Jak Series Playthroughs Thoughts

Jak II
+ I like the parrot
+ The performance of the game is mostly solid at 60 fps (though it definitely frame drops) - also just like Jak 1, almost every area dynamically loads so it really nails that "continuous fluid world" feeling. There are load screens between areas hidden behind doors, but they don't hamper much from that "fluid world" immersion. This is easily the most positive thing I have to say about this game.
+ The metal head orbs gave me some incentive to actually care about a little bit of exploring and killing stuff, so I can unlock extra abilities with dark jak
+ The minimap is... actually really nice! It points me at the next destination of appropriate missions - while they could've put in less effort and just made it a simple compass, a simple compass doesn't point you how to, say, get around a wall. The minimap seems to dynamically change the markers depending on which sub-area you're in, so it doesn't merely point you at the general direction of your destination, but it points you at how to get there more quickly. Very nice, especially given how tedious going back and forth over and over
+/- One of the most common complaints about this game is the checkpoint system (or lack thereof). Perhaps I'm just good at gaming, but I didn't really find it much of a problem - at least for the real platforming segments? My hot spicy contrarian take - a lack of checkpoints isn't necessarily bad - especially if you treat it as the game testing your ability to master an entire stage, and this game does do that - I had to learn enemy placements, health management, resource management, what's consistent or not - kinda like a speedrun! And that was... sometimes fun in this game? Having excessive checkpoints throws all of that out of the window and requires basically none of that. That being said, if one didn't really care about properly learning/mastering a stage and only cared about getting through it once and done, then yeah, the lack of checkpoints would be pretty obnoxious and I wouldn't blame them. The worst part is, a lack of checkpoints in missions that just... kill you because of things out of your control. Like air traffic. Or escort mission NPCs refusing to get in/out of the car, and then dying and you can't do shit about it. That is freaking infuriating.
- Game doesn't really refill your ammo between attempts/deaths/restarts, in a game where that's crucial. Reload spots sometimes have ammo drops but it's nowhere close to enough. That means often times, you want to figure out a layout then spend 3-4 deaths farming ammo, then do a real attempt of the mission - failing that, ammo farm yet again. In the end, you either have to repeatedly death abuse, or go REALLY OUT OF YOUR WAY to specific spots with lots of ammo drops - if you can reach them. GOOD GAME DESIGN. I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THIS AGE LIKE NES METROID.
- There's no option to (un)invert the camera, which is obnoxious but I can sorta overlook since it's an older game
- However, what's a lot harder to overlook is how the camera just... constantly gets stuck in indoor/enclosed areas. It's like a physical invisible object you're rotating, and if you just happen to not have it at the proper angle in a platforming segment, you just flat out can't point it at where you're supposed to go because it'll "hit a wall". And going into first person doesn't fix it either. Terrible.
- ALSO, THE CAMERA ONLY ROTATES HORIZONTALLY. NO ZOOMING OUT. NO VERTICAL ROTATION. THIS MEANS YOU CAN'T SEE OVER LEDGES UNLESS YOU GO INTO FIRST PERSON. And given a lot of times you're in the middle of a timer or combat, you often have to just make a blind jump and pray you don't die - spoiler alert - 90% of the time you will die because this game is a meme.
- Similarly, fighting aerial enemies basically just relies on you... hoping autoaim targets them. basically randomly. BEcaUSE THIS GAME HAS NO AIMING :) :) :)
- The racing segments have... mostly no point besides bringing Kiera back into the world?
- I know Daxter's the comedy relief but he is... uncomfortably thirsty, hitting on every girl they see. And on top of that, it's just a really awkward cringe-comedy to me which contrasts so awkwardly with the darker tone of the game.
- Jak 2 fans have told me that it's worth sticking with the game for the story... I just don't see it. Nothing happens in the first half outside of just arbitrary rebellion-like errands. The latter half of the game's story just devolved into "oh the baron wants to control a power that is dangerous, we must stop him." The twist about Jak at the end is neat I guess. The only positive I see about the writing/plot is if you already really like the characters from Jak 1, and I have minimal attachment to that, so this was a huge miss for me.

I went into this expecting it to be completely different from Jak 1. I knew it would be different. I went in with an open mind - I'm not picky about game genre. Lovers of this game swore that this game is only hated cuz it's different. No - this is not a "Jak 2 is bad because it's different" review. This game is just mediocrity to the extreme, maybe even just flat out bad by a AAA tier standard. This game just didn't know what it wanted to be. It wanted to be Jak I but also be grand theft auto but also a racing game but also tony hawk but also still a pseudo-collectathon, and it just fails to be good at any of it. It's plagued with terrible controls and camera on anything not named Jak himself - which you'd think is the majority of gameplay, but like, IT REALLY ISN'T!!!! The mission system alone is fine, but the actual missions were garbage, lots of tedious waiting around, and over half of the gameplay is just going from Point A to Point B while tediously driving - but but but it's AN OPEN WORLD!!!!!!!!!! that was... devoid of much interesting besides collectibles that are just used for cheat codes / aesthetics. Yeah, fantastic way to incentivize exploration /s. I guess this game is really loved by diehard fans because it sorta hit that "open world" feeling if you played it at release, and few other games were like that at the time? But like... that's basically nostalgia lol. There's just nothing to elevate this game outside of that - but I will admit that the game does stand out on a technical level (besides the camera). That's... about it.



