The Besties - Speaking sequels with Axiom Verge 2 and Psychonauts 2

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

This week, we’re breaking down two sequels that couldn’t be more different from each other: The unique metroidvania romp known as Axiom Verge 2, and the throwback action-platformer Psychonauts 2.��Other games discussed include Spelunky 1 and 2 on Switch, The Vale and Twelve Minutes. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Yesterday I was offered $20. I'm not going to plug the website, but they were offering $20 for a free meal between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. in New York City. So I took advantage of it by getting two large decadent smoothies from the smoothie place across the street from me, which I would normally just walk downstairs and get.

But because I was getting the free $20, I had to order it online and have it delivered. Okay. So everything was great. Smoothies show up. They're free. It's awesome. Nice tip for the driver, of course.

And then I realized that there are no straws in here. Now, what's the play? What would you do in this scenario? Dark summer jazz. Dump it out the window. You would just throw it? No, I wouldn't throw the whole cup, but I would dump the beverage out the window

because what am I supposed to do? Drink this with my mouth and get ants in my mouth? Why are there ants? Because you got smoothie on your face. And then the ants got on your face. Oh, so you're saying it's more of like attracting the ants. Yeah, there's not ants in this. Jesus, guys. Guys, where are you ordering your smoothies from that attracting the ants. Yeah, there's not ants in this. Jesus, guys.

Guys, where are you ordering your smoothies from that you think ants are a thing? The ant hill. We don't have ants. We don't have smoothies in West Virginia, but like I imagine there's probably the sweet taste of them will draw in the ants. Do you understand? If you leave apple on ground, it's ants. Right there. If you leave a smoothie on face, it's ants. If you leave smoothie on face,

it's ants. Hey, can I ask you a question, Russ? Did you get spirulina up in them? What? Did you get spirulina up in them? I don't know what that is. It's a good algae. They put them in smoothies to get strong. Oh, yeah, no. I got a dessert smoothie. Mine is not for

health. All smoothies are dessert smoothies if you're healthy enough. If it's not healthy, it's a milkshake. Yeah. That's a dumb, dumb. One time I got a smoothie with spirulina in and it gave me the worst diarrhea I ever had in my whole life. Nice try, Algie.

Not again. I just wanted to say I sheepishly walked across the street, walked into the store and was like, hey, I ordered online, but I didn't get a straw, so I'm just going to take a few straws. Okay, goodbye. You left your home to get a straw? Learn

to fashion one from foil and tape. my name is justin mcroy and i know the best games with the z of the week my name is griffin mcroy and i also know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best plural games of the week. My name is Russ Rushing and I know the best games of the week. Someone's not trying to wake that baby up. I love it. It's so good. It's so good. It's Welcome to the Besties where we profile the latest and greatest in home interactive intergaming. It's a video game club and just by by listening, my friend, you are a member. Christopher Thomas Plant, how many times do you have to introduce yourself as Christopher Thomas Plant

before it becomes a Jean-Paul Gaultier situation, before you're Paul Thomas Anderson? I think at least another hundred. If it hasn't happened now, it's not going to happen. Yeah. The number in my head was a hundred. This week we're going to be talking about two games that's right two games axiom verge 2 and after the break psychonauts 2 two sequels two very different products uh christopher thomas plant now we're down to 99 uh tell me a little something

about axiom verge 2 axiom verge 2 is a metroidvania type of game that's a sequel to axiom verge 1 but in a twist is quite a bit different than axiom verge 1 where that game is uh a very loyal ode to uh the metroid games this one is a little bit different but i'll save how it's different for our conversation real quick before we even get into very quickly 30 seconds experience with first axiom verge because i bounced off this thing so bad like it had a very lo-fi sort of retro aesthetic uh and it did not appeal to me whatsoever did not enjoy it bounced off very quickly as first as you as you guys know i play every metroidvania ever and axiom verge is no different i played that one as well i played the whole thing i beat it did not love it i thought it was okay but i was not super grabbed by it um

i can't i don't know part of it was the art style part of it was just like the guidance like player guidance and and stuff like that just didn't do it for me it never clicked i feel very differently about axiom verge 2 so it'll be interesting yeah axiom verge 1 i feel like uh it adheres to that metroid formula a little bit too closely and doesn't quite stay i got lost a lot in axiom verge which like in a metroidvania when you go too long without like making progress or getting an upgrade like it is the most defeating thing and i i've tried to play axiom verge a few times i fucking love the aesthetic and the like the whole vibe of it and the weird cyber gods

shit like that's all extremely my jam and maybe one day i'll get through it but um yeah that that carrot on a stick approach just never really clicked with me in Axiom Verge. And though Axiom Verge 2 is a wildly different thing, for whatever reason, it did click with me this time. Poet, did you play the first one? Yeah, I just skipped Axiom Verge 1 altogether. I'm really having a journey. Russ Fruschick has been dealing with a lot of text messages this week about whether or not I like Metroidvania games because I'm having a real crisis of conscience. And I'm in a different place now, this morning, than I think I was even around, I don't know, my last text to him at about 11 p.m. last night.

