Recently, Microsoft has been bringing their pre-exisiting back catalogue of games and brand-new upcoming releases to technically a competing platform, Steam.

Their first introduction was overly tentative, undecided whether they should fully embrace the fan-favourite platform or continually forge their own max-profit path with the much-maligned Windows Store, which desperately needs a complete re-work ahead of the impending Windows 11.

Slowly but surely more games arrived and enjoyed immense, immediate success. You’ll easily find all their heavy hitter franchises on Steam: Halo, Forza, Gears of War and more. However, there’s always been one peculiar outlier which Xbox treats specially for some reason – Minecraft.

It isn’t the world-wide sensation’s main attraction, but the spin-off dungeon crawler, Minecraft Dungeons is making its way to Steam next month. Originally debuting last year, the Steam release bundles together all the game’s 6 DLCs worth of post-launch content under the ‘Ultimate Edition’ banner. It’s primarily targeted as younger fan’s first foray from basic block-building mechanics to an action role-playing game, where an experience co-op partner can lend a helping hand.

With Minecraft Dungeons clearly showing a Minecraft game can eventually find itself on Steam, will it pave the way for the main game?

Unfortunately, we don’t anticipate it any time soon, even though it’d be the perfect pairing with Steam’s seamless modification integration with their workshop support. Weirdly, Xbox Game Pass on PC doesn’t even include Minecraft. Being the best-selling game of all time by a long shot, Microsoft likely envisions Minecraft as a unique entity and industry oddity. It confidently stands alone and doesn’t need to rely on conventional marketplaces.

Gamescom 2021 highlights

This years’ Gamescom, basically the EU version of E3, is currently ongoing. It’s wrapping up tonight and all the big-name announcements have already dropped. Here’s the highlights.

The long-awaited sequel to Saints Row, or rather reboot in this case, was finally revealed. Clicking through to the trailer hosted on YouTube, the feedback is overwhelmingly negative. It’s supposedly releases on February 25th, 2022 but only a pre-rendered cinematic trailer was shown, not even an overly choreographed ‘in-engine’ showcase.

The stark backlash seems to stem from the trailer’s ‘trendy’ tone. Saints Row was always closely compared to the Grand Theft Auto series, but it openly embraced its wacky antics. Based solely on the cinematic, the reboot is killing its past for a more cheerful, upbeat tone and fans aren’t too pleased. Hopefully gameplay footage is released soon and has a more positive impact.

They aren’t ground-breaking announcements, but release dates for Xbox’s Halo: Infinite and PlayStation’s Horizon: Forbidden West were announced at Gamescom. These are the respective platform’s big upcoming exclusives, so it’s reassuring knowing the dates are locked-in with no more unexpected delays.

Halo: Infinite will be releasing just in time for the holiday season, December 8th, 2021 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC – all day one on Xbox Game Pass. Here’s how to use a keyboard and mouse on an Xbox console.

Horizon: Forbidden West has been awkwardly shoved to 18th February, 2022 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, leaving these consoles with no first-party presence for the all-important holiday season.