Psychonauts 2 Offers a Glimpse Into an Alternate Future

Double Fine’s new masterpiece is what I once envisioned would be common in the modern gaming landscape

When I was in my senior year of high school, I had fully convinced myself that video games were reaching their endpoint.

Not video games as a whole (an artistic medium that has gone through nothing but turbulent ups and downs since its conception), but video games for me. It’s not a rare occurrence to grow up in a household where video games are viewed as a profound waste of time, and I think this is a sentiment widely shared by my fellow spurned Millennials and Xers. While video games were a major component of my childhood — and a purveyor of some of my happiest early memories — video games were also actively criticized by the same parents who purchased these delightful toys for me.

Video games were just that — toys. Video games were a waste of time. Video games were not for adults. Video games were a thing I would eventually have to leave behind when I went struck out into the “real world” for myself and discovered what it was like to be an adult. At the age of eighteen I would have to bury my Game Boy Advance in a shoebox, pat it lovingly, and walk away as it gathered dust and I became a man of means.