Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy [PS2]

Naughty Dog had a big hit with Crash Bandicoot on the PS1. For the PS2, they decided to launch a new IP, building on their previous formula while greatly expanding the world, gameplay, and narrative possibilities enabled by the leap in tech. I think they achieved that goal in many ways, but it's not easy to recommend this game in 2024.

The best parts are the diversity of levels and their open world-ish arrangement. Arriving at a new area is always a delight, with new things to see and do. Graphics are good for the era, and the character animations are especially excellent. It's also nice to see the collectathon gameplay incorporated into a story.

The more mediocre elements are, well, Jak and Daxter. They are not very compelling protagonists. Jak is a completely silent, smirking, eye-rolling pretty boy. Daxter is chatty, selfish, and sarcastic. I found him annoying at first, but his persistent in-your-face quips did grow on me. Together they push the cool teenage vibe way, way too hard. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong. Ratchet and Clank, released a year later, would do the hero-and-sidecick schtick so, so much better. Jak and Daxter's supporting characters are actually far more entertaining: Keira is spunky and cute, and Samos is grumpy and impatient. I like his toes.

The worst parts are—and this will shock you!—the 3D platforming. I actually quite enjoyed it in the first third of the game. Just exploring, collecting, and jumping or climbing to reach all the areas. If I messed up, the auto-save checkpoints were plentiful and made it easy to try again. But around the mid-point the platforming becomes significantly harder, demanding precision and timing that the controls and camera just can't keep up with. Checkpoints also become fewer and fewer. The end-game area is just 100% frustration, with rage-inducing challenges and almost no checkpoints. I swear there was one jump that I had to try 20 times, and of course I had to repeat the same stuff over and over just to get to it.

There are also vehicle levels. Cool idea, and sometimes feels pretty awesome, but when precision is required the floaty-boaty controls are not fun at all.

Combat is also very meh. At least it's easy enough that doesn't get frustrating.

A tech aside: Naughty Dog created a very unique programming language for the Jak and Daxter franchise: GOAL, which is a compiled Scheme-like LISP designed specifically for gaming. It was extremely innovative and had many helpful tools for debugging and changing the code on the fly, while the game was running. When Sony acquired Naughty Dog, GOAL was considered too weird for other teams to work with, and so was discontinued.

I played the game with OpenGOAL, an open source implementation that can run the games on modern hardware, resolution, and framerates. It works very well and is a great way to experience the games.