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Jak and Daxter 2 - Second Try, Even Worse

Started by Dracos, November 24, 2005, 11:10:55 AM

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Dracos

So a while after Jak and Daxter, I steeled my courage, looked at the other two games and remembered how folks had said they totally redid them and all...and checked out the next in the series.  This, my friends, was a mistake and one I fixed by donating the series to the library.

I did not get even as far as I did in the first game.  There are a lot of reasons for that.  The most evident was writing quality.  It was atrocious.  I couldn't stand to ever see these plot scenes happen.  They were awkward, poorly choreographed, and lacked any sense of cohesion to them.  It felt overall stupid throughout and I generally dreaded the completion of any 'mission' in the game as it inevitably involved another one of these cutscenes.

Did I mention Jak talked in this one?  I don't think I have yet.  Jak talks.  Everyone cries.  Anyhow, apparently they realized they couldn't get by with happy go lucky adventuring mute Jak who just happily goes everywhere.  Instead he is mysteriously kidnapped at the beginning of the game for two years, subjected to monstrous torments and given dark superpowers, and a voice.  Dear god, why did they give him a voice?  Jak is transformed into your stereotypical anti-hero out for revenge dark and brooding overly melodramatic guy, complete with a perpetual sneer at everything and overreacting rage at the guy who tortured him.

Aside from the obvious sort of time flux this involved, it means that instead of playing one unlikable character, the game presented you with the option of playing two unlikable characters who work together to be complete jackasses.  You've got Daxter being still his whiny ass, though a little toned down from the previous game, and Jak being a savage brute who you wonder why he is even working with the resistance since he takes about every opportunity to indicate he just really wants to charge into the main kingdom base and tear everyone to shreds.

The adventure this time is a little less collection oriented, thankfully, though Jak alone adds enough negatives to it to make it hard to enjoy.  Instead they gave this huge city that you had to navigate for each adventure.  I dunno, I found this tedious and unnecessary.  Yes, I know that the hero has to walk from one end of the city to the other, but you know that's not fun.  I just want to beat things up, hop around ledges, and have fun with it.  Moreso, there wasn't much point to exploring this city.  There were relatively few things scattered far apart to find and they weren't easy to find and weren't well marked after you did find them.  The result was that there was almost no benefit to actual exploring over just randomly stumbling across things.  You were no more likely to find stuff being intelligent and exploring and even if you did, there were good odds that you wouldn't be able to use it and would have no marker for getting back for when you could use it.  I found this particularly irritating from an exploration perspective.

I put this game down after a few hours.  I just couldn't keep playing it.  I have no idea how far I was into it.  I have no idea how much was further in, but I got the hint that I'd be wielding random guns later, just because.  Maybe that would've interrupted the mehness, but I don't think so.
I do feel obligated to note one last bit in comparison to Ratchet and Clank, and that is that the control scheme simply didn't feel as natural.  It was annoying to fight with Jak because it was often hard to judge distance with his attacks and positioning of him versus the enemy.  It weakened the fun value of the actual gameplay segments since you could often find yourself sliding into the slime with your standard punch attack that moved you forward about five-ten steps.
Well, Goodbye.