User blog:TyrantRex/TyrantRex's thoughts on Jak II

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eWDclkWtzs

Background
So as I mentioned EXTENDEDLY, I absolutely loved Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to the point that it's arguably my new favorite game of all time and I already had planned to check out the Jak and Daxter franchise since I got my PS2. After all it's Naughty Dog's next franchise immediately after Crash Bandicoot. But the funny thing is, I ended up getting and beating Jak II BEFORE getting the first game in the series.

Right of the bat I must say, I had some very mixed feelings towards this game before even buying it, I was told a lot about this game that was raising many red flags for myself; the darker edgier tone, use of guns, GTA style sandbox (disclaimer: I don't hate GTA, I just don't particularly like sandbox games as a whole), excessive frustrating difficutly, among others. Despite that, I stayed cautiously optimistic and picked up the game and... I did NOT expect what I actually played. But, I felt like I couldn't actually talk about it until after playing Jak 1. Now that I did... let's do this.

The Game
If you actually bothered to listen to the soundtracks I recommended for both this and Jak 1 you can already tell that there's a very drastical difference between both game's tones. You know how everyone makes fun of Shadow the Hedgehog for taking a cartoony child-friendly series and trying to make it cool and edgy with guns and swearing? Well, Jak II more or less did the same, but I think it was surprisingly well excecuted because it doesn't feel like it's trying too hard to be edgy just for the sake of being edgy. Orange talking bipedal ottsel aside everything really just fits well in the more mature tone of Jak 2. I guess it helps that the characters are humans (just with giant ears) added with Jak's redesign and him talking.

Now there are things I like about the mature tone more than the light-hearted tone. For one Jak is a significantly more interesting character here. His new look is cooler, he actually does talk, he has a fleshed out personality, and a large character arc for himself. He's an angry and aggresive revenge maniac but still keeps his noble attributes from the previous game, I actually like this. The story is also way more compelling and interesting, there are way more characters and none of them are one-note objective givers, the villains are villains, and I could go on.

The things I don't like about the new tone however, is mainly the color palette... there are a lot of grays, browns, other metalic colors, etc. Now this fits with the dystopian setting, but it's very... dull, and bleak. After looking at how colorful and pleasing to the eye Jak 1 is, this bleak color palette is more dissapointing. Another thing, the seemless loading-less transition from area to area is a lot less effective in this game; there are still no loading screens but now you have to wait a few seconds for a door to open and there are more warping gates. So overall... I don't mind the darker tone and in fact I welcome it, but I prefer Jak 1's.

As for the gameplay, the GTA sandboxness I was told was really overexaggerated. There is an open map where you drive around from mission to mission in a story driven game sure, BUT the bulk of the actual gameplay takes place in self-contained levels. And these levels, are actually REALLY good! Naughty Dog didn't forget that Jak and Daxter is supposed to be a platformer game, therefore most missions have plenty of platforming obstacles and the such. They managed to put plenty of platforming in Jak 1's Banjo-style levels so looking back it's no surprise to me that they could still do it in Jak 2. Jak keeps his exact same moveset and in fact his overall controls feels better here. He also gets two major additions to his moveset, the first is a skateboard that totally wasn't inspired by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Not much to say there, the skateboard isn't used all that often but it's fun to use and non-intrusive. The other main addition on the other hand...

GUNS! Yes, like the boxart cleary shows Jak uses guns now (technically it's just one gun with different mods but whatever) That was a big red flag because, to put it bluntly, I hate shooter games, not because of the common reasons you'd think, but because my eyesight is very bad due to a surgery mistake making shooter games near unplayable for me. But to my surprise (again), I really liked the gunplay in Jak 2. The guns feel less like weapons and more like extensions of Jak's moveset in combat. The guns are used in third-person and there's no dedicated aiming so the game uses an auto-aim lock which, yeah it's a bit unreliable at times but it's perfect for me. All you need to do to hit enemies it point in thier direction at close range and fire, because of that I have absolutely no trouble using weapons in this game. There are four weapons: A shotgun, a rifle, a machine gun, and a grenade launcher. All are easy to use, all have different uses for different situations, and all are fun and properly balanced. And even with the auto aiming the gunplay is very challenging so you still need skill. Speaking of challenge...

Apparently a lot of people complained that Jak 1 is too easy (and I can agree it's very easy) so Naughty Dog went "You want a hard game? Fine, HERE'S a hard game!" and guess what, they weren't bluffing! If there's one thing that everyone remembers Jak 2 for, its the game's brutal difficutly. This game is hard, VERY hard. But unfortunately, it's hard for the wrong reasons. There are two key factors why Jak 2 is so hard: Health and Checkpoints. The health bar says you have 8 hit points but almost every enemy in the game deals 2 damage so realistically you only have 4 hit points. This wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the other factor. The are almost no checkpoints in this game, if you die 20 seconds before finishing a mission, guess what you're doing that mission from scratch! Very rarely there will be checkpoints in the middle of a mission but most of the time it's because of a jump that's too easy to miss, any other time tough luck you're starting again.

Add the near total lack of checkpoints with the fact that you have so little health (and health pickups are rare), and you basically HAVE to do missions perfectly, there's almost zero marging for error. I'm okay with missions being challenging and some of them are very challenging, but this is Artificial Difficulty. It's not hard because it's hard, it's hard because it's too punishing. Seriously all they had to do was give 8 real hit points and/or more forgiving checkpoints this game would be a lot less frustrating while still being hard in a fair way.

Another thing that this game does horribly wrong is the driving controls. THEY'RE AWFUL! And I don't get why, the Zoomer in Jak 1 controls just fine, why are the vehicles in this game so slippery and painful to control? To make matters worse, Haven City is full of blocky squares and sharp turns that these slippery cars predictably can't take without bumping into three walls. The worst mission in this game are hands down the ones where you have to drive around town, not only to you have the overly punishing demand for perfection, now you also have to deal with awful driving controls in roads that were NOT built for those cars! I'll admit, I ragequitted more than once during this driving missions, they're THAT bad!!

*Takes a deep breath* ....but to be honest, the unfair difficulty spike and horrible driving controls without a doubt affect my overall enjoyment of the game, but those aren't enough to fully bring down the experience as a whole. Jak 2, despite two huge flaws, is still a game I greatly enjoyed. I was expecting to not like this game, and while some of my concerns did happen... I totally see myself revisiting this game. The core gameplay is great, the story is entertaining, the darker mature tone is a lot less jarring than I thought.. it's a good game! It is very frustrating and like I said I don't play games to get angry, but I fully believe it was a game worth playing.

I guess I had to describe Jak 2 in once phrase, it'd be "unexpected pleasant surprise".

As for Jak 3... still haven't found a copy :(