Jak II (2003)

I would have rated this game higher if not for utterly outrageous difficulty spikes that feel cheap and unfair. Yet, for some odd reason, I kept coming back despite almost rage quitting this game multiple times. The game did enough right for me to want to see it to the end or perhaps I succumbed to Stockholm syndrome.

What would have helped the difficulty feel fair would be to have both consistent and sensible checkpoints. When a mission had a sensible checkpoint it often felt jarring because of how incompetent the rest of the games checkpoints felt.

Jak II is a radical departure, in terms of tone and level design, from Jak and Daxter. Gone is the silent protagonist and a light cartoonish tone. Daxter is still present to throw out annoying and forced comic relief, but this time a few of his jokes actually landed for me. He's still problematic with how lusty he is towards all the female characters, and sadly the female character's cleavage has more depth than their personalities like last time. Ashlein has some character growth, but it's pretty trite in it's beat and she is still a highly sexualized character.

The writing feels about on par with the original. The plot has some twists thrown in which are alright and I do appreciate how the game mocks the absurdity of some of these reveals. Still, it's mostly a serious game with forced silly moments. The highlights would be during an early mission when you need to retrieve a flag. The original games collectible music starts to play, to only be unceremoniously halted with the platform crumbling. There's another moment like this towards the end of the game that's better and I won't spoil it.

My biggest issue with the writing is how I never had any idea what the hell was going on. Each mission briefing is mostly gibberish with the mission briefer pontificating or soliloquizing over some bullshit. Fortunately it didn't really matter for most of the missions. I never really found any of the characters likeable or clever. It felt like a cheap imitation of GTA 3 (to be fair I haven't played that game since it's original release so it's possible I would find the writing equally grating now).

The missions all boil down to either "kill things," "destroy things," "collect things," "escort things" or "race things." Rinse and repeat for the whole game. To be fair, GTA 3 can also be broken down to this structure. To further compound this repetition, the game will have you go back to the same zone multiple times. Each time you return, something usually is altered to give the level a fresh spin, still I cannot help but feel the original game did this better. Instead of having to leave and re-enter each zone between collectibles in the original you could tackle all objectives before leaving. This was a more elegant approach and forced the devs to create interlooping levels to keep the momentum of the game moving forward. With the new mission structure, the devs no longer needed to worry about elegant level design. Sometimes an objective will loop you to the beginning of an area but that occurred pretty rarely.

There are some specific missions that need to be mentioned...

Racing missions were incredible frustrating due to flimsy ship (my bike was destroyed countless times by nicking walls or other racers) and needing to use a short cuts to win. Driving normally feels like driving on ice, with turning being delayed and slow (the racing bike felt significantly more responsive and tracks were better designed for the bad driving mechanics to alleviate this). I found it impossible to drive through the city without hitting a military guard...The flimsy bike creates a narrow margin for error and what makes that unfair is how you aren't trained to drive like this making the challenge come out of no where. If it weren't mandatory I wouldn't mind it... this issue could have been fixed if the streets weren't so narrow. GTA gives plenty of space for you to maneuver. Everything in Jak 2 feels claustrophobic which is incongruent with the janky and unresponsive controls.

Aiming is clumsy and unreliable. An issue with auto aim systems is not having control over your target. For most of Jak it isn't problematic but there are a few missions, which are mandatory, that throw hordes of enemies at you. Even if you play perfectly, you can still fail since there aren't I-frames for Jak unless he is hit. Thus when you have a veritable horde of enemies on screen, it's all a die roll if you get hit enough to die. Destroy Ship at Drill Platform is one of the worst designed pieces of shit I had to endure. Surviving phase 1 of a multi-stage level requires a combination of good RNG and high skill play. The game throws a horde of 40 enemies at you and you must aim your gun to blast them. Maybe they will hit you, maybe not. Fuck it. Roll a die. What compounds the poor design of this level is being forced to aim with inverted controls... in addition this level is mandatory...

I think having difficulty reliant on RNG would be ok if a challenge was optional (i think it would still be bad design but at least I could skip it). The next terrible mission is Escape the Docks... you are on a narrow board walk and hordes of guards (between 75-100) are thrown at you. You have no way to dodge bullets so it again boils down to pure RNG no matter how well you play... and it's mandatory... cool. O and if you accidentally fall off the narrow boardwalk, instant death... cool.

What's funny about the two outrageously bad missions above is that in speedrunners use a glitch to completely skip these awful sequences. I don't blame them...

There were plenty of other missions that made me rage, but they pale in comparison to the ones mentioned above. I did have issues with "Protect hideout from bombots." I almost quit again until I looked up a strategy. I would always get shot down and forced to fight these bullet sponges on foot. That wouldn't work because a horde of guards would spawn around me and cattle prod me to death every time. What worked, which was completely unintuitive and you're not trained to do, is to get under the bot and blast it. This causes the guard AI to bug out and not be complete assholes and the bot can't touch you. Once I read this strat I did the mission on my first try. I won't mentioned the number of times I failed this mission until I learned how to exploit the bad AI.

