You can tell a lot about a game’s soul by what it deems a ‘perk’. Fallout 3, for example, thinks being better at murdering women is one. In Modern Warfare it’s dropping a grenade after death like a smug ghost. In Psychonauts 2, Double Fine will sell you a ‘beastmastery’ pin badge modifier that allows Raz’s psychic fist—usually used for thumping and tossing—to stroke woodland animals. You spend money to hurt fewer things. Honestly? It’s a tonic.
Fifteen years have passedtime enough to forget how silly the game can be, and the startling places it can take us. Of course, for the game’s inhabitants it’s been but three days: wannabe Psychonaut Raz left Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp on a rescue mission – seen in the VR spin-off – and we rejoin him in its aftermath.
