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

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