Overall, this is a tough game to recommend. It has some great moments, but they are heavily diluted in a sea of bullshit and jank. I'm on the fence about completing the trilogy and leaning towards not bothering. They didn't fix any of the issues with the first game and added guns with narrow corridors which are incongruent with the camera and bad controls. Numerous times my camera would get locked on geometry resulting in me getting killed by enemies. Having a radar (which you have in the city) would have dramatically helped with this issue on missions. Also I didn't learned about a key ability, which would have significantly lowered the difficulty of the game, until the last boss fight... firing your gun while spinning in the air. Do this every time more than 1 enemy is around. You'll thank me. You send out massive AOE damage which seems to compensate for your inability to aim with the piss poor controls.

The last thing I will state is praise (since I did very little of that) for the changes to the city as the game progresses.

I have a strange relationship with this game. I just finished it after about a year and a half of putting off. It wasn't that I didn't want to get to it, it's just upon starting the game and playing the first few missions at the start of 2020, when I'd just finished the first game, the vast difference in game play style jarred me a bit too much. I then had been meaning to get to it for a while, and now I finally have, I really don't know how I feel. Though I can determine it's not too fondly.

Firstly I do want to say that I notice I, in part, wasn't too patient with this game. I went in with a different mindset than ideal, and because the time it had taken to finally get back to this game, I had too much relied on playing through to finish rather than sitting with it and enjoying all the intricacies.

However, I still stand with the feeling that the missions overall were pretty consistently tough, meaning a lot of the time I didn't get enough breathing space to really feel rewarded for overcoming any hard moments, as I'd just get chucked into another one. I wholeheartedly acknowledge that I'm very much an average gamer with nothing more than an average skill level, despite my consistent playing of games. And because of this, I bring up the toughness not to diminish the game, but rather just highlight my low enjoyment of a huge chunk of it.

I just couldn't rate this game any higher than 2 stars, because while I should've been more patient with it, and likely would have enjoyed it more that way, this particular playthrough had me annoyed and having less fun than I would want. So while I see the positives of it, this game in my head is one I was tearing hair out for, and one which I won't find myself replaying in a long while.

Blast the finicky driving controls and blast the escort/protect missions!!

However, in hindsight I do notice the positives that were there during my playthrough, so I'll finish on a lighter note by pointing out some of them: platforming moments were an enjoyable challenge - the environments were very impressive and immersive, with the whole city feeling full of life - just like in the first game, Naughty Dog knocked it out of the park with characterisation and animation in this game - the ominous palace being ever-present all throughout the map - just Daxter in general - the Tomb of Mar - mech levels (while scarce) - returning to older locations in newer ways - surprisingly, the class 1,2 and 3 races - the soundtrack!

I think if I were to sum up how I feel about this game, I had a bad experience with what I can notice is a pretty solid premise.

I considered this my favorite game for the past 15 years, having not played it since completing it in 2006. I was worried to revisit and unfortunately found many of the common criticisms to be accurate. Yes, the game is hard and made even harder by a lack of checkpoints. Yes, it typifies the kind of bloat common to many PS2 games after the success of GTA3, using an open-world format with little to do other than run from one main storyline mission to the next.

BUT this game still rules. It has such a fun combination of fantasy, action, whimsy, and comedy that keeps you invested even when a certain mission makes you question giving up. As obnoxious as traversing the world can be, it is also beautifully designed, and I found myself casually driving through areas to take in the unique world Naughty Dog created. There's a reason I remember being bummed when Jak 3 started with the main characters being kicked out of Haven City.

There really is no other gaming trilogy quite like Jak & Daxter, and I'd say every gamer owes it to themself to play through it at least once. Jak II is a slightly rough middle chapter, but provides more than enough memorable moments to make it worth your while.

When I finally got around to playing Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy a few months ago, I really loved it. I even picked up the HD trilogy collection for PlayStation 3 so I could have a physical copy and an excuse to 100% the game again. After opening the precursor gate yet again, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to give Jak II a whirl (in spite of my knee-jerk dislike of its grimdark tonal shift).

I was happy to find that there's plenty for a fan of the original game to appreciate in its sequel. This is still a platformer at heart, and one that feels like an extension of the original game in many ways. There are many fun and memorable moments to be had throughout. And it all feels much more epic as the story unfolds and Haven City opens up to you.

But those high highs are tempered by some disappointingly low lows:

• The game's legendarily harsh difficulty (something its own developers admit) is less a test of skill than a byproduct of inconsistent design. Checkpoints are generous, except when they aren't. Ammo drops are infrequent, except for when they're abundant. Sometimes your abilities just aren't effective and it's unclear why.
• The amount of variety is certainly respectable, but many of these mechanics feel underdeveloped. Jak and Daxter felt like a collectathon platformer through and through: Jak II feels like a platformer, a run and gun game, a racing game, a skateboarding game, a GTA-like, an on-rails shooter and even whack-a-mole depending on the mission. This lack of focus was very "of its time," but hasn't aged well.
• The game's open world could have been an effective method of counter-balancing the difficulty and variety, offering different paths for reaching objectives depending on your goals as a player. But most missions are mandatory, their order is mostly linear, and optional upgrades are rare, so it mostly becomes a much larger map to traverse to get from point A to point B.
• The "collectathon" aspect of the original just isn't as satisfying here. Precursor Orbs are rare and, in another hit to the game's open world, missable in at least one area. Skull gems are more plentiful, but are rewarded for combat rather than exploration.
• If you thought Keira and Maia had some regrettably "early 2000s" character designs, the new female characters will make your eyes roll even harder.

I enjoyed Jak II, and it certainly felt rewarding to reach its conclusion. But I can't see myself returning to it the same way I did The Precursor Legacy.