Yeah, I feel very, you know, as I mentioned, I didn't dig the first game, but I do actually quite enjoy this one. And with Plant's struggles, it's made me sort of like examine Metroidvania as a genre. Traditionally, they're like 2D games. Some of them are 3D, but most of them are 2D games. Emphasis on exploration, games like Symphony of the Night, games like Super Metroid. And I think one of the reasons that plant traditionally has bounced off and plant tell me if this is wrong is that they generally have the narrative take the back take a back seat in favor of exploration and like just general vibe um and uh i would say this is

i like the narrative in this game didn't do a lot for me, even though there is a lot of it. But I do think this game is a really good representation of like getting lost in a world and then slowly becoming the master of that world through really, really cool upgrades that just kind of make you look at the world very differently than you did when you first got there. I think let's dial in on that. That's that I think is what says this game apart is like where the first game is a very metroidvania style like you get the different type of blasters and you get you know bombs or whatever that help you go through this one is like you

start out i think justin mentioned last week with a pickaxe and a boomerang and there's a lot of focus on melee combat and uh the the upgrades are just i i not really anything that i've seen in this this genre of of game before um the big the big one for me that that sort of made the game click is you get a drone at a certain point that you can throw so you can throw it up onto a ledge you can't reach or get it into a tiny crack. And at any point, you can detonate that drone and just switch back to your regular body. Not a flying drone. Not a flying drone. Well, you eventually get a,

there are upgrades that help with mobility, but. Ish, yeah. Yeah. You get a hook shot for the drone, not for you. And then you start getting upgrades that are separate for your drone and then for you. And at certain points in the story, like you can only play as one of it.

Like once you hit that point, it kind of becomes a game about bodies and stuff like that in a way that is, I think, really, really unique and quite cool. Yeah. So I want to go back to what Fresh said about narrative and whether or not that's why I've bounced off these games in the past. I think that's sort of right. I think what I've realized with these games is they inherently have funky pacing, which is on the first half, you are weak and things are slow and mundane and i think this game emphasizes that with the art style which the game takes place in effectively antarctica and then some other places which we'll get into and it's i think the

art at the beginning is pretty bland and mundane and i think to some degree that's intentional um and what you can do in the beginning is pretty bland and mundane and then the back half of the game is the opposite. The back half goes bonkers in increasingly wild and hallucinogenic ways, which I love. And you are rapidly getting all these bizarre powers that are playing with the idea of your character's identity and time and space and what you even are. And that is great. I think the issue with so many

Metroidvanias is the stories aren't good. And the story is what would help me get through that first half. Like, if the story was compelling, it could pull me through the slow part and entice me to the back part. The writing here, i don't know if it's bad or good honest i feel like i just don't read enough sci-fi but i i really really really made an effort to understand what the hell is going on in this i don't think i'm that much of a doofus and i got to the point where i was like i'm'm just skipping it. Like, this game is fun. This part is not working for me. And it, at a certain point, was outright getting in the way and impeding me from playing it. And I've enjoyed the game more once I stopped trying to even make heads or tails of it.

I'm curious what it is that, like, specific with the gameplay that, like, made you engage with it. Whereas early on, it whereas early on you is just because you got those powers and it like oh boy so yeah uh it's hard to talk about this game without spoiling it you know yeah um i guess what i could say without like any major spoilers is i would probably like the final third and fresh you you've finished it, so you can tell me here. It completely reimagines the world that you're in and forces you to navigate it in a way that is very different than how you were getting around it.

And this isn't like navigate it with like, oh, you have a hook shot now. I thought that was going to be... That's about halfway through. If it's the point you're talking about, that game turns on its ear about halfway through. Yeah. So I would say that is when it really clicked for me

because that was when it felt like it was doing something really different. And weirdly, it does something really different way before that, which we haven't gotten into yet, which is, so you have the uh the boomerang and you have the uh the what is it the the pickaxe the pickaxe yeah they they clearly give you weak weapons because what they really want you to use is your hacking ability which justin do you can you describe how that works Put out a basically like cloud of nanites in a circle around you.

And whatever they touch, you can interact with and spend basically like energy to get them to do stuff. So if it's something more minor, like you slow them down, that's a small amount of energy. If it's something like switch their allegiance to you, it's a large amount of energy. And being able to do some of those bigger actions might require like upgrades or whatever right you can also hack doors to open them and there's there's a few other things and your drone also notably can also do that it's like one of the powers you and your drone both share so there's an enemy that is flying around in the air that you can hack to make it so you can jump on them but in order to to jump at them and get at them where you can get them in range of your hacking ability,

you would fall down a pit. So you can just sacrifice your drone, chuck them into oblivion like Yoshi jump style to hack this thing so that your human body can then jump up on it safely. Once it starts getting into stuff like that, it gets very clever very quickly. Juice, what are your thoughts about it? You've been reticent um you know it's i'm fair i'm finding it hard to form opinions on it i i sort of think the exploration and powers are cool but i don't find the moment to moment that compelling like the big picture i think it's cool that the you know the hacking feels neat and it feels very different from the last one.

