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JAK 3

Question: When is an epic not an epic?
Answer: When it involves ferrets.

Seriously, say what you will about Beastmaster, but would you call it an epic? How about Starship Troopers? That had a case of the polecats. Epic? Or more of an episode of interplanetary 90210 with Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris and… space bugs?

Jak 3, the third and final chapter of developer Naughty Dog’s Precursor Saga has got “epic” written all over it. It also has a talking ferret. You can see where I’m torn over this. Given this conflict, the new action-platformer for the PS2 wraps up the series nicely, leaving you with the feeling that you’ve just played something very big indeed.

Jak 3 presents a universe that has grown by great strides beyond its predecessor, an expansive, living world where a violent war rages between the long-eared denizens of Haven city, their cast-aways in the deserts of the Wastelands, and the teeming throngs of bio-mechanical “Metalheads” that threaten to overrun all of known civilization with generic evilness.

This third part of the story picks up with angsty Jak, comedy relief weasel Daxter, and the talking, feathered monkey-bird Pecker exiled to the wastelands as traitors to the resistance in Haven city, tainted by the dark side of the universal energy, Eco. From this auspicious start, our heroes must regain their good names through the only two things they know how to do: crack wise and blow stuff up.

Let’s not mince words. I wasn’t a big fan of the changes that took place to this series between the first and second game; the addition of the guns taking away from the pure platformer goodness, the new angry Jak with attitude, the crowded city streets and faux-Grand Theft Auto gameplay.

That being said, this extension touches a little on all areas, some for the better and some for the worse. Let’s get down to it.

Let’s talk guns. There is a primary flaw to this game when it comes to aiming your weapons. It’s a sort of crossed problem with the manner in which you move around the levels and control the camera, combined with an auto-directing system that aims your shot after about two seconds of facing an enemy. The problem is that this isn’t fast enough, and you’ll frequently find yourself being hit by an enemy because, despite looking straight at it, your gun fires over its head or below its feet.

The game counters this with a number of different fire-and-forget weapon modifications, ricocheting bullets and burst radii, but that’s hardly a good substitute for accurate aiming when you’re taking ammo and life conservation to mind. Add to this a lack of strafe ala Ratchet and Clank, and you’re left with a pretty sketchy shooter of making and breaking lock-ons and very lucky shots.

You do have the option of melee, but with only a few basic attacks to Jak’s repertoire, the endless chain of spin kicks and dash punches grows tired after a little while. You can gain access to a few more moves by toggling to Dark Jak mode, flooding your body with dark Eco, paling your skin, and equipping you with all the berserker slashing rage you could hope for… for a limited time. Once your Eco meter is dry, it’s back to the ol’ spin/charge.

Honestly, I never saw much need for the dark powers in this game, apart from the few specific puzzles and arena battles that require their use. Call it player prerogative if you will, but I always found it easier to clear a room through a barrage of bouncing bullets than any real thought in combat.

The same goes for the new Light Jak powers. Apart from the power to heal yourself mid-battle, they’re very situation-specific with only a few puzzle-y levels that drive you to whip out the angel wings and fly. From my perspective, a few less rooms full of baddies and a few more Prince of Persia-esque time dilation sequences would have been outstanding. It just feels like potential wasted. Gorgeous in its effects, but wasted in use.

I don’t want to give the impression that there is not a lot of power to the power-ups. There is a fantastic distribution of new weapon mods and Eco powers handed out as you go through the game, with lots of new toys to play with. Part of this is managed through the Secrets menu, where you can spend you collected Precursor Orbs (a whopping 600 of which are scattered about the world) on more power, ammo, and firing modes, as well as the full bevy of cheats like big head mode and a mirrored game world. It’s a great little system.

Those Precursor (the ancient technology gods of this world) orbs are the impetus of exploration in Jak 3. The huge, sprawling environments you traverse are lousy with the things, and the conquest of their many hiding spots is just about the only reason you’ll have to search the dunes of the wasteland.

Let’s expand on that a bit. You’ve basically got these two huge game areas, Haven City and the Wastelands, with their various spokes of platforming dungeons attached. Whilst roaming around these maps in all the game’s load screen-free glory, all you have to do is search for these orbs. There’s nothing else to do; no shops, no conversations, nothing. It’s a major diversion from the Grand Theft Auto model that so obviously inspired the evolution of the series. What is missing is the flavor of the world in activity. Yes, there’s a war in the streets, and the raging battle provides a brilliant backdrop. Yes, the Wasteland stronghold is crawling with mute tough guys who will shoot at you if you slap them around a little. But it all feels so mechanical, like there’s just a regular rhythm going on which excludes Jak entirely. Apart from combat, you’re paid practically no attention whatsoever.

