Jak II: Renegade

PS2 review by Jim Smith - Thursday 20th November 2003

In this time of constant technological evolution, it's interesting to see how the increase in processing power of all the next generation consoles that we own has directly effected the type of games we play on them. Over the last ten years a great deal has changed; former market leaders have lucked out to opportunist multi-nationals with shrewd marketing divisions and from nowhere video games have become big money, huge in fact. The most telling truth is this; the global sales of video games out do those of Hollywood movies. So, how has this state of affairs come to be? Is it a result of the constant bombardment of game advertising prompting kids into using aggressive pester power on their parents? Or on the other hand is it not the fault of the kids anymore? I mean, video games are for kids, right?



Well, the answer to that is an obvious no. In short, times have changed. Those kids out there that cut their teeth in the early nineties playing SNES and Megadrive in their bedroom at their mum's house have grown up. They've got jobs, girlfriends (some of them at least), mortgages, all that jazz, but at the heart of it all they're still gamers and present a huge target audience for advertisers. The technology is changing, the market place is changing and consequently the type of games being made changes too. Back in the 8 and 16 bit days the platform game dominated. Left, right, jump, two dimensions and effectively it was all about Mario or Sonic; two benchmark titles produced by the two in-house teams of the two console market leaders. That's that wrapped up then, they must have been laughing all the way to the bank.

That's until Sony came along that is. Amazingly, the original Playstation was the first console to launch without any kind of platformer in sight. Think about it, what was the best platformer on the PSone? With the Megadrive it was Sonic, with the SNES it was Super Mario Bros. Actually, Nintendo and Sega were so happy with their mascots that they have released games starring these two icons on every console they've ever had and are still knocking out new versions every year. But, again, what of the PSone? And, while we're on the subject, what of the PSone mascot?

It's time to learn a few lessons. Firstly, relying on platformers to sell a console is no longer viable. Both the Xbox and the PS2 still have no killer platform title and yet they lead the next generation race over the Gamecube, which is graced with the sublime Mario Sunshine. Secondly, who is the most globally recognized gaming icon? Sonic? Mario? No, it's quite clearly a certain female adventurer with a nice arse and a pair of beautiful big, err, pistols. In retrospect, it's easy to see why the PSone sold so well. It didn't have a plumber with a moustache as it's mascot, neither was it saddled with a blue haired hedgehog. In fact, there was never an official mascot at all, but when you talk to any non-gamer about Playstation, they all immediately associate the machine with Lara Croft. Gamers have grown up, it seems, but the real irony is that Tomb Raider was, at heart, nothing more than a 3D platformer with some guns thrown in.



So, why is this relevant to Jak 2? Well, the closest thing the PSone had to Mario or Sonic was Crash Bandicoot; a kind of cross between the Tazmanian Devil and Basil Brush. Naughty Dog released Crash, a couple of sequels and an inevitable kart racer to a largely indifferent public. Sure they sold, but they were totally outsold by all the Lara Croft titles. Thing is, as 3D platformers went the Crash games weren't bad, were quite good even, but did PSone owners want to play those games anymore at all? At the time, if you really wanted to play a **** hot platformer, surely you bought an N64 and played Mario 64, still arguably the best platform game ever released, right? Yes, but the question still remains, do you want to run around and jump on cute monster's heads or do you want to blow said monsters away with big guns?

When the PS2 came out, Naughty Dog tried to address the balance. Crash, too kiddy for most PS2 gamers, was dropped and Jak and Daxter were hired. Their self-titled video game, released a good two years ago now, was a very good stab at a 3D platformer. It had a good camera system, good controls, an almost open playing environment and possibly the sweetest graphics the machine had seen to date. It sold really well and a lot of people played it, but it was still effectively an old school platformer. You ran around, jumped on monster's heads and collected coins. Sorry, I mean stars, no, eggs, that's it. To all intense purposes, Jak and Daxter was little more than a Mario 64 clone, but it was a lot better for it.

Was Naughty Dog right to borrow so heavily from Mario 64 for Jak and Daxter? Well hey, why not. Evolution comes from natural selection, so why not make a platformer built from the best bits of all the other platformers you've ever played, eh? Naughty Dog must have thought they'd struck gold and they very nearly did, except they didn't account for one thing. That thing is Grand Theft Auto III, a title that changed the face of console gaming forever.

