In the current gaming landscape, games commonly launch with major bugs, and the stability of Double Fine's Psychonauts 2 is a welcome change. However, no software is perfect, and players have found a serious flaw with a certain level in the game.
Psychonauts 2 is a highly polished game and while it may be well put together for the most part, problems have slipped through the cracks that may mar the experience for curious players. As is common in platformers, one such bug occurs when the level is navigated in an unintended way.
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A member of the Xbox Game Pass subreddit posted a detailed description of an issue with the level Bowling Ford's Strike City. A fire escape not meant to be climbed by the player exists as a background element, but despite the ladder kicking the player off this user managed to climb it by rapidly pressing Jump near it. The level progressed as normal from there until the end, where an important object was missing. Upon re-entry the object reappeared but was not interactable, locking progression entirely.
Psychonauts 2 is a critical success, receiving high praise for its creative level designs and theming. In many ways it is considered a worthy successor to the 2005 original, which has become a cult classic over the years. Hopefully a method is found to overcome the game-breaking bug, since the only other option would be restarting from the beginning of the game. As it stands, it does not appear as though a significant number of players have encountered the issue, though at least one other player has said they are also dealing with the problem.
The creativity of Psychonauts 2, even through game-breaking bugs, lends itself to an overall solid experience. Now that one player has found the method to trigger the bug, other players can avoid following the same sequence of steps and potentially ruining their playthroughs. Still, the best possible outcome is for Double Fine to take notice and release a patch to fix it, so unknowing players do not accidentally encounter it.
Major bugs making their way into retail releases of games is almost an inevitability in the modern game industry, as developers and publishers rely on post-launch patches to fix issues. However, the game marketplace servers will not be online forever and every day is a step closer to losing access to games and updates as demonstrated by Sony's attempt to shut down the PS3 store. Eventually the physical retail release will be the only legally available version, but the day the Xbox Series X online store shuts down is still many years away.
Psychonauts 2 is available now on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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