Psychonauts 2 will feature an invincibility toggle to enable "all ages, all possible needs" to enjoy the game - Game journalist mode ahoy!

[Cyclonus]

It's not ultra easy mode, it's god mode.

 

[X Pac Heat]

While I wont sit here and go into an autistic rage that a game has multiple difficulty options and someone played it on easiest, but I will call people retarded for playing a game on a "difficulty" mode that is basically press X to for cutscene.

That's fair.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

1980's/1990's - Hey you fucking pricks, here's some hard-as-balls games to torture yourself with! If you beat the game, you have officially become a man!

Current Year - D'AW, thats ok widdle baby, we will make things all better for you. Remember, you are always special no matter what!

 

[Kulee Baba]

Because 99.9% of gamers fall into one of two categories: unemployable super spergs who will mindlessly grind any game for hundreds of hours until they beat it, and normie faggots who need to be reminded not to hold the controller upside down when playing. Anything in between "mind-numbingly hard" and "press x to win" would fail to find an audience.

Don't forget there's also lots of 90s kids like myself and I often enjoy playing a hard game and honestly I'll often just stop playing it when it sometimes gets too hard or boring to me. I grew up 3 blocks away from a small arcade, if I couldn't beat an arcade game with $10 from Dad it was tough shit and I learned to just accept it. I also grew up with my older brother's NES and some 30 odd games. As most people know besides a few RPGs and Zelda there was no save slots for the NES, only a few games had a password system. I would play the opening to the 3 Mario games, Ninja Gaiden, and Castlevania repeatedly, never seeing the ending or even being near the final stages.

I've bought (and downloaded) so many games. I have only seen a fraction of the endings. It doesn't bother me, because ultimately most video game endings are just simple happy conclusions congratulating the player for completing the game. For every Silent Hill 1-3 there's 100 games with endings nobody cares about.

I'm going to admit something and it's embarrassing because I'm a lover of video games; I'm shit at them. If I were a Twitch Streamer people would likely say my game playing skills were on par with DarkSydePhil. Hell probably worse because that dude actually beat the Souls games and I've never done that despite absolutely loving the first half of Bloodborne. Don't get me wrong he's a cunt for his obnoxious personality and constant panhandling, but I can't mock him for being bad at a game.

There's only one type of gamer that bewilders me, and that is a full grown adult who plays on Game Journalist Difficulty. My roommate decided to play the DMC games because he was interested in DmC DMC (yeah dude had bad tastes) and I had a copy of the HD Collection. I came back from work to find him playing DMC1 on the easiest difficulty where every swing of Dante's sword takes a huge chunk of Phantom's health bar. I'm not an autistic jerk who would call him a casual but I think turning the difficulty into piss easy just robs the game of all fun.

But anyway at the topic at hand Psychonauts is a story focused platformer that's meant to be enjoyed by all ages like Mario but way more Hipster. It should have super easy modes because there will be kids who want to just see the cutscenes. Doesn't bother me but don't act like this is a huge accomplishment when Nintendo an often conservative corporation (in terms of design) did this for 3D Mario.

God I am such a dork for writing all this shit. I must be on the spectrum.

 

[Marissa Moira]

It's not ulta easy mode, it's god mode.

Careful now, your preference for monotheism may offend some.

 

[The Last Stand]

Game Journalist Mode

for srs tho what happened to like a "god mode" cheat code

DSP mode activated.

If achievements can be completed with invincibility mode, then I found my New Game Plus+.

 

[Gar For Archer]

Don't forget there's also lots of 90s kids like myself and I often enjoy playing a hard game and honestly I'll often just stop playing it when it sometimes gets too hard or boring to me. I grew up 3 blocks away from a small arcade, if I couldn't beat an arcade game with $10 from Dad it was tough shit and I learned to just accept it. I also grew up with my older brother's NES and some 30 odd games. As most people know besides a few RPGs and Zelda there was no save slots for the NES, only a few games had a password system. I would play the opening to the 3 Mario games, Ninja Gaiden, and Castlevania repeatedly, never seeing the ending for even being near the final stages.

I've bought (and downloaded so many games) I have only seen a fraction of the endings. It doesn't bother me, because ultimately most video game endings are just simple happy conclusions congratulating the player for completing the game. For every Silent Hill 1-3 there's 100 games with endings nobody cares about.

I'm going to admit something and it's embarrassing because I'm a lover of video games; I'm shit at them. If I were a Twitch Streamer people would likely say my game playing skills were on par with DarkSydePhil. Hell probably worse because that dude actually beat the Souls games and I've never done that despite absolutely loving the first half of Bloodborne. Don't get me wrong he's a cunt for his obnoxious personality and constant panhandling, but I can't mock him for being bad at a game.

