Before Note : I don't know where else to start this review but from the beginning so I can lay the foundation, If you don't care to read this you can skip to the actual game review below but I think it provides context for my views on this game as a whole.

The year is 2015, Christmas is a few weeks away but I get my present early in the form of The Game Awards. I remember watching a World Premiere during it, a military dude rambling about a comatose girl herding a flock of sheep. The only thing I could think of was just how silly this is, what could this game possible be? Then he said the line that made my heart skip a beat. "Send in The Psychonauts". Before I could even register what he said I heard the theme play and the memories came rushing back like a punch to the gut.

I began to sob like a toddler. Psychonauts was the very first video game I ever played. I didn't know what a video game was until back in 2005, my father brought home an Xbox from a pawn shop, and a demo disk with that on it. We saved up the money, bought the game brand new. To make the story short, he was too sick to do anything else and that was how we bonded. It was our game. We sunk hundreds of hours into it, who knows how many times we'd run it back over and over again.

Psychonauts is much more than a game to me, it truly is a work of art and it's influenced my gaming life from the very beginning. It is a masterpiece. Words can't express how powerful the memories and love for this game is, but after 16 long years of hype, could this game ever live up to the pedestal I placed it's predecessor on?

I don't want to include anything that could potentially ruin the experience for someone, so I will be as vague as can be on certain topics related to the world and what you may experience outside of the intro. This game though, I'm not even sure where to begin with this so I'll jump right in.

The Plot
(You don't need to play the first game or the VR experience to follow along, the opening cinematic basically fills in all the important bits, but I still recommend playing that first if you haven't already)

Psychonauts 2 takes place a few days after the ending of the original. You play as Raz, an honorary Psychonaut who arrived at The Motherlobe following the rescue of Truman, the grand head of the Psychonauts. The kidnapper, Loboto, is being interrogated to find out who was actually behind it because nobody believes a dentist is capable of that on their own apparently, revealing a whole psychic conspiracy at play. Can you unravel it all before it's too late?

Gameplay
Honestly it doesn't change from it's roots that much. You have a unique set of physic powers to work with. You travel around the real world finding collectibles scattered throughout and talking to people, while the mental world doing pretty much the same thing but with combat, and that's one major area this this game has really improved. The combat is so much more fluid than it was before. Using your arsenal of physic abilities you can fight some of the enemies from the original game, and a handful of new really unique ones all related to mental afflictions. The loop is pretty much the same over the course of the game and you'll find yourself getting into a routine for what works best for the right situations.

Visuals
The aesthetic of this game is phenomenal. Every single world has some vibe to it that just pops out at you. Every mental world may follow similar gameplay loops, but the they all revolve around the mental state and thoughts of the person. Every world has it's own unique identity with beautiful color palettes and the right ambiance to match the world with it's lighting. It's so entrancing to look at, I don't want to go in depth about any worlds specifically because you should experience it yourself, but I found myself being like a deer in headlights admiring the scenery of everything I came across.

Music
The OST legitimately brought tears to my eyes at some points. Whether it was some new soundtrack that added to the world you were in, completely altering the mood of the environment which made it feel so much more immersive. Other times you'd be hearing the same scores from the original game come back which was such a blast from the past it tore at my heartstrings. It's so incredibly powerful.

Problems and Glitches
In my 28 hours of playtime I only experienced one major glitch that halted my progress, a ball at the start of a level I needed to use to traverse it didn't spawn. I quit to main menu and loaded right back in. Took all of 5 seconds to do but it really confused me on what I was doing cause I ran around for 5 minutes thinking I was missing something.

Audio skipping, quite a handful of times I would be listening to someone speak and they would get interrupted by something else going on, or they'd just stop talking but their lips would keep moving like they had something more to say. There was no way to replay what they said (at least to my knowledge) so if I missed what they said I used context clues to figure out what they were talking about.

Besides the audio thing happening more than I would have liked, I experienced no crashes, stutters, or anything of the sort in that short playtime, but I've read that others have experienced other progress halting bugs or crashes, but I don't know if I was just lucky or not.

How it all comes together
The characters you meet, the colors and details of the world, the music you hear, the environments you explore, it all culminates into one of the most beautiful experiences together, but it's not perfect as much as I wish it were. Ignoring some technical flaws that took me out of the experience, I was enthralled by this world and everything in it. But I don't think you should have rushed it like I did, 28 hours for 100% completion really did burn me but I couldn't help myself.

This game is an incredible work of art. It answered so many questions and revealed so many mysteries from the first game, along with making me ask entirely new ones. Not only has it lived up to everything I had hoped it would be, but it somehow managed to surpass the hype I had for it. No, this game isn't perfect. Yes it has flaws. I can't tell you how many times I laughed because it was funny, I raged because I clearly should have climbed that ledge but fell, I smiled because it warmed my heart and I cried because there were some tender moments. The positives carry this game and I truly believe this deserves to be contender for GOTY.

If you're even remotely considering buying this game, I think you should. It's a worthy successor to continue the series. Double Fine put so much love and effort into this game and it really shows. I'm so happy I got to experience this title, I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. As the final credits began to roll, I thought I'd fine myself in tears over it all, but that wasn't the case. As the screen faded away, as cheesy as it sounds I didn't cry because it was over, I smiled because it happened.