Jak II (PS4) Review

 Jak II (PS4) 7/10

Hello everyone. Today, I’ll be tackling Jak II, the sequel to The Precursor Legacy. Jak II was originally released on October 14, 2003 for the PS2, remastered for the PS3 in the HD Collection, and then got an HD port for the PS4. The game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Entertainment. I played through the PS4 version, so I’ll be judging the game from this version. Now, just like with the previous entry, I have played this game before, with this being my third playthrough. Since I replayed the first game, I’m revisiting the rest of the series. Now, because I have played this before in the past, I had a much better time with the game as opposed to the first time. But enough rambling as I have quite a bit to say here. Let’s begin.

This game starts immediately after the events of the first game. After collecting all of the Power Cells, Jak and the gang open up the giant door and discover a Rift Portal and a ship inside. Keira hooks everything up and starts up the portal. Shit hits the fan quickly as a giant monster appears and things start spiraling out of control. The gang fly through the portal, but get separated along the way. Jak and Daxter end up in what seems to be some city slums, where Jak gets taken prisoner by the local guards. Two years pass and Daxter is finally able to free Jak from his imprisonment inside Baron Praxis’ castle. However, it turns out Jak has been subject to Dark Eco experiments, making him unrecognizable to his old joyful self. After escaping, Jak proclaims he’s going to get his revenge against Praxis, and to do this he must join the underground rebellion that’s trying to take the city back from their evil ruler. As Jak and Daxter aid Torn and his movement, they’ll uncover some dark secrets about their new home and reunite with their old friends.

I like this story. The game starts off with Jak doing simple jobs against the Baron but then it evolves into this intricate story which helps expand this world’s lore and other characters. Speaking of characters, I love this cast. Jak and Daxter are still the best duo and Daxter isn’t as annoying as he was in the first game. I love Jak’s personality. Because of the Dark Eco, he’s turned into this watered down edgelord and it’s awesome. He still retains some of his lightheartedness, but this is exactly how I wanted his character to go. Can I just say, now that he has a voice, his chemistry with Daxter is even better. Simple dialogue such as him saying “Watch out Dax!” as he’s crashing into walls in the championship races adds so much more depth to their relationship. I love all of the side characters too, with Sig, Vin, and Pecker being my favorites. Praxis was a decent villain, but the leader of the Metal Heads was better. Overall, a very solid story with a great cast of characters.

There is one thing I do find weird: At the very beginning when the game is slowly explaining how this new world works, it’s just dropping new lingo and jargon with no explanation. The first mention of the word “Metal Head” was done by Jak, and the game doesn’t explain what they are exactly until a bit later. I feel like they rushed tiny parts of the exposition at the beginning. It’s honestly not a big deal, but I thought I should mention it.

This game looks a tiny bit better than the first game. This time around, they added more detail to the backgrounds and the overall environments. I love Jak’s new look. As I was playing through the game, Haven City gave me massive Star Wars vibes from certain parts of the city. The zoomers, architecture, and weapons helped with that. Wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case as Attack of the Clones was released a year before this came out. I just love the way everyone looks, the way Haven City looks and feels, and all the side areas are just as good. Visually, the game looks amazing. The animation is also just as good as the last game. This is a great part of the game’s visuals because if they had messed with it, the game wouldn’t be as good. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The sound design is good too. I love the background music for Haven City. It sounds dreary and as if you are constantly on the run from the cops (which you kinda are). I love how the music will change its tone and small parts of its composition depending on if you are walking, driving, or riding your hoverboard. Small details like this add to the world immensely.

Voice acting for the game is as great as the first game. Gotta say, I love Jak’s voice. It fits him perfectly. Mike Erwin played him perfectly. Shout out to Max Casella (Daxter), Phil LaMarr (Sig), and Clancy Brown (Baron Praxis).

