Naughty Dog doesn't keep too many things hidden for long, and with not-so-subtle speeches and curious conversations, players can discern the bad guys from the good ones without needing much external help. There's the Baron and his suspicious relationship with the Metal Heads, Kor, the ancient, and his strange longing for an artifact, and a triangle in the making between Jak, Keira and the Baron's daughter, Ashelia. The story is packed with revealing characters, twists and surprises. I'll keep the storyline particulars to a minimum because they're a crucial part of the game, but suffice it is to say, Jak II, which clocks in between 15-25 hours depending on your skill level, spins a captivating yarn. You know the punch line is coming, you know he's going to say it, the only thing missing is the laugh track. Is he funny? He provides humor in the most basic sense, but it's "ha-ha" funny, not actually something that makes you instinctively laugh out loud. He gets drunk, ogles girls' boobs, tries bad pick up lines on said females, and basically embarrasses Jak with his deliciously bad taste. This time around, however, Daxter is the vehicle for new thematic elements. You love him but you wish he'd just grow up a little. Ready to unleash a flurry of obnoxious one-liners, bad jokes, and rambling monologues in every cutscene, Daxter perfectly pigeonholes himself into the role of the dislikeably adorable neighborhood friend.
Along those same lines, Daxter is once again the comedic sidekick.
Jak is far more likeable now that he speaks, and that fact that he's pissed off and owns honking big guns weaves in an unmistakable new level of emotion into the narrative. It's the story that gives this game the feeling that it's an adventure, like Indiana Jones or even Max Payne. Unlike pretty much every other platformer in the world (not including the upcoming, exceptionally good Ratchet and Clank Going Commando), the story here is filled with characters who you'll either love or hate. That it's actually important, crucial to the way the game is played. It's not the first time a platformer has had a worthwhile story (I'd say that Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter both delivered solid stories before), but it is the first time in the genre's history that the story has taken the lead. Not only does Naughty Dog establish right away that this is not your ordinary platform game, it then proceeds to tell you a story worth listening to. This, of course, is just the set up, the initial storyline, but it works on a few levels. He can talk, he's not so friendly, he likes to break things, and what's more, he wants to fight. The affect on Jak is that he's not only mad, filled with anger and rage at his unfair imprisonment and even less fair torture, but that he's changed. Daxter finally finds Jak and frees him, and then proceeds to watch as his buddy, unable to control the chemical changes that now take place in his body, turns into an Eco Hulk and wreaks havoc on the city's Crimson Guards.
JAK AND DAXTER PS2 INSTALL FREEZES FULL
Two years pass as Jak is experimented on and pumped full of dark Eco. Jak is taken away from Daxter, thrown into custody by new character Baron Praxis, the tyrannical 1984-ish ruler of Haven City, where they have landed. They land on a seeeimingly new planet, but it's really their on world in the future. To make a long story short, Jak and Daxter, Samos and Keira are shot into the future and split apart. The game begins with a long cutscene following the travails of Jak and Daxter at the end of their first adventure. It all starts with the story, so let's pick it up there. And a very polished, pretty and, thankfully, harder one at that.
(My suggestions - Plactioner, or how about Actionformer? To be continued.) The point is this - Jak II, undeniably born from platform roots, is an expansion of the genre.
The Story While we're at it and we're going for the teenage analogy, who are we, really? What is Jak II, really? A platformer, or a character-action game? An adventure game? An action-platformer? These questions have crossed our lips time and again, and the jury has not yet returned, but it's clear that we need to make up something new quick. A teenager who, all of a sudden, enjoys sex, drugs and rock 'n roll - who enjoys guns, a dark, twisting storyline, and a platform experience that is running away from its roots as fast and hard as possible. Layering in a massive Grand Theft Auto-like open city, jack-able cars and a living, breathing populace on top of a platform game gone mad, Jak II is like a teenage platform game that's discovered drugs for the first time. Or at least that's what the clever kids at Naughty Dog are shooting for. Where Jak and Daxter was a deep, seamless platformer with gorgeous graphics and a staid Disney-like comedy routine, Jak II is essentially an entirely new creature. But this time, it's torn up everything in the process.
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