I've played a lot more of this than I did of the first axiom verge. Of course we didn't do a besties episode on that. So I didn't necessarily feel pushed to do it. I, I, it, there's something about it that just feels like, I feel like I spend way too much time sort of like looking around trying

to figure out like, is this something I could do right now? Or is this something I need to return to later? Um, and getting around the world to like return to the stuff is, is I just don't find that particularly, um, enjoyable. Um, I, it's like, I'm not necessarily like hating it, but it's not, it's just not, uh, clicking with me. And I put a good few hours into it. I mean, I just got like, um, like, okay, I'll give you an example. I saw, you see this ax and it's like, uh, this big bronze ax you can get. And it's behind, um, this like small gap with some cracked stone. And it's like, well, well um i don't really know what to do about that but it turns out if you go to this one place on the map you can get a shockwave

ability and you can use that shockwave ability to knock the stone down to get the axe like i didn't know if that like i didn't necessarily know that's the way i needed to head next um i spent a lot of time not knowing exactly where the next place is but but I could have just walked there. Like I ended up just like looking to see what I'm supposed to do in this situation because I didn't, I hadn't encountered it before. I didn't know how far I had to go to get there. I spent a lot of time just kind of like wandering around. Um, I, I just, it didn't, uh, it didn't really hook me. And I think more, more than anything, like just the base, like you encounter a robot and fight it. It just feels not fun to me.

It just doesn't feel particularly good. It's a lot of that crouch down and then, you know, throw your boomerang and keep it at a distance and then it dies eventually. It's like... One thing to note is that combat is completely optional in this game, even boss fights.

Like you can walk right through boss fights and any upgrades, you don't get like you know souls from killing enemies to like upgrade your powers it's all exploration and discovery based so i i hit a point where you know my drone could fly over or hover over like most of the bad guys that could challenge me and i just stopped fighting all together not because it i mean partially because like justin said it's not the most engaging combat in the world but also like you don't you really don't have to do it which is i don't know an interesting thing for a game but it also i think keeps it quite short because there's not many difficulty spikes i beat it in i think like seven hours maybe six and a half. So it is, which is my main complaint about the game is I feel like it is, it does get

better and better the more sort of stuff you find and the more ways you have to explore this world. And then it's done like right when it hits what is, in my opinion, like kind of fever pitch, which was pretty disappointing. But yeah, I did want a little more from it i think that's generally a good thing that they leave you wanting more and not less but it does feel like it could have used a few more hours of like you have all the powers and here's this whole new area you could check out whereas really it was just like this tiny little

like end game area that sort of wraps up the whole thing i i think this game in particular really emphasizes the idea of like i think in a lot of metroidvanias you you get to this point where it's like well i can finally explore the whole map but here i feel like you're constantly getting powers that let you do that earlier on than you think you should like you can directly climb up walls and you know they mentioned the drone um which really helps you access like a lot more of the map than most games do that early on and i think for people that don't necessarily play a lot of these or don't necessarily love a lot of metroidvanias i definitely understand where juice is coming from where you might feel like you get lost and you don't know where you're going.

I mean, plant had the same issue with that exact same power up. Like he didn't know where to go. I've played so many of these at this point that like, it feels like a, in the way that like dark souls feels like a language, it feels like a language to me where I know, Oh,

crack stone. I don't have anything that can break that. I know I need an upgrade. I've searched everywhere in this area. I have to go somewhere else to get an upgrade to break that crack stone. Like there was no doubt in my mind. So I think it's just like a familiarity thing. I'm not saying that's good or bad

from a design perspective, but I do understand why newcomers would struggle. And this is definitely not like a newcomer Metroidvania. No, no, here's a pro tip. The map screen is like graph paper and it's the fog of war where as you go through little blocks, you are adding to the picture on the map. And it is like effectively a tiny version of the world that you have seen.

So if you like passed a waterfall, you can see that. Unfortunately, it's not large enough that you can see specific things that you want to go back and break through or like mountain, mountain ledges that you think you would be able to reach. And there's no way to mark up the map. That's not true. You can. There is not? Yeah, you can mark up the map. You can?

