Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy:
Playing through this game, it's hard not to notice the Crash Bandicoot influence, most notably the spin kick. This is a classic platform game, and a solid one at that, but for some reason, it doesn't feel as fun or fast paced as the Playstation Crash games. Surprisingly, the game manages to a fair few cutscenes throughout to explain the story, and create a plausible reason as to why you're running around the place collecting stuff. While the story is nothing spectacular, it was interesting in that it started out as trying to find a way to restore Daxter to his human form, but ended up being a defeat the evil villain type of plot. Yes, it's not original, but it works and keeps you going. In terms of graphics, you're constantly reminded that it's a game from the early beginnings of the PS2, while it's not atrocious, there are some noticeable jagged edges in the environment and character models. The environments themselves are very impressive, no longer being confined to a corridor while the only option is to go forward, each of the areas are vast and detailed. They're just begging to be explored, and while it can be overwhelming at first, it's really fun going through them, searching out all their secrets.
However, it can feel aimless at times, with no clear reason why you're doing it (yes, you're to get 'power cells' to further the game, but that's not a good enough reason). A nice touch was the subtle passing of time, it goes from day to night to day seamlessly, you'll be playing and then you suddenly notice, wow, it did get a lot darker and you realized it was night time in the game. The 'zoomer' levels, in which you ride a hover bike, could be better (it doesn't help that they thrust four levels upon you, so it feels like you have to ride that darn bike a lot). It's more to do with the controls, it doesn't feel that great and could take some getting used to. The instant death areas can be annoying, but I guess that's the point, to make it harder. The jumping mechanics can be annoying too, especially the double jump. More frequently that I would have liked, I wouldn't be able to pull off a double jump, and some of the platforms need a preciseness that just gets annoying. Example? Jumping from floating platforms to floating platforms, you not only need to do a max double jump and then spin to get to it, you need to jump off right at the edge of the platform otherwise you'll fall just short (in which case, you have to start it again). The 'eco' system were good in spicing up the game play and breaking the monotony (relatively speaking), since it acts as a sort of short term power up (such as speed or power) in which to solve the puzzles.
The camera gets stuck easily, which is a minor annoyance. Daxter's dialogue and actions were funny, even though it was borderline cheesy. The number of bosses were ridiculous, only three, one of them is optional, and only the final boss was really worth the fight (since it was so much more fun than what you were doing before). Music-wise, while the tunes weren't distracting, it didn't truly complement the game. The game felt so short though, I didn't realize that I was completing it that fast, and before I knew it, it was the final boss. It makes me long for more (so I guess despite me not being wowed, it was good enough to make me want to play more). The no load screen or loading between areas is very impressive. The trophies are very simple (since the game wasn't made with trophies in mind), just aim to get 100% and that's it. This is a solid game (albeit easy), but it didn't feel groundbreaking, on the contrary, it felt generic.
Jak II:
Oh boy, this is one of the most frustrating and hardest game I have ever played, to the point where I HATE this game. Every level ended up with me frustrated, angry at the game, and generally cursing the developer. For those of you that loved this game, please stop reading now. So, from the first time you start playing, you noticed something... everything in the first game is completely overturned. This felt like a completely different game, why bother making this a sequel when it's so unconnected to the first? The darker tone was an interesting focus, but it felt weird as it tries to take itself too seriously. This is reflected in the city, being more gritty and less colorful than the first game's world. It acts as a free roam area, which, while cool, sucks in the end. It's big for no reason other than to waste your time travelling from mission to mission, and there are a lot of limitations in what you can do. You get caught too easily by guards (extremely annoying) but the setting feels wrong due to the cartoony look. Jacking hovercrafts to drive might be cool for the first few times, but what's the point when it's so un-fun to drive those damn vehicles. It's boring, and annoying to drive, since you're just going to constantly crash. You can't go fast to your destination (unless you want guards to chase you) and the city design is atrocious and not suited for driving with twisting streets.
