Jak II reviewed

So last week I reviewed the first Jak and Daxter game. Sure I liked it but it was very flawed and derivative. In short, something needed to change if the franchise wasn't going to be a series of diminishing returns. Well something did change...everything you ever loved in the first game. In it's wake came, not only my favorite game of the series, but one of my favorite games ever so let's begin.

If you actually got 100% in the first game, you were about to open the Rift Gate. This picks up on that as you're about to drive into the gate using some conveniently built roller-coaster car and somehow using energy to activate the gate. After that, it's all a case of It Got Worse. Monsters come out and start screwing up your stuff, you go in and flung into a cyberpunk world where Jak is jailed and pumped full of dark eco. Two years later, Daxter finally rescues Jak...but Jak has been changed into an angry young man who occasionally hulks out into some God-forsaken beast.....and he can talk! So now you're free, you made yourself a revenge list...okay just one person and now you work for some people to get closer to fulfilling your revenge.

Now for the first game, it was pretty much a rip-off of Super Mario 64 but Jak II is ripping off some high-class games...ok, pretty much a simplified Grand Theft Auto. There's a map, an open-ended world and you can easily raise the ire of the cops or Krimzon Guards, just like Grand Theft Auto but I never did say originality was any of the Jak games strong suit. That's not to say that this is the only improvement for the sequel, oh hell no. The script is much better, characters are actually introduced, the plot twists are decent even if a few are sickeningly obvious, and we kinda care about the people now. Daxter is also improved for he's actually funny instead of being a boring deadpan snarker. This game also shook things up by letting Jak talk. Sure Jak talks like an average action hero who only plays by his rules but it allowed a whole new world of dialogue. It allowed Jak and Daxter to bounce off each other and allowed the love story between Jak and Keira to open up much more.

There's also the fact that you can pretty much just make this your own extended action movie. You can jump 50 feet in the air to hijack somebody's vehicle, then piss off the guards you chase you and shoot you as you race to escape them! Then as you vehicle gets enough damage you can jump out, hijack another vehicle as you watch your old vehicle explode....without ever touching the ground! And there's the small fact you actually have a gun with four mods: a shotgun, a rifle, a machine gun and the standard BFG. You can like punch or kick something than shoot it...its very awesome. It may the best pure action game ever with all the things you can do...and it never gets old.

But I hear you crying "Isn't this game supposed to be unforgivably hard?" Normally I would just tell you to suck less and then be on my merry way. But not this time, you are right for this game is difficult. Now just because a game's hard doesn't make it hard, but a game being hard and unfair does make it bad. Luckily, I never felt that Jak II was ever unfair cause each thing can be powered through with patience and shooting things until they die. But don't get me wrong, this game doesn't mess around. If you do one thing wrong you will be beaten up like a bully beats up a small child.

So in the end, the direction changed in a extremely radical way but it was all for the better. There is no light anywhere to be found, the world you knew is destroyed, the Big Bads from the first game are thankfully never seen again in this or any other Jak game and the woman still don't believe in long shirts...cause you know, for kids(notices the T rating)...oh yeah. It's Naughty Dog decided that Jak and Daxter was just going to serve as a irrelevant prologue to the series and just make Jak II the proper beginning, so you're probably better off just starting with this game instead of Jak and Daxter.

10/10