Yeah. Yeah. I did not see it. Yeah, you just press A. Jeez. And it lets you leave different icons? No, I mean, it lets you set a reminder blip. Oh, but, yeah, it doesn't let you like send you can't mark it up like with a like you can't like do it breath of the wild style where you're

no i mean there's not multiple things but i mean i don't know i didn't feel like i needed more than one icon to be like oh i need to go back here anyway that's not the the big tip the the tip is you will often at least for me see like a little glowing like green icon of hey here's where you need to go next and it'll be like five blocks directly beneath where you are that that doesn't mean you should actually try to go down and it'll seem like maybe you can through some ways through some breakable walls or something. For me, often it wasn't that route. It would be like you actually need to go 20 blocks away from it,

go down into a lake, go diagonally in a different direction, and then go back up to that. So it was, again, and I think this is fresh, you know, in the language of it is like, oh, it's always playing with your perception of the space. But for me, I would waste a lot of time trying to figure out a closer path to it because my logic was, well, I just completed something in this area and that is the next beacon and it seems to be very close to here. So why would it not do that? Why would it have me go all the way back? It's funny because the Metroidvania fan community

is very split on this. I think there's two approaches. The other approach is games like Metroid Zero Mission or Ori and the Blind Forest give you a very directed approach. It does exactly what you're talking about, which is you'll get a waypoint and you more or less beeline to that waypoint

and you will get to the place you're going for. This game and a number of other games will give you a vague location sort of in the same vicinity but definitely not tell you the way to get there i prefer the latter because i feel like and again like the thing that i love about these games is just because i love getting lost in these worlds and then fine by finally figuring out oh this is the way to go and I feel like I discovered something. Whereas the more guided way can feel, again, more like by the nose directed.

Yeah, the issue for me is I feel like it was trying to do both because the beacon dot is literally in a single block in the graph paper. Yeah. So it's pretty clear of like, this is where you need to go. Honestly, if there hadn't been anything and it was just like hey just go explore good luck i would have gotten lost more but i

think i would have enjoyed it more because i wouldn't have been batting my head against a wall so often yeah that's um that's fair yeah we didn't really mention anything about sort of the aesthetics of the game it is it is uh heavily inspired by like ancient mesopotamian like culture and uh history and stuff like that like one of the main sort of uh entities that you speak to is lama su who is like a you know mesopotamian deity uh and the music for the game is pretty different from uh anything i think i've heard in a video game before i really don't know how to uh it's it is a lot of you know it's a lot of world instruments and a lot of like a lot of yeah and it's it's such a distinct thing from axiom verge which was very like this is you are in a video game this is maybe a computer world uh yeah bold i really like the thing yeah the music

fucking kicks ass yeah it's it's i got excited every time i got to a new area because the music just is so distinct um yeah i don't know if i'd recommend this game to everybody so definitely yeah that that that that that's kind of the my my final thought of it is I, again, fresh nose. I really was not clicking with it when I started. I kind of warmed up to it. I ended up playing a lot more last night deep into that second half that you were talking about. And I was really gelling with it. That said, I don't, I mean, I agree with Hoops that the moment to moment is not particularly fun.

I found the whole game extremely clever like especially in the second half i just kept thinking like wow this pacing i didn't enjoy it but i think it's kind of brilliant and wow i didn't really like the art in the first half but that transition from the mundane to where you end up going is inspired like it really works well in the way like a book works well and having a kind of a natural pace that pulls you in um so i admire it and i think in terms of for people who i would recommend this to we have a lot of listeners who don't play a lot of games i don't know if i would recommend this to them but if you are somebody like frosh who really really likes this genre and you know you can taste the tannins in this uh fine wine of metroidvania i think i do think this is for you i think you would really really really

appreciate what's going on here it's got a crunchiness to it that i could tell if you got into it you would get super deep like it would it would really really click with you it's that it's it's interesting at this point when you've been doing this for as long as i have to separate that from like appealing to you like this is good this is not for me this is good i know this is good it's just not for me speed runs of this game also are going to be silly there's a mode right wild yeah there's a speed run mode they they supported that a lot in axiom purge one we we got a whole nother game to talk about so maybe we should uh keep keep rolling let's uh yeah let's take a break axiom Verge 1. We got a whole other game to talk about, so maybe we should keep rolling. Yeah, let's take a break. Axiom Verge 2. Check it totally out. Next

up, Psychonauts 2. Hang with us. We'll be right back. Chris Plant has had to step away for a family emergency, by which I mean he didn't charge his laptop. That's a little industry slang for you. But we are here to talk

with you about Psychonauts 2, the long in development, long awaited sequel to Super Mario Bros. The Lost... No, it's just Psychonauts. Psychonauts 2. It is I guess... Is it out today?