Before I go into gameplay, let’s talk about the technical side. I did experience some issues with the game, the main thing being unresponsive controls and a couple of glitches. Thankfully no frame rate drops or game crashes. I did find it weird how the music glitched out near the end of the game. Had to bump into a guard to trigger it back.

Onto gameplay. Similar to the first game, Jak II is a 3D platformer, but this time is much more story focused. The game is open world, with all of Haven City for you to explore, but sections of the city will be locked out to you until you progress through the story. In this, there are no Power Cells for you to collect. Instead you’ll progress through the game by completing story missions, just like with every other open world game. Also, they took out the Eco mechanic from the first game. Now instead of manipulating the different types of Eco, you’ll have weapons, or one weapon that can switch between different ammo types. You’ll have Scatter (shotgun), Blaster (repeater), Vulcan Fury (minigun), and Peacemaker (railgun). I do like this, but I also miss the Eco manipulation from the first game. You’ll also have an increased health bar as opposed to the first game. Instead of tanking 3 hits (four if you maxed out your Green Eco), in this, you’ll be able to tank 8 hits.

Level design is a mixed bag. Haven City has a horrible layout. Too many tight turns and it just feels like a massive maze to maneuver through. If you accidentally bump into a guard, the city will be put on high alert and you’ll have all the guards chasing after you. It’s nigh impossible to avoid this because of the city’s layout and how crowded it is. A lot of the levels are fine as you finish one area and then come back later to continue through it. 

Okay now onto the major issues with the game. The game has problems. And I mean a lot of problems! Some of the worst checkpoints I have ever seen in a game. You’ll be going long stretches of bullshit in some of these levels and if you die, you gotta go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING! Another issue is that there’s hardly any health drops and each enemy does 2 damage to you, meaning you can only take 4 hits before you gotta restart at the beginning. What’s the point of giving me 8 health squares if all the enemies do 2 damage? Also in some of these levels, the game doesn’t want to listen to your controls (I found this extremely apparent during the Palace infiltration during the last part of the game). I kept dying over and over again because the game wasn’t responding to my controls. The camera is also horrible in certain areas as I would die because of it and then restart the whole fucking level again.

There’s a couple of missions I would like to go over. First is the escort mission down into the sewers. In this mission, you have to escort three idiots (I call them the Three Stooges) through the sewers so that you can retrieve the statue of Mar. Back when I first played this on the PS3, I broke my controller at this mission because of how infuriating it is. There’s so many enemies and because I had to replay this mission so many times, I had to hear the same fucking dialogue over and over again! Second mission I wanna go over is when you race Erol through the city to prove who has the bigger wang. All the zoomers handle like ass. They love to slide all over the place and having to do tight turns on such things in the worst designed city ever made this mission a lot harder than it needed to be. The last mission is the Palace infiltration that I mentioned earlier. For some fucking reason, my game decided to stop listening to half of my controls for this mission specifically. Couple this with the large number of enemies and narrow platforms made this mission absolute hell. I almost broke my controller again lmao. 

The bosses are actually great. There’s 4 bosses for the game: Praxis 1, Praxis 2, Krew, and Metal Kor. I gotta say, Metal Kor is one of my favorite bosses. His fight is difficult at first, but if you know how to spin jump + shoot with the Blaster, his fight is much easier. There’s something about it that I just love. Also, there’s a way to cheese the boss fight in which he can’t hurt you. The Praxis fights were cool and the Krew fight was just annoying. His fight could’ve been better. 

Overall, it was great to revisit this PS2 classic, but it has not aged well. It’s a great direction for the series to take, but my God were there some awful decisions here. I will not be revisiting this game again and for the love of God, do not kill yourself over trying to platinum the game. Despite the game’s aged design and many levels of bullshit, I enjoyed it a lot. Honestly it’s one of my favorite PS2 titles, although low on that list. As much as I would love to replay it one of these days, I just don’t think I can go through it again. Hopefully Jak 3 will fix these issues as I don’t remember much from that game.

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

This is Zorgak, signing off.