Jak 3
+ I like the parrot
+ The performance of the game is mostly solid at 60 fps (though it definitely frame drops) - also just like Jak 1/2, almost every area dynamically loads so it really nails that "continuous fluid world" feeling. There are load screens between areas hidden behind doors, but they don't hamper much from that "fluid world" immersion. This is easily the most positive thing I have to say about this game.
+ I have more investment in the desert half of the game that Jak found himself in - the area is more interesting to look around (despite being a desert), and I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC LIKE IN JAK 2 OH MY GOD THANK GOODNESS
+ On the other hand, when returning to Haven City, the immersion and setting with it constantly being under attack adds a lot more to it, due to the story setting. While it might sound annoying constantly seeing enemies fighting NPCs all over the city, it mostly doesn't get in the way of the actual gameplay of going from point A to B (unlike AIR TRAFFIC IN JAK 2!!!!!!), and it really gives off that vibe that you really are fighting for something for real. Jak 2's Haven City was... gloomy, barely changed, and was just incredibly dull.
+ Though it's no Ratchet, this game definitely tried to add more depth to the gun. You still have the same guns from Jak 2, but they have modifiers that you can access which are... basically different weapons. And... that's a pretty big plus! I like the expansion on this.
+ They somewhat addressed the issue of reloading ammo upon deaths/reloads from Jak 2 - Hub areas tend to have a lot of ammo boxes and will generally suffice. At least, I never found myself needing to death abuse to refill ammo on mission attempts.
+/- Similarly, they opted to expand on Jak's abilities for his different forms - including the new Light Jak. I respect what they were going for here, and some of them were also required for some of the platforming missions - but most of the interesting ones are required for basically one mission, then just... forgotten (with the exception of flight but like... it's flight, kinda hard make that interesting lol). Perhaps I missed them because I didn't spend much time exploring (see negative points below on why), but at least as far as I can tell, they didn't have optional areas that can be accessed with these new abilities, so that would've been really neat - I'm a sucker for re-exploring backtracking with new abilities and finding goodies. TL;DR Neat new abilities but kind of a hugely missed opportunity.
+/- Checkpoint system is more lenient than Jak 2 overall, but some of the most obnoxious missions still didn't have any, so like... it's not like it mattered that much. This game did seem to tone down on the escort missions at least, but they still sucked - dealing with praying that NPCs enter/exit your car randomly is and always has been and always will be garbage.
+/- A lot of my camera complaints from Jak 2 still apply to Jak 3. But it SEEMS like they were aware of the garbage camera? Like, platforming segments were a lot more horizontally-based, and not in enclosed spaces, meaning the inability to tilt the camera vertically and the camera getting blocked by walls wasn't really that relevant. This still sorta feels like a lame band-aid fix rather than a "make the camera actually work", but at the end of the day, the game being designed around the garbage camera means the garbageness of the camera isn't as much of an issue, so I do have to give it credit for that.
- This game has a lot more focus on grounded driving (rather than like, Jak 2's air driving and praying you don't hit air traffic / guards) and initially it seems ok - the game gave a nice tutorial on sharper turns, jumping, gunning, etc. But the controls are just... god awful in the desert. I would literally be driving straight without pressing any direction, and the car will arbitrarily swerve 90 degrees to the right. Or I will suddenly flip over for 4 seconds because I just happened to... go down a hill? Not only is this ridiculously irritating but there are literally TIMED MISSIONS that require driving, and it's a fight against the garbage controls. The worst part is, this game thankfully has a mechanic where if you're stuck flipped over, then the game will automatically flip you back over - which is obviously nice as a "softlock prevention" tool, but they also... CLEARLY KNEW THAT THIS WAS A PROBLEM IF THEY HAD TO PROGRAM THIS IN?!?!?!?!
- The plot is also kind of all over the place, even more than Jak 2's. Like, the "character development" they were going for is a mess. For example, Jak being banished to the desert and being treated like utter shit and forced to arena for his life - then when Ashelin comes to request help, Jak says "Yeah I'm not going back, because I have friends in my new life" ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Or when the village leader Damas tells Jak he can't lose Jak like he lost his son, yet he's also the one who demands Jak gamble his life in the arena and constantly sends him to missions that are death sentences. I guess I could see the player feeling more attachment if they spent a lot more time exploring the world (I didn't), but at the same time, there's basically no NPC interaction outside of mission cutscenes that I'm having a hard time seeing where the game expects you to empathize with Jak's relationships with the new characters.
- The pacman minigame can Fing suck a butt. Almost made me quit this garbage game.

This game was more tolerable to play than Jak 2, mostly because it was (usually) more forgiving on the missions that are bullshit/unfun. Again, I don't mind the lack of checkpoints on