5 Years Ago, Double Fine Boldly Tried to Reimagine the AAA Machine
On Psychonauts 2's fifth birthday, Polygon looks back at Double Fine's bold effort to reshape what AAA video games could be..
On Psychonauts 2's fifth birthday, Polygon looks back at Double Fine's bold effort to reshape what AAA video games could be.
The short version
- Psychonauts 2 's best features are its writing and world design.
- I've extolled the virtues of the former in the not-too-distant-past , but the latter often gets overlooked or oversimplified as just psychedelic or "cool" ( Rick Lane's deep dive from 2021 aside).
- It is psychedelic, but it's also a loud statement about what makes good video games good.
What happened
Which makes Xbox doubling down on doing the same thing, but at a higher volume , all the more frustrating. Sony's strategy isn't much different, now that Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, and Insomniac are its primary studios.
Why it matters
Take Astro Bot out of the lineup, and the last decade of PlayStation games is filled with different shades of the same over-the-shoulder action, with few efforts to try something, anything , daring or new.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Polygon via the links above and below.