It's cool to finally hear Jak talk... but does he have to be such a jackass? His anger and rudeness doesn't suit him (he was so helpful and easy going before), sure, what happened to him would have changed him, but none of his attitude is carried over from Jak 1, frankly, he's not a likable character. One of things that most annoy me is the fact the developers thought it was great to add in guns, cash in on the trend of projectile weapons, -_-. This makes all other physical attacks practically redundant. I wished they added in strafing, since the boss battles are annoying since they like to overwhelm you with cannon fodder, chasing you and you can't instantly turn around to shoot. I'm talk about the story first before I go into the crux of why this game is so frustrating and hard. The story is contrived, some twists, but doesn't leave any major impact. Yet, there are so many pointless padding in the story which leads to pointless missions, padding the game out. It never really captured my attention since they were pretty all excuses in order for Jak to shoot things (and this is what the game is, shoot things). The music was uninspired and bland.
To the actual game play, first: only a very small proportion is platforming sequences (boo!!), all other stages are just point and shoot (where's the fun?), jetboard or racing. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make racing levels when the controls are so terrible (hard to do tight turns at high speed, finnicky controls etc), they should have rethought it. While bearable during the races (still not good though), even when they all smash into you so you can't drive properly (collisions are annoying since you bounce back), the ones taking place in the streets at high speed are NOT fun. When it comes to the precision turning, the jetboard is crap (you must go at high speed, and even then, it's hard to aim properly coz it's so finnicky). The grinding is frustrating, most of the time, you'll miss, especially apparent in the last few levels where you have to jump gaps while grinding, and the worst thing? Restarting the WHOLE level when you fail. Jak II is filled with frustrating levels, and insane difficulty spikes that ruin the enjoyment of the game. There's a difference between a challenging game that's satisfying to play and a frustrating game in which it tries to be challenging by being cheap, such as Jak II. They chuck at you tight time limits, a heap of enemies to fight at once and stupid terrible controls.
The double jump can fail at times (as in, you couldn't do it because your timing wasn't right). On average, you'll be trying each level more than 5 times. The difficulty is very inconsistent since you'll get some levels that are not too difficult and then suddenly, you encounter an extremely frustratingly hard level. The developers expect you to play these levels multiple times in order to memorize everything to do a perfect run, no mistakes. I hate this trial and error game play, especially when the checkpoints are very unforgiving. They are spread too far apart, and with the trial and error game play, this means you'll be doing the same bits again and again and again until you get a perfect run. What's more, your ammo is not the same amount as when you went in, so if start with low ammo and didn't get to pick some up before you die, and it's an intense shooting level, good luck. Another thing the designers thought was a good idea was to give you eight pieces of health. You would think, oh, that's not too bad since Jak 1 only gave you a max of four, well, I have to ask, why did they give me eight pieces of health when 90% of damage I receive takes away two pieces? I mean, overwhelming numbers of enemies that fire projectiles, you have got to be kidding me.
You might say the variety in terms of game play will be a blessing, but it's also a curse. It might keep you interested by presenting different stuff to play each time but if you don't like a couple (or aren't too good) of them, then it ruins the game. Especially in Jak II where there is too much variety, you know the saying, "jack of all trades but master of none". If it's any comfort, the graphics are great and a huge step up from Jak 1. Overall, this is a very frustrating game, you can't helping thinking when will this end and you don't want to play unless you just want to say to yourself "I've finished it, I don't have to ever look at it again". The game time has been dragged on for too long, it should take around 8-10 hours but because it’s so hard and the broken checkpoint system causes you to restart a far way back whenever you die, it artificially extends the game time to 15 hours or so (give or take a few hours). That’s not including the sidequests, which are equally hard. I don't know what appeal of this game was, but I will never look at Naughty Dog games again like they are the best, Jak II broke that image for me, it was a terrible mistake to make it this hard... by cheap and unfair mechanics.