Anyway, it's two years on now and Naughty Dog is back doing what they do best. Not content with borrowing heavily from all other platform games ever to make Jak and Daxter, they simply drop all borders and borrow from practically every game ever for the sequel, Jak 2. They appear to have taken the evolution through natural selection concept to an extreme and, again, have managed to balance the influences so well that they've produced another quality title. If you can sweep aside any prejudices about the lack of originality in game development these days, one thing is clear. Jak 2 is a very good game.



The actual in-game story of Jak 2 begins back at Sandover village, Jak and Daxter's home in the prequel. Behind the mysterious portal from the first game they find a Precursor Ring and, as they attempt to open it, a monster jumps through and attacks them. In the resulting encounter Jak, Daxter, Samos the sage and his daughter Keira are thrown into the portal. The gang is separated, with Jak and Daxter winding up at the setting for the new game, Haven City and the others. well that would be telling. Haven City, though, is a nasty place. It's dark, dank and dirty and as soon as they arrive Jak is captured by the ruthless ruler of the city, Baron Praxis. His Krimzon guard imprison Jak, but as he's being dragged away you can hear Daxter shouting in the background "I'll save you buddy!" Anyway, two years later Daxter does indeed rescue Jak but not before Praxis has had the opportunity to subject Jak to loads of experiments involving a mysterious Dark Eco.

And that's where the game kicks off; Daxter undoing Jak's bonds and control being passed to the player in the dungeons of Praxis's castle. What follows could easily be taken out of the first chapter of `How to build a bog standard platformer', it's so corny. You have to find your way out through a bunch of rooms that conveniently can only be traversed if you use certain moves, pretty much all the moves in your arsenal as it goes. Dax is on your shoulder like in the first game, chirping out helpful stuff detailing how to do all the different type of moves you've got, all the button combos and what have you, and when to use them. Before you know it you've escaped and that's where the game really begins.

While the core game mechanics of Jak is faithful to the original, the game structure is radically different. Gone is the last great legacy of the platform era of old, that of having the game center on collecting something. Here you don't have to collect a certain number of stars, coins, orbs, whatever to finish a level, because you don't have levels as such anymore either. It's all about missions now, and admittedly the missions often involve getting you to a certain platform or something, but when you get there you just have to flick a switch or blow something up and it's on to the next one. Remind you of something? Well get this, to get a mission you have to traverse Haven City to the location of one of several non-player characters and sit through a highly detailed and quite enjoyable cut scene where you're told roughly what you have to do. Then it's off again, to whatever location they've identified. Oh and how do you get around Haven City? Well, by stealing vehicles of course!

I think you're probably getting the idea by now. If you were guessing that this game is like a shed load of mini platforming adventures cobbled around a GTA style shell, then you'd be dead right. What you probably won't expect is that the whole package is actually really well put together. Haven City is graphically gorgeous and is essentially this game's hub. As in GTA, you can jack cars and shoot bystanders and even shoot the Krimzon Guard out on patrol (essentially this city's police). This promptly raises your wanted level and you then get chased through the city streets by guards in their vehicles while getting shot at by guards on foot, and so on. Usually though, this is no big deal. The city itself is mostly just used as a narrative tool to allow you to travel between mission locations, although there are a few missions which actually involve you doing stuff in the streets, e.g. picking up and dropping off stuff or racing against a time limit. These missions are quite fun since, despite sorely missing some kind of hand brake feature, the hover cars and bikes all tend to handle quite well when you get used to them. Zipping from A to B becomes second nature and certain areas become more and more familiar as you sail through them in the same way that I'm sure many of us think we know Vice City like the back of our hand.



If Haven City is the hub of the game, the platforming mission bits are the heart and soul and what a delight they turned out to be. If Jak and Daxter was the PS2s best platformer then the sequel carries on the legacy admirably with a grand design unsurprisingly based on a mixture of Sega and Nintendo's best ideas. Naughty Dog have lifted the fast-paced feel and swarming drone-like bad guys you usually associate with the Sonic titles from Sega while the technically accomplished level design is undoubtedly all Nintendo's influence. The result is very polished indeed, making the whole thing the most satisfying platformer I've played for years. Throw in some guns and a few funky dark eco powers and you have the perfect recipe for some extremely late nights.

