Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier reviewed

So as you know, I'm a big fan of the Jak and Daxter series.  The only game that I haven't played in the franchise was Daxter, a PSP exclusive.  I spit on the PSP!  Okay, not really but I'm not a hand-held type of gamer.  Anyways, I was on Wikipedia where I saw that there was a new Jak and Daxter game coming out and it was coming out for the PS2!  It was also coming out for the PSP, yay but I should have worried right then and there.  It's a continuation of the Jak games, why wasn't it coming out for the PS3?  But I didn't care, I saw it a few days ago and got it for $30.  So were my fears founded?  Let's find out as we dig into Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. 


Some time after Jak X, that totally awesome racing game, the world has changed completely.  Haven City is completely destroyed.  Most of the people you know are dead, besides Jak, Daxter and Keira.  Alright, none of that actually happens but you don't see Haven City or your friends which is horrible since there Daxter's love interest Tess and crotchety old guy Samos.  However, not everything is fine since the world is running out of eco and the gang has to figure out a way to get some more eco.  Also, did you know that the world is flat and that Kiera is training to be a sage?  The same Kiera that always used science to fix things and not magic.  Also, a sage-in-training apparently requires you to wear clothes!  That stands against everything that Keira is and now I can't use the "You know, for kids!" joke that I stole from The Nostalgia Critic.

But that's not the least of the plot's problem.  A big problem is how poorly written it is.  It's not Devil May Cry 2 bad since this game does have transitions, just no details.  You also will know the what's and why's something is happening from scene-to-scene.  The problem is the game is a whole bunch of set-pieces that never gel.  The plot twists are ass-pulls as there's no build-up for those supposed twists.  Then the game pretty much abandons characters for a time and when they come back, the rules of change which would be shocking if you weren't trying to remember who they were.

But even then it's not the story's biggest problem!  There is Dark Daxter.  Now if you remember from Jak II and 3, Jak could turn into a Dark version of himself which was brutal and animalistic.  He doesn't do it here since the transformation will kill him or something, I'm not entirely sure on that.  Now three times during the game, Daxter does some WACKY HIJINKS he falls in a hole and gets some Dark Eco in him which turns him into a hulking, monster.  There's the tiny problem that it has NO BEARING ON THE PLOT!  It's even worse that when Jak discovers this, all he says are glib one-liners.  That's not good enough, I remember that Jak showed some concern when Daxter was in danger of being converted in Jak III and I remember when Daxter crapped himself when he first saw Dark Jak.  Then there's the bigger problem that those stages are very boring to play.  It's all shoot, claw, turn into a tornado, turn into a fire tornado and flip batteries.  Oh, you can also give Awesome Bombs/Razor Edges/pick up and throw all the enemies....wait, that's actually pretty cool.

What's almost as bad as the Dark Daxter stages is the horrible camera.  And by horrible, I mean we're dredging up horrible memories of such games like Castlevania 64 and Quest 64.  It never follows where you want to go and you can barely can control the vertical camera.  Then sometimes it whips from Point A to Point B many times at what seems like supersonic speeds.  Then anyone who has ever played any of the previous Jak games who got used to the moves will find out that some of them are gone.  I kept trying to find a way to roll so I could use my rolling jump to move around faster.  To my utter dismay, it was gone and I couldn't do it.  Taking that away is unforgivable, especially how slow Jak is otherwise.

However, this game does introduce flying.  So in the grand tradition of the Jak games, it rips off another game.  This time it's Star Fox but in All-Range mode 95% of the time.  It's actually pretty good.  There's fun side-quests to do and you have some awesome weapons to get so you blow some things up.  The dogfights scenes are very fun to play as you basically rip apart whatever structure that is trying to kill you piece by piece.  You get to bask in your glory as that structure lies in a broken heap of parts that you caused with your bare hands controlling the airship.

You can also customize your ship with scrap parts you find from killing aerial things.  You can give it health mods, boost mods, weapon mods and every other mod you could think of.  You won't use most of them but the options are there and it's pretty cool as you tinker with the ship so it could be the most awesome ship there is.  Furthermore, the customization does apply to your eco powers.  Yeah, you get a lot of new eco powers and they're pretty good.  And like I said you can upgrade your powers through Kiera since she does that to train to be a sage apparently.  But that's also fun when you do upgrade so you can play around with your powers like punching out a fireball.

So all in all, this game is a disappointment but it's not horribly bad.  The flying scenes are really fun and the customization system is decent fun.  Jak and Daxter still have good chemistry and Daxter is still funny even though his humor somewhat backpedals to the first game's style.  The graphics are cute but they don't push the system to the limits like its predecessors did.  If the camera and the story was better, this game would've been fine just like the first Jak game.  As it is though, the big fans will be amused by it even though it ends up being a hollow experience and the casual fans should skip it and stick with the main trilogy: II, 3 and X.

6/10

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