Jak 3:
It started off like Jak II, and I thought, oh no, not another game that's similar. However, THIS is what Jak II is supposed to be like. Jak 3 perfected Jak II's broken mechanics and made all the shooting combined with platforming fun and enjoyable. At first, because it reminded me of Jak II, I wasn't really liking this game, but a few missions in, I found myself unknowingly liking the game, and that was when I realized, what I was doing was really fun. This is basically the same in terms of premise and game play but it's easier, and the game doesn't feel cheap when you lose, because it's fair. It seems that they had taken all the criticism from Jak II to heart, corrected them, and pushed out Jak 3, this is the definitive Jak game in which they had envisioned it from II onwards. That said, there were still some annoying parts. For some reason, they love putting in vehicles with driving controls that suck. In this installments, it's desert track vehicles, which, while handles better than hovercrafts (still present here), the constant sliding when you're trying to turn gets really annoying, especially in a timed chase. You'll eventually learn to minimize the sliding but it still happens and it's just terrible.
While playing through some of the levels and I died, I was very surprised at the generosity at the checkpoints. I had expected to be put much further back, but most of them, I didn't have to trek through most of the level again, that was great. The enemies thrown at you aren't too overwhelming (although the latter parts provide more of a challenge, but still very easy). I loved the gun upgrades and the different effects they have. Effectively tripling in terms of variety, each gun had something that made it special to use in a certain situation, I just wished I had more of an incentive to fully utilize each different gun upgrade. Finding precursor orbs to upgrade things (which aren't necessary, but makes the game easier) was a good idea, and gives me better incentives to seek out those orbs. In terms of boss fights, they were very standard typical affairs, I had wanted more of a variety instead of just the basic three or four staged battles we are all used to after three games.
Once again, a few of the missions feel pointless. Personally, I didn't like the missions which requires you to use the desert vehicles, especially when you're forced to, to get to the final boss. You get three big areas to explore now, Haven City, Wasteland and Spargus, all of which provide no reason to explore other than the odd precursor orb. Especially in Haven City, where it's overrun with monsters, you get no benefits from defeating them, so you usually just ride through on a hovercraft, artificially extending the play time. I can't believe all the moves they have gradually added onto Jak, you have such a wide arsenal of moves at your disposal that you don't know which one you wanna use. The inclusion of Light Jak here, with his regenerative powers, really tip the game over on the easy side. Story wise, it was okay, nothing really gripping, at least Jak isn't such a badass anymore, he's much more likeable. The story twists weren't too impactful, it will surprise you, but it won't leave a mark.
As usual, the story here's only an excuse for the action, and I didn't like the choice of the villain, seems a bit... cheap and forced. It didn't make much sense, but I did like how we get given more information about the mysterious Precursors, what happened to them and the effects of Eco. The graphics are stunning, but I think it uses the same engine as Jak II (which was already impressive). There are no jagged edges and the environment is extremely detailed. I didn't take much note of the music, since it was mostly just background noise to me and it served it's purpose. The variety of game play is still existent, you'll get to shoot, platform, drive vehicles, ride dinosaur type creatures in chases, rail shoot and even play minigames such as a variant of pacman! I had a lot of fun with Jak 3, it's an infinitely better game than it's predecessor in story, game play or graphics, pretty much in every area. This is a game that I will come back to replay. Another downside? It's too short.
Overall:
It is a good collection, disregarding Jak II, which is one of the most annoying and frustrating games I have ever played, the other two are great. Jak is a classic platforming game, while Jak 3 is an evolution of that concept. They both work very well in what they do, and were great fun. Jak II is only for the most dedicated, as I don't feel there's too much going for it, the story wasn't a killer and the game play is worse than Jak 3's, I guess the main reasons you'd play it is either because you're looking for a challenge, or want to understand Jak 3's story from the get go. Either way, this is a collection worth getting, just for the chance of checking out this classic trilogy of games.
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