Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS4) Review

 Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS4) 7/10

Hello everyone and welcome to another game review. Today, I’m going to go over one of the first mainline PS2 games, and a personal favorite franchise from that console generation. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was originally released on December 3, 2001 for the PS2, then remastered for the PS3, and then got an HD port for the PS4. The game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. I played the PS4 version so I’ll be judging the game from that. Now, I have a history with this game series. In fact, this is my third playthrough of this game, so I know it fairly well. My first time was the PS3 version, second time was the PS4 version with me getting the platinum trophy, and then there’s this time for this review. With that said, let’s begin.

Our story follows silent protagonist Jak and his sidekick Daxter as they try to reverse the effects of the Dark Eco that tainted Daxter, turning him into a fuzzy orange rat creature. In this world, there’s mystical properties called Eco: Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Dark, and Light. Each type of Eco affects the user in a different way. Jak is able to use Eco in ways that were never thought possible before. Jak and Daxter are going to have to travel north to meet with the Dark Eco Sage Gol in hopes that he can turn Daxter back to normal. On their way, they discover that Gol and his assistant Maia have been corrupted by the Dark Eco and plan to use the Dark Eco silos to reshape the world in their image. Now it’s up to the duo, the Green Sage Samos, and his mechanic daughter Keira to save the world. In order to travel north, the duo will need to collect Power Cells to advance their journey.

The story is not bad at all. It’s nice and simple with a decent plot twist in the middle. Despite Jak being a silent protagonist, he’s very expressive with his animations, which I’ll get to in a bit. Everybody here has a personality and it’s great. Daxter is egotistical and has a loud mouth. Keira is the smartest of the group, constantly tinkering with the Zoomer and helping Jak and Daxter in their journey. Samos is the wise old man of the group, constantly nagging at the duo to get their shit together. Gol and Maia are typical villains, which is a bit disappointing, but it’s whatever. There’s a handful of side characters too and each one has a personality as well. Overall, a great cast of characters. My favorite character is Jak with Daxter close second, but he does get a bit annoying at times.

The game looks great. I know it’s an HD port, but the game genuinely looks good. You don’t always have to have the best looking graphics for a game to look good and this game is proof of that. Yes it’s polygonal, but that helps give it charm that not a whole lot of games have. Each area looks unique from each other and that helps with the game’s charm too. Also, I love this world. I love how this world works and how Eco affects everything. I love all the different creatures and animals. It’s such a unique world and I would love to get to know more about it.

The game’s animation needs to be commended. If it weren’t for this, the game wouldn’t be such a big hit. Because of the animation, everyone actually feels like they could be real people. Their movements and facial animations are top notch and perfectly fit with the cartoony art style.

The music is pretty great too. Each location has a very unique sound to them, with my favorites having to be Spider Cave, Forbidden Jungle, Sandover Village, and Misty Island. Although all of the locations sound great.

The voice acting for the characters are all great, except Gol. Gol sounds like he smokes 12 packs a day and I can barely understand him. Daxter (Max Casella), Keira (Anna Garduno), and Samos (Warren Burton) sound great. Also, why the fuck is Kevin Conroy in here? It’s such a random casting to have the voice of Batman play the Fisherman whose laugh I can still. I’m not complaining, but it’s still weird.

Now onto gameplay. Jak and Daxter is a 3D platformer. You’ll be running, jumping, and attacking your way through the many levels. Collecting Precursor Orbs (or eggs as everyone else calls them), Scout Flies (collect all seven in each area and you’ll get a Power Cell), and the main collectable Power Cells. Each Power Cell is like a puzzle for you to complete. Complete this platforming section, kill X amount of enemies, complete a race, etc. These Power Cells are usually pretty easy to get, but some of these I didn’t bother getting (I already got the platinum trophy, so I had no reason to 100% it again). At the end of my journey, I had collected 95 Power Cells and about 1500/2000 Precursor Orbs. The game isn’t hard by any means, but if you fuck around too much, you will die and restart at the previous checkpoint. What’s great about the game is that you can approach the levels however you want. You have the freedom to choose which Power Cell you want to tackle first, just like in future 3D platformers

One thing I love about the gameplay is the Eco mechanic. Like I said earlier, there’s several different types of Eco for you to use. Blue makes you run faster and acts like a magnet to nearby collectables, collect 50 Green Eco and you’ll restore some health, Red Eco makes your attacks stronger, and Yellow Eco allows you to shoot fire. All of these (except Green) are time limited, so you’ll be having to use your head on how to accomplish your goals with the Eco given to you..

All of the side characters have missions for you. Turn on the power, crack the bird egg, put the Yakows back in the pen, etc. But most of the time, they’ll want 90 Precursor Orbs in exchange for a Power Cell. There’s also Precursor Oracles that will want 120 eggs in exchange for a Power Cell. If you haven’t noticed, Precursor Orbs are very important for your journey. Collecting these things are important, but thankfully you don’t need to collect all two thousand of them, unless you are going for the platinum.

The bosses for the game are actually cool, although there are few and far in-between. There’s the plant thing in Forbidden Jungle, Klaww that’s right after the Rock Village, and then Gol and Maia at the end. I feel like the game needed one more boss after Klaww and before Gol and Maia. Speaking of which, that final boss was annoying af. The boss itself is a decent challenge, but for some reason my game decided to not read my double jumps anymore, which resulted in me dying more times than necessary.

Overall, I had a blast revisiting the game. If you are interested in 3D platformers or are looking for an “old” game to play, go check this out. The game still holds up to today’s standards and you can easily pick it up and put it down with ease. I highly recommend it to anyone that has a Playstation. The game does have some minor issues, but it’s nothing that should ruin the fun.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.