Yeah, it is out. It's available on Game Pass and PC and Xbox. The first came out 16 years ago, by is out. Yeah. It's available on Game Pass and PC and Xbox. The first came out 16 years ago, by the way. Hachi Machi. Yeah, 2005, first Psychonauts came out, and then 12 years later, The Rhombus of Ruin, the PSVR sort of interstitial chapter also was was released which this game ties some of the events

into in a nice little animated introduction i wanted to mention uh you mentioned the first game when it came out the first game came out right when i started doing video game journalism stuff yeah right so it is a very weird experience to be playing this game now um because it is like a total time warp trip to back to that period it's very close to when i i we started at similar times this is like i was doing freelancing at this point um i hadn't started a joystick yet but like it's very much early like form did you guys play the first game at all oh yeah sure it was a it was a big goatee contender back then and and some context if you were like super young back then or didn't play the original psychonauts is

that it was already kind of a throwback thing like this runaround collect-a-thon 3d platformer banjo kazooie style thing was not necessarily i mean the closest we got to it was fucking like blinks the time sweeper like this genre was on its way out when the first psychonauts dropped back in 2005 and i think that's important context because i playing psychonauts 2 was like i have not fucking played a 3d platformer where i had to run around and collect a hundred acorns or whatever. More very quick context for you on the original Psychonauts. Tim Schafer is the designer of that game

and lead designer of this game. Tim Schafer is somebody who came up in the LucasArts stable. He designed games like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. Had very much a cult following. And Psychonauts is a very interesting case of like it felt like him finally getting to make a big full budget action

platformer you know a way from moving away from like the adventure games that he had done and like something really on a scale that he had not done before and because it was published by a smaller publisher it didn't do the kind of sales numbers published by majesco it was majesco yeah it's like very very under the radar uh according to this it sold around a hundred thousand copies and it was very much like scooped up in the time after that like it wasn't big when it launched it was big you know in the years after that when people started to discover it and um that is why like it is the only reason i think that there is a psychonauts too because it is it is the sort of like good warm fuzzy feelings people have about the first one uh and about its like cult status and kind of like an

one of the last like i think last times you were able to have like a true like cult thing that didn't get played actually by a million people yeah um i i wanted to just to mention the sales real quick and i think part of it 100 is the fact that majesco put this game out and majesco was not known for putting out smash hits. But I think it's also just the weirdness of this game made it a very hard pitch for people. I still, you know, on Twitter, we were still getting questions. What even is Psychonauts?

So just, I'm going to do like a quick sprint of like this world and kind of explain what's going on. And then we'll segue into the sequel, which directly is a sequel of all the events in the first game basically psychonauts is an organization of uh folks who basically travel around the world doing good deeds through um telekinetic powers so um the spirit of the first game is you go around as this character raz who's a small like nine-year-old ten-year-old boy who is learning that he has psychic powers and can jump into the minds of people who are having

difficulties suffering from like actual like depression or anxiety or stage fright or whatever it is and so the core levels of the game were kind of playing through the minds of these people and you would see their fears or anxieties represented through level design so uh maybe you'd you know be going through a 3d level and it would turn upside down or maybe you'd there's a whole level that very well-known level where that's set with all these milkmen and spies and this guy who's dealing with like a lot of paranoia and so each levels was this very personal story about this individual and you kind of learn what makes them tick and help them to sort of uh accept or or uh work through their problems um through these levels so very creative i'm not surprised that it tanked because how do you elevator pitch that game?

But the second one is more or less a continuation of that spirit. Yes. Yes. Very much in sort of the polar opposite way that where Axiom Verge 2 is a huge departure that feels very much in keeping with the first game.

I think we've really talked, have we talked about mechanically? Okay, so mechanically, here's what it is. It's an action platformer where the world and the actions that you're taking are all sort of tied to the aesthetic or the theme of like the mind. So for instance, your powers are all like psychic abilities.

You have telekinesis where you can grab stuff and throw it. You have like psi beams. You can set stuff on fire with your mind. There's clairvoyance where you can read people's minds. There's – I'm probably forgetting some, right? There's mental connection, which is like you can connect to ideas, for example, like, I don't know, asking for help and winning. You connect those two ideas in the mind of someone and that like sort of rewires their brain. But it's also a platforming mechanic because you're zipping between these ideas. But that's the – and all the collectibles are like emotional baggage, emotional baggage,

right? So you find emotional baggage, you unlock it and that helps the person or you, you know, the enemies are all like negative sort of thought patterns like doubt for example and things like that are or censorship like self-censoring um those are like the the enemies that you fight um it is aesthetically uh looks like nothing else incredible and it's probably the biggest selling point from my perspective is like it is it is it goes complete it leans completely into the fact that like it is a completely abstract setting for for a a game and it is a completely like just wildly vividly visually imaginative in all like nearly every second it is a joy to to yeah it the variety is really incredible because one level, Justin, you were talking about this before we started recording,

is like you're going to the mind of a barber and so there's oceans and stuff, but the ocean is made up of hair and there's like barbicide, giant canisters that kill bugs and so it's all that theming. And that's like a mechanic, right? So there's like lice

and if you walk through the lice, you can't jump so you have to get rid of the lice to move on so you have to find a big can of Barbasol and knock it over with your telekinesis. So you have that sort of level and then the next level or the one I'm playing through now