So, is it all good or are there a few chinks in the armour? Well, Jak 2 is one of those games that is inevitably going to have the odd glitch or two which, if you really think about them too hard, could ruin your overall enjoyment. But compared to the all-encompassing grandeur of the title, they seem pretty insignificant. Let's take Have City for a start. Yes, it's beautiful and large but it's no way as interactive as say Zelda or Vice City. One example is of the reaction of the town folk that you often fly pass. Get too close to a pedestrian and they scream and run, smash into another hover vehicle and it often bursts into flames, or smash another vehicle, or cause some other kind of ruckus but the Krimzon Guard do nothing. You literally have to run down a guard or smash into a guard vehicle for them to react, and even they get bored eventually and leave you alone if you fly off. But this doesn't really retract too much from the game since most of the Haven City bits are just you racing across town to the next mission, so it's not like you're looking to interact with the citizens to much anyway. If you really are going to get picky, you could argue that the vehicle handling feels a bit sluggish at first, and there are only a handful of vehicle designs across the whole city, but you get used to this stuff too and soon overlook them. In the same vein you can forgive the slight slowdown which occurs when you pan the camera around to quickly, because there's often a lot going on and consequently the draw distance is quite remarkable considering.

The platform sections too are, like I implied before, a little derivative being littered with platforming stalwarts like hydraulic platforms, rotating platforms, disappearing platforms, electric platforms and protruding spikes you have to time your jump over, falling rocks to dodge and time consuming respawning enemies, etc, etc. But so what? I think they give the game an old school connection and I like the same as I like the situation with the checkpoints, i.e. there aren't a great many. When you start a platform section there are usually no automatic checkpoints until quite near the end, or before a boss encounter, and you can't save manually (well you can, but it just takes you back to the last automatic checkpoint, so that's pretty useless). This doesn't seem to matter though because one thing Jak 2 has got right in a big way is the difficulty level. Sure, most missions take maybe three or four goes to pull off, but you will keep coming back for more and each time you'll usually breeze through the bits you know how to do and end up getting much further than before; the true mark of a well balanced title. I don't think any section took me more than a dozen goes if that, so that's what, half an hour tops? That's nothing really you know, and by the end of it you'll be pretty pleased with all the joypad gymnastics you've had to pull off to get there.



Anyway, all high profile titles are open for criticism and Jak 2 is no exception, but I've got to tell you I haven't enjoyed a 3D platformer this much for quite a while. One of the nicest about this title is the strong narrative held together by the sweet, almost Cartoon Network quality, cut scenes, the key being in the writing. These scenes are cartoony and funny but without being irritating, which I'll admit surprised me. It obviously paid to get voice actors in of note, the most famous being Phil LaMarr, the voice of Samurai Jack no less, and Susan Eisenberg who also lends her vocal talents to Wonder Woman in the Justice League series.

Couple this with the extraordinary variety of game play elements and you know you're on to a winner. Some missions are platform based, some just involve blasting robots, some racing against time limits, some even involve you skating around on this cool hover board like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, and it's all lovely to look at. The best missions, however, involve a little bit of everything. Fly here, protect this guy, give him a lift across town then jump out and provide covering fire while he makes his getaway; that kind of thing. So, thinking about it, maybe Jak 2 shouldn't really by considered a platformer as such rather more of an arcade action-adventure. Or perhaps an arcade action-adventure with platform elements? Whatever, it's doesn't really matter what how you classify it since video games are going through a transition and Jak 2 is right up there. Platform games, arcade games, adventure games; they all seem to be going the same way now, and Jak 2 seems have it's finger in all the pies. Thankfully, though, the polish throughout the whole title is so consistent that it's never really let down anywhere which leaves us with an extremely accomplished title. A classic might be too strong a word, I agree, this is no Mario 64 or Zelda title, but Jak 2 is very good and can happily sit in any PS2 owners collection proudly. Go and buy it.

Thunderbolt score: nine out of ten

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