4/5 ★ – pinksteady's review of Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin.

Psychonauts happens to be one of my all-time favourite games. Everything about it makes for such an enjoyable, fun and immersive game. If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3830/Psychonauts/. I’m also, of course, a backer of the sequel which I am very excited for (https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-2). Weirdly though, as I didn’t have a PSVR when Psychonauts In The Rhombus of Ruin came along, I didn’t really pay much attention. I think I wanted to avoid knowing anything about it, given that I had no way of playing it. However, I finally got a PSVR and so now my Rhombus time has come! It was a relatively short game (which seems to be a theme of PSVR games), but it was true-to-the-bone Psychonauts through and through. The voice acting, the art style, the dialogue - it was all so familiar and took me back to the glory days of the original. The game itself is decent but not excellent. I think my main criticism is that it is too short, and doesn’t get a chance to really explore itself fully. It introduces new mechanics as you progress, but you hardly get the chance to use them. It would be have been nice to get a bit more freedom to explore and try out earned abilities in different places to uncover secrets etc, like in the original. I think that exceeded the intended scope of this game, which feels more of a VR proof-of-concept by Double Fine to see what developing in VR might be like. And I don’t blame them - VR is a niche platform and I doubt an independent studio like DF have the funds or resource to make a fully-fledged VR game without any reassurance the sales would cover the costs. Anyway, I’m really pleased I played it, I enjoyed playing with the characters again, but it only mildly scratched my Psychonauts itch and I continue to look forward to the full-scale sequel!