is themed after, it looks like the Yellow Submarine submarine the beetles like that aesthetic of like rainbow colors and trippy drug infused aesthetics and all the characters are like inspired by that uh spirit so then there's really a night and day jump between each of these levels and then in between those you're kind of thrown into this small-sized open world area where you can kind of explore and complete these like little side quests but most of the core and where i think the heart of the game is are in these mine levels and there are quite a few of them that definitely carry the story along yeah i i those are very very rad i

am having trouble and i don't know that i've played enough of this game to like really sound off on it because it is also a much bigger and much more ambitious thing than i was expecting like mechanically speaking like there's a lot i feel like there's a lot more stuff to do in like combat is actually way more like uh i i don't know i feel like there's you have a i'm looking forward to hearing what the next word out of your mouth. I don't know. I think the combat is, is more interesting than it was in the first Psychonauts.

Like you can't just run at each enemy and pound the, you know, punch button. Like there is, there is a bit more to it than that. But it is a, it is a big and ambitious game. And for me,

the, the stuff we've talked about so far is incredible. And the stuff between it is an albatross around its neck. And I think if you're really into the world and that sense of humor and exploring this academy where the psychonauts learn their stuff and all the different characters that you meet and talk to, that stuff is great. But it's not hooking me the way that the the real meat of the thing is and it just kind of gets in the way i i think a lot of the problem for me is that the story stuff is very much connected to the first game like this is not a um like relaunch or rethink or whatever like you go to one stage and there's even a joke where he's like you it's it's back in the setting of one of the settings for the

original game and he says like i haven't been here for days it's like well yeah in their world it has been days for me it's been 16 years and it is the world is like completely populated with a bunch of characters already that they do not do the work of like introducing to you it feels very much like they're just like picking up where the first game left off and there is a like introductory sequence but it's so like tell don't show uh that it's really hard to like dial into because it's just like and anyway there was this guy and he went into this person's mind and you it is very much assuming not only that you played the first game which i did but it's assuming that you played the first game like last week and you very much are and like if if you can

swing it that's probably the ideal way because like i all these there's tons of characters and none of them get the sort of like introduction or reintroduction that you would hope for in a game where you're supposed to like care about the different yeah here's this is going to be weird especially if you've only played like the first few hours which i think have as justin alluded to like pretty serious pacing issues just because there's a lot of exposition. But I think, you know, having played a little bit more, I would say the parts that I find the most interesting

or engaging are not the funny, goofy, I'm making gags about bacon parts. It's the sad and like really emotionally wrought parts that generally come at the end of levels when you understand like what this person what this character has been going through at you know through you know their trauma or their pressures in life or whatever it is um that um kind of brings stuff home there's an early level uh that is like a mash-up of a casino and a hospital and the spirit of the level is you're given this new ability,

Justin alluded to it earlier, this mental connection ability that lets you rewire people's brains. And in this case, you're trying to rewire this woman's brain to get her to take the kids on a dangerous mission that she doesn't want to do. And you're doing the mission. And while I was doing it, I was like,

this does not feel right that we're doing this, but but i'm just gonna go ahead and do it because it's the mission and then at the end of it you are like fully shown how awful what you've just done is like you should not be doing that it's like the equivalent of one like one of those unkillable you know unforgivable curses in harry Harry Potter that changing people's brains is wrong. What you really should be doing as a true psychonaut is letting people sort of confront their own issues with, you know, you'll help, almost like a therapist would,

but it is not about changing people's minds as much as it is just like giving them strength to conquer their own issues. Yeah. And there's a lot more gravitas there clicks with me there really is a lot going on there that like and and each of the levels has its own moment like that i i think all that stuff is great i i you know justin was again talking about the combat earlier as was griffin i think the combat and the platforming are fine, but they feel, it feels like they made the first game, they're like, we do not really need to update this combat or this

platforming at all, nothing has really changed in this genre for the last 17 years, there's nothing we need to do to make it feel better or more smooth or whatever, And it shows because it feels exactly the same. And to me, I've played a lot of platforming in the last 17 years, and it feels pretty dated. It makes me feel like it's playing second fiddle to the heart of the game, which are these stories and these worlds.

So I don't know. I feel a little bit like I'm slogging through some of the platforming parts where i'd rather really just like experience it as a story to the point like maybe this would have been a better adventure game than it would be a platforming game i don't know um but that was just sort of my takeaway from it i don't even i don't even think the platform is that bad i just think i think it's just fine. Like it doesn't feel special. I think, yeah, it's not. There is something, and I don't know what it is,

but I think that the big thing that I was struggling with is that, and this is where you really start to see the fact that like we don't know what we're, like we don't make games. Right. So like we don't understand some of these. But there is a depth issue with a lot of the jumps where I think it's because they're more focused on it looking really good than communicating things like depth and placement.

