I'm about as big a Jak & Daxter Trilogy fan as there is, so I was excited to finally play Jak X once it was ported to PS4 (my PS2 died on me right before the game released back in the day). I remembered it getting middling (~7.5) reviews upon its release but figured it would be a competent enough racer to provide some fun with characters I loved.

Unfortunately, Jak X is a collection of great ideas executed with cheap shortcuts in order to make them work. Vehicular carnage should be, and is frequently here, quite a bit of fun, but Naughty Dog understood that such mayhem requires all the drivers to remain within close proximity of eachother during a race. This requires some noticeable and enraging cheating on the part of the game: other drivers will suddenly surge up to you out of nowhere; your turbo is often so ineffective at actually getting you ahead that I had other drivers passing me while I was using it. Add in the near-game-breaking issue of your car becoming uncontrollable if you upgrade it past the 80% mark and it's easy to become infuriated and apathetic about a game (at least in Adventure (story) mode, with its mixed bag of race types) that should be a fun escape.

Given the anemic story here, that Adventure mode, which forces the player to win about 80 races of various types in order to complete the plot, is only worth it for the J&D completists. In theory, I could see myself hopping back on to the game for a single match just to get some vehicular carnage, as the cars generally control well and produce a commendable level of mayhem and destruction in the right race type. With all the racers out there, though, Jak X fails to distinguish itself while offering the player more frustration than thrills.