Psychonauts 2

This is an overall really great game, but right now I'll go over its weaker areas that might turn off people potentially considering it. First, and arguably the biggest gripe, is the fact that the game has all the controls you'd think of for a typical 3D platformer, but it also has this ability wheel where the game does something unique with it. There's a maximum of 8 abilities with you unlocking more as you go, and they're spaced out really well (the last ability is attained near the endgame), but it's a wheel because the game lets you map it to the 4 bumpers of your controller meaning L1, L2, R1 and R2 (if you're playing on a controller which I did and I recommend since this is a platformer). All these abilities have their unique purposes for traversal or specific puzzles, but they all also serve in the combat that the game has, and that's where the issue comes in. Having to constantly change your mapping on the controller for several abilities gets very tedious and it feels especially off considering how fluid other great platformer games are. Ideally you want the button layout to be so natural and not changing to the point where you don't think about it when you do actions and it's just muscle memory and that makes platforming, in part, extremely satisfying to do, but this wheel system really gets in the way of that. The worst part is that it's really barebones with no QoL features to at least try to make it better. They could have A. assigned some of the abilities to 2-button combos (which is the best one for eventual "you stop thinking about it" gameplay but of course, does have the steepest learning curve), B. Have button presets based on your playstyle or what you're doing, or C. let you make your own presets of abilities already mapped to certain controls. There were many paths they could've taken to make it not as bad as it is but they didn't do any of them. And the last con that might turn some people off is the fact that, yes, this game does have a lot of cutscenes, and there's 2 parts of the game where it has a ton of them packed together. Unfortunately, the first one is basically at the beginning, so don't let the game give you the impression that it'll be that cutscene heavy all throughout because it won't be, but there is one section around 70% through the main campaign where it does have a lot of cutscenes packed together again. On the flip side though, literally all cutscenes and even all normal conversations are voice acted, which I thought was really cool. Even then, though, while the story is very creative and cool in many ways, it also has some frankly poor writing decisions (the only spoiler-free one being that many characters are underutilized) and even a few plot holes too in retrospect, even though it touches on and I think represents some themes very well (not just through main exposition but also through those smaller comic collectables the game gives you). Other than those 2 things really, the game is just fantastic. The platforming is really damn good (although I certainly question people who say it's one of the best ever because I don't think it's on that level, even though it's really good regardless). The music is really good overall, with some tracks that are just ok but some are really great. And, of course, the best part of the game is easily the theming with the human psyche and how wildly creative many of the game's sections get. If you want to know what kinds of sections, you can have a look online because I won't go over it here, but it really is some of the best creativity I've seen in gaming. Overall, there's probably 2 (maybe 3) types of people I'd recommend this game to. The first, and most prominent, is people who want a game with memorable art direction and just overall creativity, in which case this is easily a must-play for you. The second is those who really enjoy a good platformer, which this definitely is, but I wouldn't expect it to be top-tier; I'd say absolutely worth checking out but not necessarily a must-play. And the third is those people who are really into learning all of the world building and the lore of fictional worlds because wow this game has a lot of it and it actually is pretty interesting :""D. I say maybe 3 groups of people because the weaker parts of the game's story may discourage you personally form looking into the world itself, since they're, of course, connected, but not entirely. Again, in that case, worth looking into, but not a must-play. If I had to give a rating on a tier list, this game is legitimately an A+ (where S is best). I was this close *puts fingers together* to putting it in S but I think those cons I mentioned in the beginning do hold it back enough to be an A+ instead. (also for fellow ultrawide users, this game basically has ultrawide during all gameplay and 16:9 during cutscenes, but I like this more than other games of its type because it sometimes does edits from 16:9 to 21:9 which are pretty cool, but obviously, ultrawide all the time is best. During gameplay, the ultrawide is flawless, though, which was great.)