But this game, more than any 3D platformer I have played in recent memory, I found myself missing a lot of jumps just because I couldn't tell how far away something was or how spaced out it should be yeah I think that's a good example just mechanically it just feels kind of right it feels like they're a little bit out of their comfort zone um in terms of making this specific type of game uh whereas with the narrative and the story stuff they feel like that is exactly where they should be um so yeah i don't know uh it it's definitely one of

those things where it's really great that it's on game pass because i could see this game coming out and being super expensive to develop and once again not doing super well because it's kind of hard to pitch but the fact that it's on game pass i think a lot more people are going to play it and uh that feels like a way better fit to me um than it would be just selling this as a 60 it's weird you know and again this is getting out of our lane because like we don't actually have insight into there was not a you know 28 part documentary about the making of cybernets too so we don't have the insight but like it still also feels like a little bit tied together with spit and wishes. Like there's not infrequent that you like walk into a place and things won't populate.

Or like there's like a level of smoothness and polish to the mechanics of like we're talking about with the platforming and stuff like that. feels like it's like a little bit off of where it needs to be to be really a really like polished experience especially for as long as as it has been in development yeah i would give a tip to people uh if you really just want to experience and experience the story there's some really great accessibility features you could turn off like any damage you can set it so like you do a ton of damage to enemies if you don't want to worry about the combat and make the platforming relatively straightforward and you don't have to worry about health turn all that stuff on and just like play through it like you're watching a movie basically yep oh it's also not very funny oh that's i don't think that's entirely fair

how many times did you laugh playing a couple no griffin how many times did you laugh playing it couple no griffin how many times did you laugh a couple good i got a couple giggles out of it yeah it's really it's try it's super try hard in a way you want to talk about stuff that feels dated now right that wouldn't have felt dated in 2005 i don't mean this is a crit i'm saying that like humor and this specifically this kind of like irreverence has been done so well so many times since this game originally came out that like the the comedy of it like it feels like it doesn't feel have the same sort of um uh it doesn't feel as dangerous or like as as witty as it did 15 years ago when games took themselves so much more seriously that That I agree with. I was looking back at the

releases that came out the same year as the original Psychonauts, and you compare those narratives to the narratives today, where we see 16 incredibly cool, risky narrative indie games come out every month, and it's a very different environment than it was back then. So I

think Psychonauts had the edge in a way that it does not any longer on that narrative side can we do emails yeah uh chris is usually the shepherd of these but i can start uh chris uh c palito 87 says the milkman conspiracy from psychonauts 1 is uh one of only 27 video game levels with its own wikipedia page are any of the levels in psychonauts 2 worthy of a wikipedia page i don't know that i've hit anything that really like the milkman conspiracy thing is what people talked about like you couldn't talk about psychonauts one without talking about that wild ass level and i i bet there's something i just don't think I would have. The stuff that I've seen has been artistically really inspired,

but mechanically not as interesting. I did a level that was like a cooking show with hand puppets, which was very cool. I don't know. Yeah. That sounds cool. It was exactly like Milkman's Conspiracy, but it was like 70s themed,

and it had like 70s music and a whole set and a crowd. Real quick, guys. 15 seconds on what Milkman Conspiracy is because that probably sounds wild to you. I don't know how to summarize that 15 seconds. The uninitiated. It's like almost, it is a weird, Psychonauts is a lot like Psychonauts 2,

so if you've played that now, you kind of get a vibe for it, but the Milkman Conspiracy level was just like out of nowhere, here is Splinter Cell. Like, it is just, like, a complete fucking, like, whiplash, wild thing that has, like, one joke that it really focuses in on, which is also not sort of the comedy style of Double Fine Games. It is just so, I don't know,

it's just really, really, really memorable. Yeah, it's worth watching a YouTube video if you're not going to play through the whole game just to see it, because it's really tough. It's tough to summarize, but it's interesting. Here's one about Axiom Verge from GordKY on Twitter. Is Axiom Verge worth playing now that a sequel is out? Does it feel dated?

Is it necessary story-wise? We did not talk about this. You really, like uh real quick the there's this concept in axiom verge called the breach which is this sort of big storm that all like worlds and realities are kind of suspended in and that's the connective tissue between uh these these two games there is almost no connective tissue i think otherwise yeah you could fully skip it um yeah and be fine you don't have to i think there's definitely some like they use the term like pattern mind a few times in axiom verge 2 in a way you definitely do not need to know what it is it's like star trek lingo that is it is explained in the first i think the

protagonist of two is maybe the antagonist of the first game not an antagonist they're the theory is a side let's but anyway trending towards spoilers i i i think one day i will play through axiom verge because i think there's a lot there that i think is very cool uh it's just takes a little bit more work than i think i'm usually willing to uh to uh put into a a metroidvania like this um honorable mentions anyone have you been playing spelunky one and two on switch i have oh it's really good y'all uh if if you know we've talked enough about spelunky on this podcast is i don't want to bore people but both of them are out on switch as of this moment um they're both incredible um and i think

the switch is the perfect platform for it because it really is like an obviously pick up and put down kind of system and given the restart relearn nature of these games um it's really a perfect platform for it uh spunky 2 in particular yeah yeah, they both run great, but Spunky 2 runs really well, actually better than it did on my PC, which is funny, and is an incredible multiplayer game, so if you have the chance, definitely grab

that, because it's really one of my favorite games the last few years. Deuce, you been playing anything? I very randomly reinstalled um, wait, did I tell you guys about been playing anything? I very randomly reinstalled wait, did I tell you guys about the veil? oh, that's what I wanted to talk about the veil, okay did you guys try it?

