Jak and Daxter reviewed

Once again, I'm embarking on yet another mini journey with the Jak series, or more specifically,the first two. I did have the third and Jak X but they have somehow disappeared...my brother probably took them because I'm pretty sure that I didn't sell them. Anyways, in 2001 Naughty Dog, still riding high on the success of Crash Bandicoot decided to give Crash up and work on something new. This something turned out to be the Jak and Daxter series that is one of the most surprising franchises on the PS2 but you wouldn't know it from the first game. Oh, and Crash Bandicoot moved to other developers where it began its long and painful decline.

So the story begins with our two heroes, Jak and Daxter, who's still a human...just a ratty looking one, going to the mysterious Misty Island for some reason, well being mischievous and all but that's no real reason. But through some WACKY EVENTS Daxter falls into some Dark Eco and changes into an Ottsel...that furry thingy. So now you have to quest to see Gol, the Sage of Dark Eco, to try to change Daxter back while collecting power cells to access other places on your flying machine invented by the sexy Keira...you know, for kids and possibly pedophiles! But wouldn't you know it, Gol's turned evil and has kidnapped the other sages so he can pretty much destroy the world with lots of Dark Eco in some silos. So now you have to go and kick his ass...oh, and his sister is also evil and you got to kill her too.

Now I know that really none of the Jak games are exactly original(which I don't care about as long as the product's good...it may be a topic of a future blog) but when you're playing it you get this familiar feeling. You have to find power cells to advance further into the world, there's a bunch of eggs you can get to buy power cells off people, there's some scout flies in all the levels that you have to collect them all to get a power cell and there's some Eco that makes you more powerful. Does any of that sound familiar? My God, it's like Super Mario 64! And that's the main problem with the gameplay, it's so familiar and derivative that while it's competent it's not as fun as it should be. I wouldn't say it's boring cause I never wanted to stop playing but it is dry in the fact that it doesn't really try anything new.

But the game's saving grace is the voice work. The one voice you're going to hear a lot is Daxter, even more so if you playing with the hints on. His voice is annoying and grating but it does fit the character immensely. But the writing does fail Daxter more often than not. The game tries to groom him as a successor to Kazooie from the Banjo-Kazooie games as a Deadpan Snarker. The problem is that Daxter isn't as funny nor as cute as Kazooie. But on the flip side is Samos, your adopted father figure, is hilarious. Sure he's your angry doddering grandfather but the writing is much better for his character like this:

Samos: Looks like the Blue Sage threw a party.
Keira: Oh my, Rock Villiage's on fire!
Samos: One heck of a party.

But the real surprise is that this game has Dee Snider as Gol. Yes, that Dee Snider...the one from Twisted Sister! I wouldn't say it was a coup cause he doesn't have that many lines or appearances but the fact he's there is awesome. I kinda do want him back especially since the game did hint at Gol's survival but seeing how much better the other games are, it's probably for the best.

The graphics themselves are bright and cheery even though it looks like a N64 or PS1 refugee...granted it was released in 2001 so it does have an excuse. But what it also has is that the world is almost totally seamless with minimal loading times in every situation. Granted it isn't as seamless as God of War but in God of War's case you can tell when the game was loading data for the next area with it's featureless paths. In Jak and Daxter's case, there are no featureless paths so it is actually loading while the game is throwing enemies at you which is a bit better than God of War's method.

So all this began the second of Naughty Dog's great franchise. Sure it was pretty much a knock-off of better fetch-quest games, granted a competent knock-off but you knew that somehow this franchise would at least satisfy a base desire. Little did we know what the future games would do....

7/10