Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier takes place after the original trilogy, providing you (theoretically) with more of the same great platforming gameplay combined with shooting. Released for the PSP and later ported onto the PS2, The Lost Frontier sees Jak, Daxter and Keira head to the brink of the world to find new Eco as it is running out in the world. As they arrive on Brink Island, they encounter sky pirates, and eventually, they stumble themselves into a Dark Eco plot. Unfortunately, the story of The Lost Frontier ends up becoming a write-off. It's boring and you'll soon have a lack of caring about it before you're even a quarter of the way in. There's just nothing about the characters or their motives that interests you. The plot is formulaic filled with stereotypical characters. The terrible plot can be forgiven if the gameplay is good, but frankly, it doesn't shine in this area either. It plays similarly to Jak 3 in which Jak can spin kick, jump, punch and use guns. Shooting the gun isn't like a third-person or first-person shooter, you just face towards the enemy and fire, hoping that the auto aim actually picks the right enemy you wanted to shoot.
You can mod your gun which provides it with different effects, such as a shotgun, rifle, a weaker but high rate of fire bullet and a grenade launcher. The Lost Frontier mixes platforming and combat evenly. The game takes place at the edge of the world, mainly on an island and ancient ruins, so the variety isn't that great. The graphics are theoretically good but something seems off in that the environments just feel bland and uninteresting. The platforming starts off being okay but goes into a downward spiral. This is because two-thirds into the game, there are some horrible platforming amongst floating platforms. It's easy to die as you cannot determine how far Jak is jumping due to the terrible camera angle. The camera is controlled by the shoulder buttons which is the best you can do with the PSP hardware (lack of right analogue stick). However, if you have a Vita, you can map the right stick to move the camera which is heaps better, but not enough to save the game.
Even with the mapping of the camera to a Vita's right stick, The Lost Frontier has awkward camera angles that is looking at the behind of Jak, but angled too high such that you cannot see much ahead of Jak. It's frustrating when you can't see much of what is in front of you and plan ahead. Aerial dogfights are introduced into this game, using Jak's plane, the Hellcat to fend off enemies in the air. Eventually, other planes will become unlockable and you can purchase upgrades. It's quite good in the beginning but like everything else, it starts to become repetitive when you're thrown into many dogfights with various bosses and battles, yet each one feeling like it's the same, long dragged out battle. The last major gameplay element is Dark Daxter, in which Daxter turns into a big mutated monster, capable of throwing Dark Eco projectiles and spin into a tornado. Not only are these sections out of place within the story, it's also out of place within the gameplay. It's like someone wanted to pad out the game after it was finished and threw these random sections in.
There are other terrible Daxter monsters such as when he goes into a ball and roll through a section where the camera swings all over the place and you end up just fluking the section. If you like boss battles, then The Lost Frontier will not disappoint in terms of the quantity of them. Even when there is no need for a boss, there will be one. These are cheap bosses with heaps of health but an extremely limited moveset, making these boss fights drag on and on. Plus, when they (and normal enemies for that matter), hurt you by taking off at least two of your health points in one go, sometimes you think what is the point of playing the game. What makes it worse is that the camera locks onto these bosses, meaning it is hard to pick up health boxes when you need to since you have to guess where the health crates are offscreen and aim for it blindly while still dodging the boss's attacks. A neat feature is that Jak can upgrade his moves. In additional to the normal combat moves, he gains various Eco abilities such as jumping higher using Eco boosts, creating a shield around him and slowing down time. By collecting Dark Eco from defeated enemies, you can unlock additional moves or boot the power of his existing ones.
To extend the longevity of the game, there are various additional sidequests such as more plane fights and finding Precursor Orbs, which can be traded to unlock cheats. Another downside is that you cannot replay missions or even revisit some of the areas once you've completed them, which means you have to collect all the Precursor Orbs the first around to guarantee you won't miss any. Once you finish the game, which is about 5 to 7 hours, you can replay the game again in Hero Mode where you retain all your weapons and armor but enemies are more powerful and there are exclusive upgrades. Overall, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier isn't a horrible game as such, it is frankly uninspired and poor compared to the previous games. The story is downright bland, it's hard to care about the characters and the poor design decisions of some of the gameplay cannot be forgiven. The Lost Frontier is hard to recommend since it's exceptionally average, so maybe wait until it is extremely cheap on sale if you wanted to give it a try.
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