There's only one type of gamer that bewilders me, and that is a full grown adult who plays on Game Journalist Difficulty. My roommate decided to play the DMC games because he was interested in DmC DMC (yeah dude had bad tastes) and I had a copy of the HD Collection. I came back from work to find him play DMC1 on the easiest difficulty where every swing of Dante's sword takes a huge chunk of Phantom's health bar. I'm not an autistic jerk who would call him a casual but I think turning the difficulty into piss easy just robs the game of all fun.

But anyway at the topic at hand Psychonauts is a story focused platformer that's meant to be enjoyed by all ages like Mario but way more Hipster. It should have super easy modes because there will be kids who want to just see the cutscenes. Doesn't bother me but don't act like this is a huge accomplishment when Nintendo an often conservative corporation (in terms of design) did this for 3D Mario.

God I am such a dork for writing all this shit. I must be on the spectrum.

Agreed, video game stories/endings are fucking overrated.

As someone with a job and other hobbies I put in way higher priority than video games, there’s a LOT of games where I play them up to the point where I’d need to invest some serious time and effort sitting down and properly learning the mechanics, and just drop them because I decided it’s not worth by time gitting gud and pushing through to the end. Like… if I invested another 20 hours into it (I’m pretty bad at video games) I COULD beat it, but what the fuck do I get out of that other than wasting 20 hours I could’ve spent doing something more interesting? When I was a kid I’d have the option to bum out and play 3 hours a day for a week straight and power through it, but frankly nowadays I have better shit to do with what limited free time I have.

I don’t get any joy out of finishing games for the sake of finishing them (in fact the process would be decidedly UNfun, considering I’ll constantly be thinking of the other shit I’d rather be doing with my time, like sleeping) and NOT finishing them doesn’t take away from the fun I had playing it up til that point. So if I’m not having fun and I’m not getting anything out of it, why even bother? If I really cared about the story (which I don’t) I could just watch the cutscenes on YouTube or put on an LP while I eat.

 

[Kuchipatchi]

They best do this for the difficulty select or it's an instant 0 stars from me.

 

[Judge Dredd]

For me, the inclusion of easy mode or cheats is not a problem.

There are two problems I have with it.

1. The reason they're doing this. To appease hipster game journos who have the easiest job in the world, but are too lazy to do it because they want to Tweet about Trump all day; And to appease ResetEra types who hate games but don't want to miss out on the zeitgeist.
2. The virtue signalling around it. They included easy mode/cheats, yet are acting like this is some great new feature that allows the disabled to play their game. It's not a real accessibility option like colour blind mode or larger fonts, so what disability does it help? I guess if you consider game journalists and ResetEra special needs...

 

[Kulee Baba]

Agreed, video game stories/endings are fucking overrated.

As someone with a job and other hobbies I put in way higher priority than video games, there’s a LOT of games where I play them up to the point where I’d need to invest some serious time and effort sitting down and properly learning the mechanics. When I was a kid I’d have the option to bum out and play 3 hours a day for a week straight and power through it, but frankly nowadays I have better shit to do with my time, like sleep.

I don’t get any joy out of finishing games for the sake of finishing them (in fact the process would be decidedly UNfun, considering I’ll constantly be thinking of the other shit I’d rather be doing with my time, like sleeping) and NOT finishing them doesn’t take away from the fun I had playing it up til that point. So if I’m not having fun and I’m not getting anything out of it, why even bother? If I really cared about the story (which I don’t) I could just watch the cutscenes on YouTube or put on an LP while I eat.

This brings up one situation I will agree with game journalists on, they don't need to necessarily complete the whole game to write a review.

If a game is a blast to play for 10+ hours it's worth checking out. I know people like to talk about how expensive games are but when they're on sale I can thankfully say $30 is disposable money to me. And there's a ton of games that aren't even very old that still go down $20. If I had a PS4 I know for certain I'd have bought that Spider-Man game for cheap and had fun with it.

Some games are great at the start and then become rather lousy at the end. System Shock 2 comes to mind, I just was playing SS2 again and I decided to stop when you leave the Rickenbacker. At that point the level designs get really boring and unless you purposely handicap yourself by picking lousy upgrades you'll have an easy time with the enemies. Still a classic and a must play for most gamers.

 

[Gar For Archer]

This brings up one situation I will agree with game journalists on, they don't need to necessarily complete the whole game to write a review.

If a game is a blast to play for 10+ hours it's worth checking out. I know people like to talk about how expensive games are but when they're on sale I can thankfully say $30 is disposable money to me. And there's a ton of games that aren't even very old that still go down $20. If I had a PS4 I know for certain I'd have bought that Spider-Man game for cheap and had fun with it.