The second major element of the open cities involves the mission progression. It’s still very linear, with only a single task to accomplish at any one time. It’s disappointing that you’re given all this space, all this flavor, and it’s spent ferrying back and forth across these cityscapes. It’s still a marked improvement over Jak 2, where that same transit was clogged by hundreds of AI controlled hovercars, but the fact of the matter is the only decision you make involving your effect on the world is “do I do the mission now, or later?”

As is the nature of the genre, Jak 3 employs a number of different mission types to spice up your experience. There’s nothing as particularly pure about the platforming that sparked the series to begin with. Most of that has shifted towards an area-based blast-fest with a few floating ledges to get you from gun battle to gun battle. There are plenty of driving sequences, which we’ll go into more detail about in a moment. There are various rail shooters, a couple of flying sequences (including a very cool Pilotwings hang-gliding moment), and encounters with tube-slider anti-grav racing. Daxter even gets into the fray at a few points. If variety is your spice of life, this game has something for you.

Here’s the thing about the missions that ties into the overall theme of the game world: they lack continuity of story. For the most part, you’re running off to do some great harm to the Metalheads, or perhaps digging up a chunk of Precursor technology, because the war demands it. When you get back from blowing up a gate, you’ll inevitably be shipped off to another part of town to work on something else, and you’ll return to your newly opened front door a while later, by which point the relevance of your smash-in has waned. In comparison to the truly brilliant mission structure of Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper 2, Jak feels a little vague and disjointed. This may just be an effect of the huge world and the long drive to cross it after every mission, but there is a very thin line tying the beginning of the game to the end, broken in places, looped in others.

Still, every bit of the world suggests that there is something large going on, and you’re stuck in the middle of it. By the time you’ve hit the closing credits, you feel like you’ve accomplished something substantial. Saving the world will put a smile on your face.

I said I’d talk a bit about the vehicles. There are a good number of things that you’ll drive and fly around Haven city and the wastelands, and none of them are particularly fun. Every last dune buggy in the garage has got serious weight issues. Sliding, rolling, getting hung up on rocks and enemy deathmobiles; this is what you can expect to be doing when you set out for a drive. Every little duck and dive of the sands will deviate you from your course, leaving you with two options: either pay very, very close attention to the terrain and know exactly how to aim your wheels to minimize its effect on your direction, or swear as you spin out again, and again, and again. Bumps send you flying, with the back end often rolling over the top. The most entertaining vehicle, the Grasshopper, has huge built-in shocks that can send you soaring into the air with the tap of the button (creating the best thing in vehicular platforming since Blaster Master). That car, too, steers like a wildebeest; not a good thing when you’re leaping over open seas.

The hover-vehicles in the city have another problem. They’re slow. Now that all the traffic is out of the way, I want to open up a bit, tearing across the wide spaces. But no, your long, arduous trek from mission point to mission point will be a long one.

Finally, the hoverboard. I hate the hoverboard. The hoverboard was responsible for more of my deaths in this game than any other single entity. It accentuates and amplifies the effect of the slow turning speed of the camera, lifting it to the forefront as a major source of misery and demise. It is difficult to steer, lands clumsily from aimed jumps, and flips around with a boost of speed when you run into something (normally while trying to jump on top of that thing, sending you directly to the nearest pit and a long, deadly fall).

If I have heaped a lot of criticism on Jak 3’s shoulders (and I most assuredly have) it’s because of what this game represents. It is the end of this troubled series which started out with such promise. For the story, for the world it presents, for the brilliant timing in the writing and the truly outstanding animation that accompanies it, the voices that carry it; Jak 3 by all rights deserves to be called an epic, ferret and all. As have its predecessors, it drips with distinction and style from every pore.

It is nigh impossible to attach a simple numeric score to something like this game. The obvious flaws lie in the most subjective areas, namely that mystical realm of “gameplay.” There’s no defined qualities beyond the feelings it has instilled in the player by the time the controller is set down contentedly or thrown aside in rage. Jak 3 is capable of both these things. Personally, despite the frustrations of the weapons; despite the linearity and the sketchy driving physics, I was left with a true feeling of satisfaction when all was said and done. As a fan of the series; of the story behind it, Jak 3 delivered.

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Posted by Brad on Dec 10th, 2004 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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