Before We Begin
I’ve just learned that the sequel to Jak II is not titled Jak III, but rather Jak 3. Taking into account the fact that Daxter was dropped from the titles after the first game, this means that exactly nothing about the naming conventions of this series makes sense. How appropriate. Not even using the same numeral system is so incredibly dumb that I’m just going to go along with it.
I’m going to reiterate how much I’m willing to settle for easy and forgettable for this game. Nothing about Jak II was good enough to keep me invested, so the extreme difficulty on top of that just led to endless frustration. I’m not expecting the third entry in the series to magically be one of my favorite games of all time, so as long as it’s not as annoying as the second, I’ll probably be fine.
I thought about playing a Lego game or something to take a break, but I’m worried that if I do that it’ll have the same effect that Horizon Zero Dawn did last time. Since I’d rather not be reminded that better games exist, I’ll just have to plow through. Pray for me.
Day One
It might be too early to call it. I’ve seen terrible things happen in the back half of some games. But with that disclaimer: I’m really enjoying Jak 3.
The story is just about as random as ever, and this time you really get the sense that Naughty Dog built the story around the game they wanted to make instead of the other way around. The game begins with Jak being banished into the desert around Haven City because the residents don’t trust him and blame him for a recent attack. He did just save the city and everyone in it, but fine, whatever.
In the desert, which didn’t exist in Jak II, there are all kinds of creatures and buggy-riding outcasts, and this is where things really take off: this game is basically Mad Max with an orange weasel. There’s an out-of-place reverence for modes of transportation, there’s a Thunderdome-type deathmatch arena, and there’s a weird sense of decay to civilization despite not being that far away from modern society (in this case the distance is only physical rather than temporal, which makes it even stranger). The king of the outcasts is Jak’s dad, and although we’re not supposed to know that yet, ND is really bad at hiding it.
The missions, while still offering a challenge, no longer feel like they’re going out of their way to kill you. Checkpoints are more numerous and the margin for error is wide enough that some small mistakes here and there won’t force you to restart the whole level. This also allows for a much larger world and missions with more scope than those in Jak II, which helps the gameplay feel that much more varied. Upon death you still lose all the ammo and eco you spent in your previous life, which continues to be a really rotten way to compound the player’s punishment for failing a mission, but it’s not quite as egregious this time given the other improvements.
I’ve completed 18 of 60 missions and although I’m glad that this will likely take less time than Jak II, I’m disappointed that this couldn’t have been the longer game instead. I’ve played some pretty cool sections that managed to combine the shooting, platforming, and puzzle solving of the previous two installments in a satisfying way. I’m actually excited to find out what’s in store – something I could never say about The Precursor Legacy or II.
Day Two
I’ve left off at “Destroy Eco Grid With Jinx,” so I’ve beaten 32 of 60 missions – just over half the game.
In Jak II I frequently felt like the game cheated, throwing some really nasty tricks at me and forcing me to die just for not knowing the level, or artificially ramping up the difficulty by throwing a bunch of enemies at me in a way that was near impossible to escape from (the infamous docks level is a good example of the latter). The current mission is, thankfully, the only time I’ve felt like this in Jak 3, although it is disappointing to have these feelings return at all.
I’m in an escort mission (grrr) and I have to cart around one of my teammates as they arm several bombs around the city. The catch is that enemies are swarming us, sometimes with guns, and my teammate doesn’t have a lot of health. No checkpoints either. The ammo loss upon death is really starting to wear me down, because there’s no real way to replenish it during the mission, so my best weapons are now useless just because I’ve died too many times. I always used to hate it when an RPG would present you with a non-obvious, deliberately unbeatable boss, but still take away all the items you used trying to defeat it. This is a step up from that in terms of completely aggravating mechanics, and the worst part is that it can’t possibly be explained through technical limitations. It’s one of the last vestiges of Jak II’s awful kill-the-player philosophy.
I tend to beat difficult missions more easily when I walk away for a night, so maybe it’ll stop giving me so much trouble in the morning.
Day Three
Turns out, I was walking away for more than a night. I did exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do and played through Lego Marvel Superheroes 2. The chilled out, no-stakes gameplay was just what I needed and I’m ready to finish up the Jak series once and for all.
It still took me a couple tries to get past “Destroy Eco Grid With Jinx” and I’m now leaving off on “Defend HQ From Attack.” This mission is in the middle of one branch of a set of branching missions. Having beaten the other two paths first, this is one of the last three missions to complete before I’m in the final, non-branching portion of the game. This puts me at having completed 43 of the 60 missions.
I still say that unnecessary timers are the bane of my existence, closely followed by escort missions and overly aggressive, suicidal enemies. As such, driving in the wasteland is less fun than it should be, and nearly every mission in the city is a chore. The back half of the game definitely hasn’t been as fun or creative as the first half, and the two main settings don’t mesh well together, but it’s still head and shoulders above Jak II.
A Precursor statue told me about a world-ending threat, which is by far the most involvement they’ve had in any of the games’ stories, so there’s that. Still, with so little game left to go, they couldn’t possibly have enough important things to do to fully justify them being a part of the series. It’s disappointing, because I love mysterious little world building details like this, but they’ve felt like such an afterthought this entire time.
Day Four
Leaving off today on “Activate Astro-Viewer in Haven Forest,” bringing me up to 51 of 60 missions. With any luck, tomorrow will be the last day.
There have been some fun missions here and there – the war factory and sewer levels were full of platform-y goodness – but overall, I stand by what I said before. Past the halfway point, the game fails to deliver on its own premise and instead flip flops between its original conceit and being an easier version of Jak II, complete with a revolution against a severely underdeveloped villain. It is fun, but it’s really driving home the feeling that Naughty Dog never figured out what it wanted this series to be.
I’m also glad that this entry is pretty well paced. It’s ending soon enough that it hasn’t overstayed its welcome like Jak II did, but it’s also felt more substantial than The Precursor Legacy. I think once I wrap up the last nine missions, I’ll be ready for it to be over.
Day Five
The Precursors are ottsels.
Conclusion
You know what? I can respect that twist. To me, that’s Naughty Dog finally admitting that they never had any idea where they were going with any of this. So be it. I wish that I hadn’t gone in with the idea that these games had a story worth investing in, but I can respect a solid trope inversion.
The first half of this game was the best the series has ever been. Unfortunately, I was right in wondering whether the second half was going to be a bit more dull than that. There were still bright spots, and it was infinitely better than any portion of Jak II, but for the most part that second half dragged the game down just below The Precursor Legacy.
I was disappointed that Samos and Keira had nothing to do with anything in this one. They weren’t well developed characters by any means, but it was odd to see them pushed into the furthest background after spending two full games with them. I would have liked to have a proper wrap-up with them, especially over characters like Torn and Ashelin.
I was also right about the treatment of the wasteland elements in the second half – namely, they barely existed. You raced a few more times. The final boss partially took place in the wasteland. Jak’s dad made a couple final appearances, including the entirely predictable and ultimately inconsequential reveal that he was Jak’s father. Other than that, it was back to the city for the most part. The entire back half of the game felt like one last ditch effort to make sense out of all the random little pieces of the series. When they couldn’t do that? Ottsels. Everything is ottsels.
It’s actually more surprising to me now that I’ve finished that these are considered classic PS2 games – not because they aren’t good, but because nothing about them makes any sense at all. Not the naming conventions, not the story, not the lore, and certainly not the gameplay, which often feels more luck-based than not. I don’t see myself making a return anytime soon – but more on that in the soon-to-be-written project conclusion.
The Ranking
- Jak and Daxter
- Jak III
- Jak II
Mister Binger 