I've not tried it yet the veil is a so, okay I'll give you the story of the veil you are the sister of a newly crowned king who rather than focus on ruling the kingdom you have spent your life learning how to fight

through various circumstances you find yourself like 500 miles away from your home kingdom and you have to get back using just your wits and your sword to or you know broken rusty sword that you start with to navigate the world but the thing that is

sets this game apart is that your character is not sighted. They cannot see. So the game is presented completely without visuals. It is completely audio. Even the navigating menus, combat, changing equipment, navigating in the world, it's all audio and that works through uh various cues like i'll give an example very early on you're playing like hide and seek with

your friends and this uh you're you're looking for this one guy and someone says he's near the like the water mill or what have you and i at first i was kind of wandering around running into walls and then i was like wait a minute that i could hear it i hear the water mill or what have you and i at first i was kind of wandering around running into walls and then i was like wait a minute that i could hear it i hear the water mill it's you have to play with headphones i mean you have to um but then you could hear the direction of it and you can head there and find the person you're looking for in combat you hear someone about to attack you and you use that to time your counter attacks and how where you need to attack because you can hear the enemies uh moving around right so there's all kinds of really smart stuff like that what's

very cool about it besides the fact that it's like innovative and different is that because you are removing the visual element and you can't really like skip through anything it really draws you in i mean it's very because it's all you know you're presenting it in the theater of the mind it's like You can't really like skip through anything. It really draws you in. I mean, it's very, cause it's all, you know, you're presenting it in the theater of the mind. It's like very immersive in that sense because you are creating the visuals yourself. So because you have to really focus in on the sounds of the game

and focus in on what people are saying and that kind of thing, it's really immersive cause it really like you have to be dialed in. It's a very cool thing. I have not finished to see like how they use really immersive because it really like you have to be dialed in um it's a very cool thing i have not uh finished to see like how they use some of these different uh ideas but uh it's called the veil uh v-a-l-e it's on xbox and pc is it okay i played 12 minutes it's not good it's not good it's like i hear it's like a david cage game in miniature

that's a fair way of putting it it's a it the premise is interesting it's an adventure game where time is looping and you're a guy and uh you're a guy guy and you're home to your your wife and then a few minutes later fucking willem dafoe shows up and kills you uh and so you have to figure out how to get away from that but um the looping is not very it gets very repetitive very quickly but like all the mechanic stuff aside and there's issues with the mechanic wild, not self-aware trauma porn. It does sound like David Cage. Yeah. Honest to God, guys, it goes even further than...

This game makes David Cage seem like a restrained, monastic sort of dude. monastic sort of uh dude uh and it also has a a twist ending that is really very very terrible uh it's i i have not been i don't know i don't it's not like i was like wildly looking forward to this game but it looked neat and you know it's got um daisy ridley and willem dafoe and uh fucking young professor x whose name i can't remember yes um but god almighty it falls so it doesn't just fall flat like it's actively pretty gross uh so this is about as hard a hard a recommendation for pass as i can possibly generate for a video game. Would you be able, if you could separate your fucking politics for one second.

Is it in any way fun? Oh, no. Fun's not the word I would use to, I mean, I guess if you, I mean, no. Alright. Yeah, it's, yeah. It's not even politics. It's just like, man, i don't i don't even it's not even politics it's just like uh

man i i don't want to talk i i as much as i despise this game i don't feel like spoiling it is a fair thing to do but you guys should not play it yeah thanks so much for reviewing our show to uh you go ahead you need the name sunny buddy muffin thank you lift slow h scarf elephant algorithms and who t55 thank you for writing crap okay plan isn't here to do this so i'm going to tell you the games we talked about it's axiom verge 2 and psychonauts 2 we talked about spelunky 1 and 2 on the switch the veil is the sort of audio adventure that's on Steam and apparently Xbox

and then just Xbox and then 12 Minutes is the looping narrative game on various platforms. Yeah, I played it on Steam. Oh, is it? Next week, we're going to be talking about

heroes. No, wait a minute. Excuse me. There's no more heroes than this one and this third one. Have you guys started playing this game yet? No. I'm looking forward to it. I hear it's buck wild. It's buck wild. Alright.

That's going to do it for this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties!