Triple Click - Triple Play: Psychonauts 2

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk delve into each other's brains to talk about Psychonauts 2, one of the best games of the year so far. They talk about the delightful writing, the clever level design, and the emotional moments. They also talk about Double Fine, the maker of Psychonauts 2, and its long, turbulent history as a game developer. One More Thing: Kirk: Ghost of Tsushima - game pairing & ac comparison Maddy: DickinsonJason: 12 MinutesLinks:The Double Fine Adventure! Documentary, Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVwg-9WL3dEKotaku’s Renata Price on 12 Minutes: https://kotaku.com/twelve-minutes-might-have-the-worst-video-game-ending-o-1847540262Kirk’s 2011 (!!) article about game pairings, complete with extremely 2011-era photoshop top art https://kotaku.com/like-rich-wine-and-sharp-cheese-some-games-just-go-wel-5862022Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Be kind to your brain. Fill it with whatever you love. It's your home, and you can't move out. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we all played Psychonauts 2, a game about a psychic and training who enters other people's brains, explores the unsettling and entertaining worlds inside, and tidies them up a bit.

I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. It's us. Welcome to both of you. And hello to all of our listeners. another episode.

Hello, my friends. The bands back together again. You did the truth. We're podcasting it up. Yeah. As you know, you, the listener. You. You.

We are a part of maximum funds. We. Which is pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And something else that's cool about it is that if you become a member of maximum fun, you get access to our bonus episodes. Which means, for example, for example, if you listen to our Half Life 2 episode recently, and you were like, what I really want to know is what Jason and Maddie think about episode one and episode two of Half-Life-2,

which were released later and include even more cliffhangers and weird G-Man talking. Well, you could become a member, and then you would get an episode later this month about that very topic. And also a wealth of other triple-click episodes. Yes. Like the one we just published this week. That's true. Yeah. That's right. There's a new one.

Yeah. It's just it. All about Mythic quests. very fun. So, yeah. I don't know. I just think people should go to maximum fun.org slash join and consider becoming members, but they don't have to. They could also just keep listening. I think that too, though. It's funny. I mean, great minds think alike, I guess. I mean, yeah, it's what I think. It's what I think. It's not what everybody thinks. It's just what I think. But this week, we are going to talk about a video game. That's usually what we do. But we're going to do it again. A video game.

A video game. Yes, a video game on this podcast. If you can believe it, not a TV show, not a book. Nope. Not today. Oh my goodness. So we are going to be talking today about psychonauts too. Jason, why didn't you also say it? Come on. Psychonauts too. There we go. Psychonauts two. This game is, wow.

So this is a sequel to a game from 2005. It is made by Double Fine Productions. And disclosures up front, all three of us are playing review codes that we got from Microsoft. And also, like, worth saying that I at least know people who work at Double Fine now and have known people who've worked there in the past. We all used to work with someone who works a double fine. That is true, I guess. Heather Alexander.

I'm used to work at Kataku with all three of us, and now works a double fine. So we have various, you know, connections to them. We've had Tim on the show on split screen in the past, and I very much enjoy Tim, just as an interview and as a guy. Tim Schaefer, I should say. We're on a first name basis with Tim. We've had him on the show enough times, I would say. So, you know, take that into account, I suppose, when we talk about this game.

So we've all been playing this game. I think we're all playing on PC. And I'm curious for just some overall up front impressions before we get into it. Maddie, why don't you go first? What do you think of Psychonauts too? Sure. Okay, so I never played the first Psychonauts. And I believe there's an interstitial VR game as well that I also obviously didn't play.

The Rombus of Ruin. Wouldn't it be shocking if I had played that? I was just like, oh, yeah, I played the entire VR game. Loved it. Never mentioned it before. No, just kidding. I never played a Psychonauts thing. I played other double-fine games.

enjoy the style of humor, the wacky. It's usually like animated style like a kids movie, but it's a video game that you're playing. I love that vibe. But I didn't go into this with high expectations because I just didn't know anything. And I love it. And I'm so into it. And I am laughing out loud at so much of it. And I love that this game just plunges you directly into its world and doesn't bother to explain anything to you. There's a lot of show don't tell and do don't tell in this video game where it just doesn't explain expository information about the world at all. You are just a little psychic boy named Rasputin, Raz, and you are entering the

psychonauts headquarters and you are learning how to become an even more powerful psychic. And that apparently means putting little doors on the backs of people's heads. and then you open the door and a ghost version of you enters their brain. And then that brain is sort of an allegorical version of their thoughts. So like, for example, somebody who thinks a whole lot about, like, video games, the inside of their brain might be a living room with a bunch of consoles in it that you would explore. And then you would, like, plug all the consoles back in properly. That would be Maddie's brain.

Yeah. And that would be, like, how you would sort out my emotional turmoil would be, like, untangling all of my cables and like plugging my consoles back in. For example, that's not in the game, but it could be. That's the kind of thing that's in here. And so you just explore a bunch of different brains, talk to all these wacky-looking characters around the psychonauts, and learn about a mystery, an overarching mystery as to this villainous person, Maligula, I think her name is, who may or may not be returning and why would somebody want her to return? She's sort of like an evil psychic mastermind. and it's so fun.

It's so good. I love it. That's my take on this game. And he's digging it. Jason, early impressions of psychonauts too. Yeah, so I was trying to think before we recorded, is there anything I don't like about this game? And I think the answer is no.

Like, I love this game. Like, I can think of anything that I dislike about it. Like, everything that it sets out to do, I feel like it does perfectly. It looks great. It sounds great. The music is fantastic. the writing is like top notch.

The art is wacky and out there and awesome. And just when you think that like you've got the game's core rhythm and you know exactly what you're going to be doing, it surprises you with like something new or something something totally unexpected. I'm currently up to, I'm a bunch of hours in. I'm currently up to the question, questionable area. You mean the questionable area? Which is kind of like, like that's one of those things that I didn't expect.

I did play the first one and so I didn't certainly did not expect the return of Raz's entire family and certainly did not expect them to set up at a campground which is reminiscent of the first game in a lot of ways obviously you also get to actually see the camp from the first game but I won't get too in depth on the spoilers there but yeah no I'm really loving and yeah that's oh I was going to say that's that's an example of like a subversion that I didn't expect because so much of the game takes place in either the mother lobes, like in its headquarters, or like on missions and brains of people. And didn't expect there to be an entire like forest and cave and campground outside of the mother lobe also that you would explore. So it's just really cool. I would just really,

really love it in so many ways. The only thing I guess I really don't like about this is that despite Tim Schaefer promising to us on an episode of split screen that the double fine documentary attached to this game would be coming out shortly before the game launched, it has not come out yet. And I've been asking them over and over and over the heck is the deal. Where is it? What is he hiding? Because the original, the double-fine documentary for a little bit of backstory here is that Double-Find the company, for those people who might not know, they were very close to going

under. And essentially they were saved by the power of crowdfunding and Kickstarter and fans giving their money to support them back in 2012 when they like broke Kickstarter records and raised $4 million to make what would then be called broken age. And as part of that, they also hired this documentary crew, two-player productions, to film the whole process of making Broken Age. And you can find the results on YouTube. It's a 19-20-part documentary series. It's one of the best things I've ever watched.

I watch it like five times all the way through because it's just so insightful and so brilliant. The best look I've ever seen at like how games are made and the toils it takes. And just they are showing warts and all. They are showing the ugliness and like the tough decisions. at meat. And so when they crowdfunded before DoubleFind was published by Microsoft in 2018, they crowdfunded Psychonauts 2 as well. I believe in 2015 is when they crowdfunded it on FIG. And as part of that, they also promised there would be a second Double FIND documentary coinciding with this. They would have cameras running on the whole development process. And I've been waiting

for nothing more than that. Like that. I've been so excited for that. Yeah, who cares about the game? We just want those. Gossipy details. I'll be excited to finish the game and then watch a documentary about it, only because it will give me more insight into the specific decisions they're weighing and stuff, which I also felt about Broken Age. I sort of enjoyed watching that after having played the game, like watching them mess with a puzzle that I had already solved,

being like, oh, interesting, these are all the different iterations they went through. So I'll totally watch it when it comes out. But I want to second that that documentary is amazing. I watch the entire thing, which it's not short, but it is. I mean, if you want to know about video game development, it's like the first thing I'd recommend as well other than maybe reading Jason's books but yeah it's good

yes but those I mean those documentaries very much inspired my books and I've very much inspired everything I've written and yeah so I've been very excited for that especially because we know this game's development has been turbulent as well obviously took a very long time

that I was looking at the fig which was their crowdfunding campaign they had originally said the game would come out in 2018 so obviously three years after it was supposed to come out, they were bought by Microsoft in the middle of it, and they lost their director who left in the middle of production, which is never a great sign. And I'm sure there's a lot of behind the scenes drama there that I'm very interested in hearing. But one thing that they wanted to do this time was like release it all at once after the game came out because I felt

like it was too much of a distraction to have like ongoing episodes as the game was also in development because then the documentary and the reactions to it became part of the story. And it was all just a weird dynamic. Remember Kirkah, you and I, I don't think Maddie was there. We talked to Anna Kipniss, who was formerly a programmer at Double Fine, and she had kind of mixed feelings. You can go back and listen to that episode of Split Screen. She had kind of mixed feelings about it all. But anyway, very excited for that. But back on track, the game, I love it to death. It is awesome. Can't wait to play more. Nice. Yeah, so I'm right there with both of you. I love this. We all really like this game. I'm over the moon about this game. It's so good. I can't believe how good it is. I

I played the entire first game. I beat the meat circus man. That was like one of the first really difficult platforming things I beat in a game. I hear it's notorious. A lot of people have been mentioning the meat circus lately since Psychonauts 2 came out. It's too hard. It needed to be nerfed. But I did beat it.

And that was, I probably played it in 08 or 09, even though it came out in 2005. That was kind of after I'd gotten back into gaming and everyone was like, oh, you know, that guy who like, you know, helped make Monkey Island back in the day. Like now he's running the studio and this is like their big game. it's this classic, and I played it and really did love it, especially the story. And yeah, I'm so impressed, and I was surprised at how into the deep end it is in terms of the narrative in the world. And it was reminding me that the first game feels that way, too, though in a kind of different

way. Like, this just feels like part two of psychonauts to me. It feels almost like the first game was a pre-like a prelude or an opening act to this game, because they don't introduce anything. Like, you just are supposed to know who Ford Kreller is, who all the psychonauts are. Well, they do have an introductory video that, like, tells the story. Yes.

It goes very quickly. It goes very quickly. I was really confused by the intro. You can rewatch it, by the way, in the extras. No, I know. That is not the part that confused me. Okay, so the very beginning of this video game after the, like, story intro, which I paid attention to and fully understood,

is Raz talking about being in Psychonauts HQ, but you see him in a bunch of Q. cubicles and then like he goes to an award ceremony where like somebody is receiving an employee of a month award. That's meant to be a fake out. Yeah. But I legit did not understand what the heck was going on in that scene for like a really long time because I didn't even understand that you enter people's brains in this game.

And so like, you know, the other characters are like awarding this sort of one of, I can't remember the character's name, but he's one of the villains in this. He has like a wacky shower cap and he's like a meme. Oh, the dentist. The dentist guy. So, like, they are inside the dentist's mind, but the other characters are trying to get the dentist to tell them who his boss is. And so I'm the player just like,

why don't these characters who all work in an office together know who their own boss is? I don't understand what this game is. And, like, why don't any of them know? And, like, it's not directly explained. And then they're, like, running around this wacky office, which it's wacky because it's inside someone's head and it's an allegory. And it took me, like, multiple more scenes where, like, then I saw them all in the psychonauts like their superhero ship together where they're like outside the brain.

And then they go back to the real Psychonauts HQ, which is not a cubicle farm and not inside of a dentist's brain. But at no point did they sit down and be like, so anyway, we enter brains. That's the thing we do here. And the brains are allegories, you see. It took me like three location changes before I was like, oh, that first scene wasn't actually Psychonauts HQ. That was an allegory for this other thing that's happening. Because, again, they explain nothing, which I actually think is really bold and awesome. The fact that they just throw you in, like, midway through a mission, they don't really tell

you what anyone's powers are. You just watch them using their powers and you're like, oh, okay. Like, I guess this character's good at levitation, for example, and like this other character's good at this or that. And like, okay, it feels like you're watching the Marvel movies like out of order or something. It's fun. But, you know, confusing. Yeah, and the first game worked that way to an extent also, and that was kind of what I was remembering.

So you're coming in with all these abilities that you slowly unlocked in the first game. And it doesn't do the sequel thing where it takes them away and makes you get them again. Like there's a scene when you're exploring around the grounds and you get in a boat and you drive the boat with your mind. That was in the first game, there was a lake that you had to cross and you couldn't cross it until later in the story. So you had to get your merit badge for like whatever, I think it was maybe telekinesis. It was something that allowed you to drive the boat. It was maybe like your boat certification badge, like at summer camp, because the first game is set at the summer camp

where they train the young psychics to then go join the psychonauts. And then you just can get in the boat and drive it, because, of course, you can drive a boat in this game. Like, there's a lot of abilities like that that you just have at the very beginning. And they don't explain to you that these are things you unlocked in the first game. So there's way less of this feeling of, like, mechanical onboarding, because you're given so many abilities.

And then they start giving you new abilities. because it's a sequel. And it really is like a pretty dense narrative and mechanical experience at first. And that's because the narrative is also really sort of fleshed out and complicated. And it's operating on all these levels of metaphor and history. So it's a lot of things about memory and the backstory of these people who created the psychonauts. And then it's also this abstract layer where you're seeing how they see one another. So maybe you're in this huge puppet show.

and it's because one character feels like a puppet, and then all the puppets are actually representative of actual characters in the real world because they have the same voice actors, and you start to realize these connections as you're playing through the game. And then there's the way it feels to play the game, which is when you're out in the world

and you're just exploring, it's kind of like, it just feels like whatever, banjo-cazui or ratchet and inclanic, like it feels like a kind of third-person platformer. But once you go into one of these minds, I think it's amazing how effectively this game captures the feeling of a train of thought or of imagination or of memory or of a nightmare or a dream. Like, it's so cool the way that these levels shift and, you know, flip on top of one another and go in and out and are constantly changing. Like, I don't know how this game engine works, but the way things

become huge and tiny and, like, just go inside of one another. The way that they seamlessly transition between cutscenes and, like, move the whole world is so cool. It really, especially the first level, which you talked about, Maddie, where you're going into someone's brain to try to steal a secret, it totally made me think of Inception, which I think is really interesting, because Inception came out, I think it was in 2009, and it came out, or maybe 10, it was right around there, it came out after the first Psychonauts. And I have to wonder if Christopher Nolan played Psychonauts, because there's a lot of stuff that's pretty similar, including, like, there are these sensors that show up that you have to fight, and they're really similar to the way that you're subconscious

and Inception, like, kind of knows you're not supposed to be there and tries to kick you out. The way that he's been conditioned, the guy, the dentist that you're going into, he's been kind of conditioned to not tell you the secrets. You're trying to go deeper and deeper into his mind to get a secret. It's very inceptiony. And it just struck me that my own understanding, and I think maybe the broader public understanding of this kind of thinking, has also just grown over the last, you know, 16 years or however many years it's been since, yeah, 16 years since Psychonauts came out.

And I just have a kind of innate understanding of it. And it just captures that over and over and over again, the feeling of moving through a mind and watching a mind change and seeing someone, you know, work even on their issues, like these representations of things. There's a representation of a panic attack in this level that I'm playing right now. It's so, like, it's so imaginative and so good. I can't believe the level that it's operating on so consistently.

Yeah. Were the thought bubbles, those weren't in the first game. Were they in the idea linking ideas? Yeah, that I think is a brilliant. concept. Oh, so fun. Yeah. You're like leaping from thought to thought and like making connections as part of the puzzle. And just the idea of each puzzle not necessarily making sense in terms of looking at every type of puzzle in the game, but just individually the puzzles make sense. They operate according to dream logic where it's like, okay, yeah, I'll use my huge telekin at a can to unzip a cave. And then now I'm

suddenly in a lighthouse because sure, that's where I am now. So now I need to turn up. on the lighthouse light because it's lighthouse. If you think about it, all 3D platformers operate by that same logic. Well, kind of, yeah. Mario, you take a mushroom to get bigger. Exactly. Right, but they don't make it as like out front textual as this game does where it's clearly being used as a direct metaphor, which is really cool.

It feels like a Nintendo game to me in a lot of ways. The way that Mario Galaxy, which I was recently playing, is always delighting you with new ideas and new twists. And each level just goes somewhere you didn't expect. only it's doing it in a service of a much more explicit narrative. And so, you know, each of those shifts also is like reflecting something that's going on. And the more you think about it, the richer it becomes. And it's really, it's really impressive stuff, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's some, like, really interesting, subtle storytelling stuff. Like, you find these vaults and they tell these stories without dialogue. Faults are always, so those are the things from the first game, too. That's always what those always get you. Like, those make me, like, really feel, feelings. Yeah, they're brilliant.

And then you get stuff like with Hollis, you can see her vault about what she did in the past, like changing someone's thoughts. But then, and then she'll allude to it, but she won't explain it. So you have to find the vault if you want the full story, which I think is brilliant. Kirk, to your point, yeah, I think it's really the whole train of thought thing and the whole like outgoing through each of these brains is like going on this like train ride through someone's like thought process. it's really interesting how the mechanics will change to account for that as well. Like in Hollis's brain, how suddenly it'll become this 2D platforming section for a spell. And like, I mean, it's brilliant the way that you're hopping on these like...

The X-ray printouts. The X-ray reports and that then turn into cards and how they're moving and adjusting based on what's going on in the scene. There's just a ton of stuff that is, yeah, it is very Nintendo-like. The casino level especially struck me. like a very classic Nintendo style or I mean you could say double fine style sort of level and how brilliant it is in its level designed and that it like there are three different things you have a clear objective like get these three gazillions there you can do them in any order there's three

of them you have to go get and each of them is a totally different mechanic and totally a different set of ideas but they all play into the same theme of like being part of the casino and it just it's all just like like next level stuff. It's just like like designers on top of their craft. Yeah. Yeah, I really, I think so too. Well, we'll get into the gameplay in a minute. I want to talk a little more specifically about the aesthetics because I just got a shout

out. For starters, the music of this game. So Peter McConnell is the composer for this game. The longtime double-fine composer, he like wrote the Grim Fandango soundtrack, the original Psychonauts score. I love his Psychonauts theme, which is woven into everything in this game. The music in this game is bananas good. Like, it's such a huge part of its personality.

I love it so much. And I'm playing through the Syking section, which people who play the game will know, and it's a very musical section. And it's doing stuff. This is also very Nintendo-y, where you're trying to get this band back together. And this level is just delightful. I mean, I could go on forever, like, about any number of things that are happening during this. There's a music video that I just watched that was just like, what is, like, these people are at the top of their game. This is amazing stuff.

But musically, like, you'll be exploring a level where you're trying to reunite a musician with their instrument. And the music that you're trying to find is, like, the keyboard and the drums for the keyboard and the drummer. And all the music that's playing is, like, organ and drum sets. So it's subtle stuff like that, which also, if you remember in Mario Odyssey, when you're in New Dog City, you're trying to put that band together. As you put the band together, the instruments that you've added begin playing that, like, funky version of the Mario theme. So if you just have the horn and the drummer, it'll just be the band together. those two, and then as you have them, it's the same kind of idea. And it's so cool how all of that

stuff works together. And then the art, I mean, this game is visually bananas looking, and the animation, the animation team, there's like a unique animation every three seconds. Like, there's cutscenes and transitions. And like the amount of facial stuff that Raz is doing, the way he reacts to things, the constant physical humor, it's totally wild. This must have taken so much work to make this game. I know. You can really tell they spent all the years on it. I feel like the main difference between this game and a Mario Odyssey or like a Nintendo game is the fact that this game has body horror elements interwoven throughout. That's not to say there's never body horror in a Mario game, but I feel like, okay, so there's a lot of teeth. There's actually

like a pretty detailed content warning at the beginning of the game of like, here are the various unsettling body horror elements in the game. And I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. I can deal with the teeth. I was talking with that. The hair level was so disgusting. to me with all the lights. Right, you're getting snorted into a nose. Like, I hated the lice and the hair level so much. I was like viscerally upset about them. And just, but it's an incredible level where you're like, okay, like this is a new enemy. Like, I'm going to have to figure out how to get rid of these head lice. But then, yeah, like, by the time I got to being snorted up a nose with mucus and stuff, I was like, this is fine. This is psychonauts, dude.

Like, this is what happens in this video game now. Like, I don't know. I don't know. That It's a body. It's a human body. I'm inside somebody's brain. But yeah, it's so weird. The tongue, the tongue freaked me out a little bit when you got up to the top of that tower and you're on his tongue. Yeah. He's like, I can taste you. You taste like shoes. He's like, I don't need to know that, man. Yeah, there's so much writing. I mean, Schaefer's got the writing credit on this and he must have, I'm assuming. Is he the only writer? Are there any other writers? Yeah, I just, I see him credited as written by, but like, I mean, I really do enjoy his,

sense of humor and it's never quite how I remember it. Like I always think, oh, it's going to maybe seem like this style or that style, but it's really just its own style. I mean, it really is a defining thing of these games is that this sort of low-key spaced out, not like, oh, that's so random humor, but it's like pretty sharp and it's usually it usually kind of has a point. Like each joke has a like focus to it. I'm being kind of abstract because I'm trying to zoom out as much as possible.

It's an abstract game. And it's hard to describe, like, a sense of humor, but its sense of humor is kind of specific in that way. I want to know what Tim's brain space would look like if we invaded him. Probably terrifying. That would be interesting. A lot of weird shit in there. So I will say that the gameplay, I like the platforming fine. Really, like, totally fine.

I think it's, I've gotten used to it. And especially once you start using your, like, little ball to bounce around on. It's pretty fun. The combat doesn't really do it for me. I find it just kind of, it's kind of whatever, like it's a little spammy, a little hard to get a handle on. There are just times where I'm fighting a whole bunch of little dudes, and I'm like, oh, this is just sort of... It feels like it didn't need to be in the game, but yeah. Yeah, and you can just adjust combat difficulty and make it so it's easy.

And I don't even know that the game would really suffer for that. Like, it doesn't need to be challenging in terms of the combat. I think the platforming, the exploration in the story is where it's at. Yeah. And the boss, the boss is at least one boss that I've only fought one boss. Octopus. They're fun. That was awesome. It was fun. Yeah. The puppet bosses are gross but fun.

Yeah, I feel like the main issue I've run into in terms of just the combat design is the fact that I really like all the power-ups that Raz can use, but you can't map all of them at the same time. And Jason, I don't know if you're far enough into the game of this is a significant concern for you yet, but like the more

you unlock, once you have your full wheel a la animal crossing of like every single thing you can select, a lot of them are legit useful. And like throughout that psyching section, I kept having to switch around different stuff. And then like I'd enter a combat section and be like, okay,

let me get out like my psychic blast and my fireball so that I can fight these guys. And then let me go back to my like levitation ball and all my other like traversal abilities. And there's like a time travel ability that you need to use a lot, which is awesome. I mean, like every single ability I just listed is actually really fun

and satisfying to use. But having to constantly take them on and off of the controller is a little unwieldy. I don't know the solve for that other than like a proprietary psychonauts 2 controller that's like 16 buttons or something. But that's just covered in buttons. Well, there's the tricks. I mean, there are tricks you can use.

What I've been doing is I keep left trigger on levitation always and right trigger on what is it like telekinesis always. And then I just switch the bumpers to the others. And I just kind of mentally know which one I'm going to put in it. That's what I do too. It's just two is never quite enough. Yeah. I do that too.

But it's the more stuff you get, the more. stuff you get, the more you're like, I kind of need like another couple slots. No, like, right. Like fire is super useful because if you set the bigger sensors on fire, they run around for a while and you can just chase them because otherwise you can't stagger them. So those guys can be sort of frustrating. If you get in there hitting them, they'll hit you. And yeah, the mental link is actually really good because it tethers enemies and pulls them around and lets you get a whole bunch more mobility. But it's also nice just having a ranged attack. Like the side blast is just really useful for the little guys.

So, yeah, I do kind of, I feel that that they, it's partly because they didn't really ditch any abilities from the first game. So they're just adding even more stuff. And it was a lot in the first game, if I remember correctly. Yeah. This is a good problem to have. Yeah, it is. There's too many good abilities that I want to use them. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so. I think that being, like, clutter is never great, even if all the things that are cluttering are cool. But I take your point. Like, I think that that is true, that they're all fun to use. And like we've said, like combat just isn't super tough. or you don't have to, it's not really involved if you don't want it to be, and it's fine. So let's talk a little more about the story stuff. There's this moment in the first game that I feel, well, there's a couple moments in the first game.

There's the Milkman Conspiracy, which is one of the most unbelievable platformer levels I've ever played, and there is this moment where you go into a lake monster's brain, and that's also one of the most memorable moments I've ever played. And I think those two levels are the levels that really informed a lot of this game. and it just makes this game, it feels like this outsized, amplified version of the coolest stuff in Psychonauts 1, which is what a sequel should be.

And it's part of why it almost feels like a continuation and not a sequel. It's almost like they have wanted to do a sequel for like years and years and years. Like he's just been sitting on these ideas. Well, that's the thing. The story behind this game, this is one of the reasons that I'm so excited

about the documentary. The story behind this game is that like the first Psychonauts had to deal with like getting canceled. Actually, it was canceled by Microsoft, believe it or not. I remember. Switch publishers around went through kind of development hell. And Double Fun was just always on the rocks. It was always in trouble for years and years and years, despite being super talented. And like Tim, by all accounts, being a really good boss and manager, it just always had trouble like with financials. And then they were trying to pitch a Psychonauts too. Couldn't get it off the ground. It was like fans wanted it forever. At one point, Notch before he became the kind of Creighton he is today or before you were yelled himself to be the cretan he is today. He like tweeted he was going to fund Psychonauts 2. And Tim Schaefer was like seriously like let's talk. And then Notch of course ghosted in like it

never actually happened. And Psychonuts 2 was always a stream game for lots of people. And then it was announced at the Game Awards in 2015. And it was a whole huge thing. It was like, oh my God, Psychonauts 2. It's like actually happening. Getting crowdfunded. Like it can finally come to fruition. But that was that announcement date was 10 years after the first game. So it was very clearly like something that Tim Schaefer and then a lot of the original like a fair amount of original Double Fine employees who worked on Second Nuts 1 are still at Double Fine and worked on this game as well. So I'm sure they were all just like bouncing around ideas and like brainstorming and like imagining what they could do with the sequel for over those years.

So cool because I feel like based on your work, Jason, it sounds like a pretty rare thing for people to still be at the same studio for 15 years and still actually want to make the sequel to something. I think Double Fine does have that. things about Double Fine. That is, like, the fact that Peter McConnell is just their guy and he does music for their games and that he's back, and that the voice cast came back. I mean, it really aesthetically carries on from a game that came out 16 years ago. That's, like, long enough that a person who was born in that game came out, like, can drive a car. Like, that's a really, really long time.

So, yeah, I think that does kind of, that is a testament, I think, to whatever that special thing is that makes people like working at Double Fine. There's a moment in the first documentary where their audio director, he is. is like they're like in the thick of it on broken age. They're like crunching like hell and it is brutal, brutal times. And it's like very, it looks like it's late at night. And he is like tearing up on camera. And he's like, man, like this is our chance. Like we really have to make something special here.

It really feels like double fine. Like could be this amazing company, but has always just been stuck like having no leverage with these publisher contracts and like bouncing from one bad deal to another and has never found that hit, that big hit that like can really take them to the next. level. And they never did. Broken Age was not that, unfortunately, for them. And really, Broken Age was kind of a flawed game, especially the second half. I really was not a huge fan. Way bigger fan of the documentary than the actual game. Yeah. Weird game. And then they got bought by

Microsoft, which is kind of interesting because it's like they still have that double-fined spirit, it seems. They still can be themselves, but also they have this corporate backing, which is like, uh, consolidation. We've talked about that before, how awful it can be. But also, like, Now they don't have to worry about going under suddenly. So that itself gives them the freedom to make big ambitious projects like this. Right. The feeling I get from this game is that it was probably saved by the Microsoft acquisition. And we'll see.

But I'm sure that it was like the Microsoft acquisition, that money, that stability made it possible for them to go as all in as this game does. Okay. So there's more to it. Sorry to interrupt you, but there's one key part of this that you have to know, which is that their original publisher was Starbreed. which you guys may remember is the publisher that went bankrupt and like their their offices were raided and their CEO was like arrested for insider training. I think he was exonerated later. But yeah, so I actually remember, I'm sure Greg Rice will not mind me sharing this quick anecdote,

but I was at something, E3 or GDC or something. And I saw Greg Rice who was at Double Finders Now on PlayStation, but was their like big PR slash marketing slash production. He was just one of the key guys there for a very long time. I ran into him in the bathroom just as the Starbree stuff was happening. I was like, man, Greg, Starbrees, huh? He was like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. So yeah, I was like, it was like, it was like. Oh my God.

So yeah, so I don't want to be like hagiological. Is that any pronounced it? About this, about double fine because I haven't talked to every single person who's work there ever, and I'm sure they have plenty of their own problems. But it really seems like a place that is like run by a good, who cares about his employees in a place where they have a culture that a lot of people are happy with. Hence, a lot of longtime employees, Kirk, to hear a question. Yeah, yeah.

I got that sense from that documentary, too, just that people, it's like a lot of artists who want to make art, and they get to do that there, as evidenced by this game. I mean. And a manager who's, like, in the middle of it doing writing and, like, clearly. Right. I think that helps a lot, like, when the boss knows what it's like to make these games. And some of the things you see in the documentary are, like, like, him, um, waste. time and like showing some of his weaknesses by like not being able to do certain things like trying

to implement his own dialogue and not being able to and then forcing other people to have to do that and feeling bad about it because he can't do it he can't do it himself and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there like I said. So can I make another comparison that I keep agreeing to me as I play this game? That's actually control. This game reminds me of control in a certain way playing it. You're exploring this this weird facility. There's a lot of extra normal stuff going on. You're learning the history of this like paranormal psychic organization. And a lot of the puzzles that you're solving involve going into the memory space of the founders of this organization. In this case, the psychonauts, in the case of control, the Bureau of Control,

there is this similar feeling. And there's a cool music video in both games. That's true. It has like one, this kind of has that like spy meets government meets. I don't know. Like there's just a similarity there that I've. find really appealing. And I'm just continually struck by the feeling of this is everything I wanted to see when I played the first game, narratively speaking. The first game promises so much by introducing this world where it's not, you know, it's, it's not our world. It's a sort of normal world, but there are definitely psychics. All the characters look bananas. I mean, the character design in this game is just wonderful. Like it looks like, like you said, Nadi. It's like claymation

looking. I mean, not literally, claimation, but I feel like that's a good note of comparison if people are driving and don't have time to Google image this game. What's crazy about it is that they all look like they came from different games, but somehow it all feels coherent. Like, the art feels coherent even then they all are drastically

different. Yeah. I think Raz actually kind of looks like whatever the lead character's name is in Ants, that movie. Yes. Which I don't regret saying for anybody who hadn't made that connection and now we'll only see Woody Allen's character in Anne's.

Sorry. But in a way that I think works and kind of so anyways, this world is kind of our world, but it's also very much not. And in the first game, you're just this kid at summer camp and you learn about the psychonauts, but you really only, like you meet a couple of them. There's

Agent 9, wonderful character. There's a couple of those, there's Mia. And those are all active psychonauts who are counselors at the camp. But there's always this promise of a bigger world, of psychic battles and, you know, intrigue and spy shenanigans where you get on the plane and you go to the casino and you do the casino job and you get to do that in this game and then you're also in Psychonauts HQ in the kind of

the like bureaucracy the paranormal bureaucracy that makes me think of control and I just love that whole energy like the whole vibe of this game really really does it for me yeah supernatural combined with office is always a great combination like the the the mundaneities of our office work life combined with like batches psychological psychic stuff it's cool yeah not as scary as control though like it is still scary like on a scale from Mario galaxy to control psychonauts 2 is right in the middle it's in a very comfortable spot where it'll just freak you out a little tiny bit also jack black is in this game and he's doing a great job did we say that yet he's doing a great job i just want to say that

i haven't seen him yet i'm looking forward to oh he's a real treat love that singing voice yeah he's got a great voice and he's not being as jack blacky as he was in brutal legend which i appreciate He is not. It actually took me a long time to figure out it was him, which I think is by design, perhaps, because you're kind of figuring out who he is after you meet his character anyway. Right.

When he started singing, I was like, oh, I bet this is Jack Black, only because I know he and Tim Schaefer are friends. Spoiless here. No, no, trust me,

it's not because there's no way you could guess literally any plot point that happens in this game because it's like the most absurd thing that's ever unfolded. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Jack Black is also phenomenal

and Broken Age where he plays the cult leader and the sky. That's right, it's true. Yeah, he's good in that too. The cloud cult leader. Yeah, Jack Black is a cool guy. Anyways, I don't know. I'm going to play the rest of this game. I'm definitely finding that I like playing it in sort of bursts. I've been mixing and matching it with the game. That's my one

more thing. I'm actually going to talk about that in one more thing. It's nice to just play like an hour or two of it because it's just a lot and I don't mean that in the it's a lot bad way. I just mean like there's so much going on. It has so much food for thought. It's so visually, musically, it's just so rich

that I'm like, okay, I've played an hour and a half. I'm going to cool it and play more tomorrow. But I'm definitely going to play the rest of this game. I'm very excited about it. It's definitely, yeah, definitely a game that's well, well played in short sessions, which I think for a lot of our listeners will be a real appeal because I know a lot of our listeners are

short on time, and this is very much the perfect game to like go and play an hour after work at night after the kids go to bed, play for a couple hours. It's great. Like each level feels like the perfect length in that way where like having an hour of playtime, you feel like you actually accomplish something.

Like usually you can get through a brain and even talk to a couple of people at headquarters about some funny BS is going on there and you can turn in for the night. I feel like you really taught Raz something important for the day. It's good. It's a good game. It's a cool game.

It's on PC and consoles. It's also on Game Pass. And I know sometimes I'll say things on Game Pass and be wrong about it, but I'm pretty sure about this one. Yeah, you're not lying this time. It's on Game Pass. It actually is.

If you have Game Fest. Yes. You can just play it. So go play it. It's really cool. Let's take a break and we'll be back for one more thing. If you're sick of constantly arguing with the people closest to you about topics that really aren't going to change the world, we're here to take that stress off of your shoulders.

We take care of it for you on we got this with Mark and Hal. That's right, Hal. If you have a subjective question that you want answered objectively once and for all time for all of the people of the world. Questions like, Who's the best Disney villain? Mac or PC? Or should you put ketchup on a hot dog?

That's why we're here. Yes, I get that these are the biggest question of our time. And we're often joined by special guests like Nathan Phileon, Orlando Jones, and Paget Brewster. So let Mark and Howe take care of it for you on We Got This with Mark and Howe weekly on Maximum Fun. Hi, I'm Annabelle Gerrich. And I'm Laura House. And we're the hosts of Tiny Victories.

My Tiny Victory is that. I sewed that button back on the day after it broke. We talk about that little thing that you did that's a big deal to you, but nobody else cares. Did you get that Guggenheim Genius Award? We don't want to hear from you. We want little bitty tiny victories. My tiny victory is a tattoo that I added on to this last weekend. Let's talk about it.

My victory is that I'm one-year cancer-free, but my tiny victory is that I took all of the cushions off the couch, pounded them out, put them back, And it looks so great. So if you're like us and you want to celebrate the tiny achievements of ordinary people, listen to Tiny Victories. It's on every Monday on Maximum Fun. And we're back for one more thing. Jason, what's your one more thing? I want to hear about this. Okay.

So you know how with Psychonuts 2, I was like, I can't think of anything I don't like about this game. Great intro. Great intro. The exact opposite. I cannot think of one thing that I actually liked about a new game. called 12 minutes. Also on game pass. This is a big disappointment for me. And I know for a lot of people because this game has been like much anticipated for years. It's like really cool. It's published by Anna Perna. It's developed by it's one of those one man show things, one guy who did the bulk of it,

but he had some help. Luis Antonio. And it has gotten a lot of hype because it has some big name actors in it, James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Defoe. And the concept of this game is you are a man. You get home to your apartment and you talk to your wife. It's all told from this cool top-down art style when suddenly a man breaks in and he says he is a cop and then he beats you both up and kills you. Cool. And you have to and then you wake up and it's like a time loop.

Great. And then you start again from the beginning and it's a time loop. And your guy, your main guy remembers everything that happens. So he knows he's a time loop. And so the concept is you can point and click on things. like a point and click adventure and interact with objects and do things at specific times to make things happen. And the idea is to learn new information that can help you escape from this time loop. And your guy will remember that information so he can bring it up in conversations with his wife or with this guy who's breaking in.

And it's really miserable for a lot of reasons. First of all, it does not help at all that a game called Overboard that I've raved about came out earlier this year, which has almost the exact same structure in that you're kind of following this ticking clock. Every action you do takes time. And you have to figure out who's going to be where, which order you can do things in. If you pick up this thing, well, you have enough time to go and do this thing. Except overboard is like funnier, more clever, better designs, like better writing, tighter. And that game was made in like five months. This game was made in like seven years.

And sexy Brutale, which I meant to mention when we talked about overboard. but that's another cool one. That, yeah, that's on my list to play. There's also a new game called The Forgotten City that people have been raving about that I want to talk about, that I have to play, and we'll talk about down the road.

But anyway, 12 minutes, it's like a really ugly, ugly game at its core. It's like, it's story at the end of things is like not, not very good and not very interesting and not really tell, it has a lot of, like,

brutality that doesn't really make much of a point, and it has a lot of just ugliness, both on the outside and on the inside. It just really did not resonate with me at all. A lot of the actions you have to take are kind of violent and arbitrary and not really pleasant to go through, which I think for a game can work if it ultimately is in the is meant to set up something satisfying or deliver on something or have a point.

And this game just does not do that. The voice acting is really disappointing, considering the talent that they have. It feels like they're all directed in really poor ways. By the end of it, you have to do some really awful things and see some really awful things. There should be some sort of content warning at the beginning of the game. But there is not, but people should know. Like if you're sensitive to certain things, you should definitely look up what is going to be in this game before you play it

because there's some really awful stuff in it. And then it just ends with like one of the most weakest like cop-out endings. I've ever seen. I'm just like, I regretted playing it. I was like, I have to tell everybody not to play this game

because it's just really, really bad. Unusual, and that is unusual. Yeah, usually my one more thing. Usually I want my one more thing to be something cool,

something I like. I thought about mentioning like Stephen King's new book Billy Summers, which is amazing. No, no, not.

Not allowed. Cut off as my. No, no, I'm not. They're playing the music. But I'm not telling you up to. I only say that.

I only say that for the purposes of pointing out that despite- That good things exist and we could list some of that. No, no, no, no. No, I'm just saying that despite really enjoying something this week, I felt so compelled to tell listeners not to play this game that I had to bring this up as a one more thing. But we have no idea what you enjoyed because you didn't tell us and you won't.

So I appreciate that restraint. Anyway, go play overboard, which is such a better game. Like, if you want the same sort of structure, go play that because this is just like, it's like David Cage. Like, it's like David Cage Light. It's like a bad David Cage game. It's just like, ugh, I really hated it. Yeah, I enjoyed reading the Kotaku article that Renata wrote,

one of Kotaku's new staffers, Renata wrote a spoilerific write-up of 12 minutes, which I greatly enjoyed reading and also was like, I don't need to play the game now, so maybe we can link to that. If people are listening to this and they want to know what the twist ending is, and they also want to read some pretty funny writing from Renata Price at Kataka. I will second that, and I will say that I read

Renato's article as well and I was glad I did because I was like, I'm not playing this game. I'm good. Also, having heard from Jason already that he didn't like it. Yeah. Don't play. Nice. All right, well, I'm actually going to go second because mine'll go pretty quick because it's the same thing that I talked about last week that I even binged my way in to talk more about because

we had recorded early. Yeah, you really, you're abusing your editing pattern. Well, we were under time and we had recorded so far in advance that it was always weird to just be like, well, I got this game. last night and I played five minutes of it and then put out the episode when I played like many more hours. No, it's allowed. I'm just saying you can do that. You have the power. I do. And we don't have that power. Yeah, exactly. We can't do it. Maddie and I can't. It's the benefit of doing the work. I'm going to bing in and talk about Stephen King's name. So I'm still playing Ghost of Tsushima. Again,

this is a PS5 game. This is a game that Sony sent me a code for. So I've been playing this at the same time as I've been playing Psychonauts 2. And I've found the two to be very complimentary. Ghost of Sushima has a pretty cool story, but it's very straightforward. It's, you know, just this tale of samurai fighting for the freedom of Japan. And it's, you know, it's nice, it's fine, but I'm not super invested in the story. I just think it's really fun. It's really beautiful. I'm having a great time exploring.

And I'm sort of up to the expansion that's in this new director's cut. It's called Iki Island. Oh, so you beat the game already? Wow. No. So the expansion comes in the middle of the game. So it's a very... standard open world thing like Far Cry 2 and then whatever other games, like Far Cry 2 is the only game that matters, where halfway through the game, they're like, and now, welcome to the other half of the map. Now you're going to do all that, you know, continue all your stories in the northern part. And when that happens, you can then access Siki Island, which I think is supposed, it could go after at the end of the game. It's pretty tough. There's some pretty wild enemies there. But you can do it kind of whenever. And I was like, I'm ready for a change. So I've been doing that. But I've really been finding this pairing to work well because, like I kind of mentioned, the combat isn't really

thing so much in Psychonauts too. And I like playing it, but for long periods of time, it's like a little bit much. Like I just really get a lot out of an hour. But Goats of Sushi It's like, oh yeah, man, like I'll just cruise around and go to unlock a thing and sneak through a thing and stab some guys. And like, it's so pretty looking. It's so aesthetically pleasing. Every sword fight is really fun. So the two just really work very well together for me. And I think that a big part of why I've been enjoying it is because I'm pairing it with this other game, which is funny because I don't know if this was an actual resolution for me, but it's definitely a thing I'd been trying to do,

which is play one game at a time and finish it. And it is worth mentioning that there are times when it's actually really great to play two games at the same time and to kind of pair them. This is not a new thing. I've talked about this before, but I really have been finding that to be appealing. So I do like a good game pairing,

and I've been in the midst of one. And what kind of wine are you pairing in these two games? It's a good question. What kind of cheese? What kind of crackers, et cetera? There was an article I wrote for Kataku where it was like, I did a, we did a, I think it was Joel Johnson did a Photoshop and it was like Skyrim Wine and like, and I remember what kind of cheese, Metroid cheese or something.

And they were on this picture. And that was the article was about game pairings. So I love that. This is definitely a familiar territory. So anyways, just really enjoying those two games. I'm going to have to play other things. Just, you know, we're going to be talking about Half-Life. There's so many games coming out.

I feel like I'm drowning. But I really want to finish both of them because I'm. I'm really enjoying them. So two good games that are even better together. Maddie, what's your one more thing? All right. So mine's not a video game because, I don't know, it's a TV show. So it's called Dickinson. It's one of the Apple TV Plus shows. It's the one that's not Mythic Quest or Ted Lasso that no one is talking about. I don't know why. People should watch this show. It's really good. So this is a show about Emily Dickinson, which makes it sound really boring. So let me just front load some other information, which is that John Malaney plays Henry David Thoreau in this show. And he's fucking hilarious as Henry David Thoreau.

And this show is not a realistic portrayal of Emily Dickinson's life. There are real examples of her poems. There are real historical events that happen. Like her, she had, according to many scholars, a lesbian romance with her brother's wife. That's all in the show. That's accurate as far as I'm concerned, since we'll never know. truth. There are many accurate things, but then there are also things that never happened. Like Emily Dickinson never met Thoreau, but this show just sort of creates comedic scenarios

whereby if they were to meet, this is the kind of thing they would have debated. This is what would have come up for them. Apparently, like, I think Nick Kroll plays Edgar Allen Poe. I haven't gotten to that episode yet. Looking forward to it. Also, you had me at Nick Kroll. I know. And also Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock fame and many other Fame plays Emily Dickinson's mother and she's in like almost the entire show and she's hilarious. Wait, who's Dickinson? You didn't say. Haley Stenfeld. So she really carries the show. I wasn't like a huge Haley Stenfeld fan. I think she's going to be on that, um, whatever it's called the next Marvel show that like has Kate Bishop in it and like, you know, Jeremy Renner is

whoever he plays. I guess she's not in the MCU yet. That's surprising. She seems like an actor. Yeah, like it's what every actor has to join. Everybody has to, which sort of sucks. Well, she's playing, she's playing Cape Bishop. Okay. So I see I didn't even remember that because I wasn't a Haley Stan Stan, Stan until now because I've watched the show. She played Gwen Stacy and Spider-Man into the Spider-iverse.

Oh, really? Not MCU, but adjacent. True great, man. True great is the performance for me when she was quite a while ago. That was such a good performance. Anyway, she's amazing as Emily Dickinson in this. Kind of interesting that they just did a lot of colorblind casting is this, by just being like, sure,

Haley Stainfield can be Emily Dickinson. Why not? Whatever. And like, I love that. I don't know. It's a weird show. There's a lot of anachronisms in it. Kind of like if people saw the movie The Favorite

where there was just randomly the dance scene where characters were dancing to like modern music and doing wacky dances and that was sort of juxtaposed with like the political concerns of the era. That's Dickinson, but like every single episode is that where there's like rap music and then also like Emily Dickinson poetry and stuff. Like a night's tale.

It always makes you think of a nice tale. It's exactly like a nice show. It's really fun, like, 23-minute episodes, but they're, like, really deep and make you want to read a lot of Emily Dickinson poems. But then also, they're like the perfect length. So, yeah, that's my one more thing. That's me. Nice. Dickinson. All right.

Well, I'll watch it. Well, this has been another episode of Triple Click. We did it again. We did it. We did it. We're emerging from the triple-click brain flying back out into the real worlds. And who even knows what we found inside. Well, in Kirk's Brain, we've been.

You found a bunch of saxophone. It's a huge, a huge pile of saxophone. Well, that does that same. That's why we didn't even bring it up. All right. Well, I will see the two of you next week. See you next week. Bye.

Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud. member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple

clickpublicpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience, audience supported.