Some games are great at the start and then become rather lousy at the end. System Shock 2 comes to mind, I just was playing SS2 again and I decided to stop when you leave the Rickenbacker. At that point the level designs gets really boring and unless you purposely handicap yourself by picking lousy upgrades you'll have an easy time with the enemies. Still a classic and a must play for most gamers.

You're giving game journos too much credit.

When you say "you don't need to play the whole game to write a review", you mean "oftentimes you've gotten all the fun you can out of a game before it's actually finished".
When a game journo says "you don't need to play the whole game to write a review", they mean "I attempted* the tutorial, that entitles me to give my opinion on the game as if it means shit".

 

[Haramburger]

No, but during my time Sony was anal retentive about everything, and they definitely did not like cheats.

Sony also allowed women to be attractive to men at that time, things have changed.

 

[Kill Your Idols]

I don't have anything against making a game easier (reasonable amounts of grinding, lowering the difficulty settings, using strong equipment, etc.) and I also don't think you need to play on the hardest difficulty to be a "real gamer," but shit like this is so confusing to me. If you're not going to engage with a game's systems at the most basic level, what are you even getting out of this? All the peripheral stuff like story and OST can be enjoyed via walkthroughs and streams so it's bizarre to me that people want to put down the cash and buy a game just to walk from point A to point B. This has to be some compulsion thing, right?

 

[Marissa Moira]

Sony also allowed women to be attractive to men at that time, things have changed.

I dunno dude, I mean you're asking for a paradox. Trannies can't be women so Abbey therefore could never be attractive.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Even DSP plays games on the "Dee-falt difficulty."

 

[Dom Cruise]

Outside of meat circus the original Psychonauts was not that hard, you're in the wrong hobby if you can't even handle the level of difficulty most of Psychonauts 1 offered.

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

Virgin Indie Faggot: Makes an optional mode so even a complete retard can beat his game
Chad AAA Motherfucker: Makes the default game easy enough to be beatable by a complete retard

 

[Kulee Baba]

Outside of meat circus the original Psychonauts was not that hard, you're in the wrong hobby if you can't even handle the level of difficulty most of Psychonauts 1 offered.

Yeah, let's just cut thru the bullshit.

You ever look at the back of a DVD cover and it says under Extra Features that it has "Interactive Menus." Yeah that's the equivalent to saying your game has an ultra easy difficulty mode.

As was once pointed out by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, Tim Schafer is a bad manager of a video game studio. It has taken Doublefine FIVE years to make Psychonauts 2. And I'm counting 5 years based on it fundraising $3 Million from website Fig. Fig if you don't know let's you invest in indie products and the hook is you can actually make money off the game pending it's a success. And this is what was promised as a game release date from the original campaign.

The studio's flagship game, Psychonauts , took nearly five years to make. But in the last fifteen years, we’ve grown a bit older and wiser and have shipped sixteen titles since with four more in the pipeline. Psychonauts 2, as a sequel, has already built a solid foundation and answered a lot of the questions we’d otherwise face - What is this game? Who are the characters? What is the gameplay going to be like? etc.

With all that in mind, we are estimating that Psychonauts 2 will be finished for a release in 2018.

Your planned release date where you took money from amatuer Venture Capitalists was 3 years off? That's fucking pathetic. Downright shameful in my eyes.

But hey, sometimes games get delayed you might argue. Well then why aren't we getting a PR marketing campaign for the game, which is to be released next month? Why this is the campaign, that this long waited sequel to an obscure cult classic has a mode that is totally expected for a game of this kind. Meanwhile The Outer Wilds, another title that used the Fig platform came out and is critically acclaimed by Game Journos and Steam Users.

BTW I don't hate Tim Schafer, I actually got to meet him by chance while in San Fran and he came off a decent enough fellow. I just recognized him at a restaurant and he talked to me, a total nobody for at least 20 minutes. But I do hold a small grudge towards him. I think it was lousy of him to use Kickstarter to raise money for what appeared to be a spiritual successor to his LucasArts Adventure games. And he turned around and delivered Broken Age, a game that I at least feel holds no resemblance to Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

It right away mentions story, so you know the gameplay is taking a backseat.

Which is standard operating procedure for Double Fine. A ton of the early coverage for Brutal Legend didn’t mention the gameplay, and I’m going to guess there was not an insignificant number of people who were looking forward to it who were surprised that it was a strategy game.

 

[Cyclonus]

You know why I'm against making games so easy that even drooling retards could complete it? Let me put this in language the SJWs will understand: stolen valour. Y'know, the thing you accuse people wearing native American headdresses at rock concerts of? I earned that damn ending, if they want to see it they should put in the work too. This would be somewhat mitigated by trophies and achievements for completing the game in normal or hard mode, but apparently that's too exclusive now as well. Sooner or later every game will just say "Game Over, You Win!" the second you start it up.