That means that a well-versed player can strategically save the game at key points during playthrough to have the entire game's content accessible within a single save slot. Now compare that to the original, which not only offers several save slots, but each save slot has five 'regular' save slots, an auto-save slot and a bonus 'Point of no Return'-slot generated for the endgame. This is quite a Fail on behalf of Double Fine, especially for a game that has such a heavy emphasis on the story and writing. There's no menu anywhere which allows you to view any of the in-game cutscenes once you've seen them. Want to re-watch certain cutscenes from the game? You can't. Going back is only allowed within tightly constrained conditions (re-visiting mental worlds) and with certain aspects of the game permanently off-limits (like how some level progression paths are now permanently gone). This means that P2 has the strange game design decision that the only way through the game is forward. The game even warns you when you quit the game how long it has been since the last autosave, sometime forcing the player to find a way to make the game trigger an autosave. Worse than that, even though the game offers three save slots, it doesn't offer any save game slots within those three saves - the player can't save on his own. Think of the Circus Tent-part of the Meat Circus (the part where Raz is racing against the water) to get an idea of what I mean. This is best shown during a above-average difficult platforming section in the final mental world, where suddenly the auto-save points get quite scarce with the sole intent of making the section more challenging. Every map change and almost every new platform reached triggers an autosave. Every level has dozens of autosave-points. One of those restraints is the hyper-active autosave slot. P2 is running on the Unreal-engine, which both allows for some really cool graphical effects and level-design layouts, but yet for some reason it seems to restrain the gameplay. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I'm kinda forced to, to point out how P2's pillars of strength are not the same as for P1. Worse than that, the last dangling thread is virtually ignored, and when it's finally resolved, it's done in such a horrid manner that I'm wondering whether it was the intern who did it, because Tim just forgot about it. The problem is, P2 tackles them too hard, they become the whole story, everything else takes a back seat. Rhombus of Ruin took on the first one, while Psychonauts 2 tackles the rest. # Who was the Mysterious Stranger who gave Raz the pamphlet to Whispering Rock, and why did they give it to him? # Who were the Psychic 6, as shown on the logs by the campfire? # What happened in Ford Cruller's past to leave him in such a shattered state? Loboto survive the explosion of the mental asylum? Storywise it tells a good and solid tale, with only a handful of loose plot threads, besides the cliffhanger the game ended on. It didn't hurt that the graphics and soundtrack were great as well. The pillars of strength of Psychonauts 1 were its writing, consistency, cleverness and tons and tons of little details that the game didn't draw attention to, and left up to the player to deduce if actually found.
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