Psychonauts 2 in the technology test – ComputerBase : Test |CUP | Specs |Config

The charmingly crazy action adventure Psychonauts is getting a successor after more than 16 years. Even with Microsoft in the back, Psychonauts 2 remains true to its roots. ComputerBase took a closer look at the gameplay and the technology including benchmarks.

Continuation after 16 years

After more than 16 years, the bizarre action adventure Psychonauts is getting a successor. The second part also comes from the small development team Double Fine including the well-known game designer Tim Schafer, but with Xbox Game Studios there is a new publisher – because Double Fine is now part of Microsoft.

Psychonauts 2 is based strongly on the predecessor and retains the single-player focus, the scenario, the narrative style and the humor. The developers rely on a comic style that can put the over-the-top worlds in the limelight. It is noticeable at every nook and cranny that this is a rather small development team, so top graphics at a high level are not to be expected.

But with the help of a chic art design and a lot of love for crazy details, that doesn’t usually bother, because the graphics just fit the entire game. The fact that neither animations nor detail density nor most of the other elements are on the AAA level does not detract from the look. At least not as long as you don’t have any problems with the graphic style.

Unreal Engine 4 with DirectX 12 for comic book style

Psychonauts 2 was implemented with the Unreal Engine 4. The developers rely exclusively on DirectX 12, the old API DirectX 11 cannot be selected. The game does not support other features such as ray tracing or DLSS. In addition, there is no evidence that AMD or Nvidia actively helped implement the PC version.

Psychonauts’ graphics menu is kept simple, but offers at least a few comfort options. In addition to the usual graphic presets, there are several individual options and an FPS limiter that can be set to the fixed values ​​of 30, 60, 75, 100, 120, 144, 165 and 240 FPS. In addition, there is upsampling, with which the rendering resolution can be freely configured in 5 percent steps between 25 and 100 percent. Unfortunately, the developers are not taking the next logical step of also offering downsampling.

Beyond that, there are no further conveniences, there are no sample descriptions and screenshots of the individual options.

5 graphic presets with a peculiarity

With “Very Low”, “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Very High” Psychonauts offers 2 different graphic presets. You have to be careful when using them, because they do not only affect the detail options as usual, they also include the upscaling function, depending on the resolution. As a result, for example, the mean preset in Full HD uses a different upscaling factor than in WQHD. Even the highest graphics preset uses massive upscaling in places.

The presets rely heavily on upscaling

In Full HD, the game still uses the render resolution set at Very High, but the number of pixels is also reduced with this preset at higher resolutions. In WQHD the scaling is set to 75 percent, in Ultra HD even to 50 percent. Since the set percentage always relates to the respective resolution axis and not to the number of pixels, there is never a higher rendering resolution than Full HD even with the very high preset, even if Ultra HD is set. The lower presets then use the upscaling even more aggressively until only 25 percent of the resolution remains. Why the developers are taking this strange path is not revealed in the test – also not because the FPS are usually high.

If you ignore the reduced resolution, there is actually no noticeable difference between the very high and the high preset. Only when it is in motion is it noticeable that the LOD works more aggressively and so objects appear a little closer to the player out of nowhere.

With the middle setting, some shadows lose their contour and become a mass of mush, which no longer looks nice. In addition, some items suddenly lose a lot of detail, but most of them look like they were with the higher setting. The LOD becomes even more aggressive. Shadows, lighting, surface details and reflections are the elements that suffer from further reduced graphics.

There is more performance primarily through the reduced resolution

The graphic presets in Psychonauts 2 get their performance increase primarily through the reduced resolution. Of course, this is especially true for those who use them in high resolutions. If you switch back from the maximized graphics to the very high preset in Ultra HD, you accelerate the frame rate of the Radeon RX 6700 XT by 205 percent, with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti it is 164 percent. No wonder, instead of Ultra HD, full HD is rendered with otherwise identical graphics.

The other graphic presets also benefit primarily from the lower resolution, the reduced details only play a minor role. With the high preset, the FPS on the AMD graphics card increases by a further 23 percent, on the Nvidia accelerator it is 17 percent. With the middle setting, the Radeon increases by a further 31 percent and the GeForce by 29 percent. In the even lower presets, there are hardly any differences, but this is also due to the fact that a CPU limit is slowly coming up, which is not surprising given the almost no remaining number of pixels. The very low preset only brings plus 7 or plus 11 percent compared to the medium settings.

On the next page: Benchmarks in Full HD, WQHD as well as Ultra HD and frame times