Review

Just hit my legs with hammers, shit was miserable. I don't understand. I wouldn't say that the first game was some masterpiece. But it didn't hate you. Why does this game hate the player? I don't usually like saying that, because surely the people that worked on the game did in fact want others to enjoy it. But there is so so many things in Jak 2 that bend the mind. That makes me think "Why in the fuck did they do this?"

The real frustration is I don't think it would be hard at all to make this leaps and bounds better. Nearly all of the problems in the game are so easily fixable with minimal effort. But that confuses me as to why exactly they didn't, when things are so incredibly dire as is. First, we need better checkpointing. Alex and I started employing save states really liberally. The fail conditions for missions in general are miserable. A pretty good proportion of the missions are "do it perfect or you fail". Extremely unfun. Nothing seemed to control well either, so it's like you're constantly fighting with the game. Things were very floaty in Jak 1. So I really think there needed to be more changes if we're gonna just graft on guns.

Additionally, I don't know why we don't have upgrades be a buyable thing. We should be picking up credits from the enemies and use those to get the gun upgrades. Or perhaps upgrades to our lil hoverboard. As it is, there's this weird lull in weapon upgrades that lasts hours and hours. You get showered with em in the beginning of the game, then the well runs totally dry. Which coincidentally corresponds to the section of the game where all the missions just get real shit. So it's like this one two punch of trash that makes the general experience miserable. If we had it where the player is constantly getting money and can buy upgrades at their leisure, I think that would help spread out the rate you're getting them. Would probably also feel better if the player is capable of prioritizing the upgrades they want. Rather than just whatever gets given to them.

Next, while we're talking about redoing pickups. There needs to be way more health getting dropped. They really want you to be using dark Jak all the time, even though he's no good. The game drops way more dark eco than it does green eco. I also don't understand why we don't just refill the stupid guns whenever the player dies. Real real shit that we don't do that. The more you bash your head against a particular wall the worse it gets because you're literally going through your ammo supply and not getting it back when you die. This is not a complicated situation. I really don't see how this got past any amount of peer review. There are several sections of the game that really make me feel there was zero playtesting. Or if there was, it was in that sense of those custom levels people will make for the Mario games. Where, in order to upload it for others, it just needs to be technically completable. So you get this shitty dick-punching level that is possible just barely and that's totally good enough for us to go ahead and call it a day.

Most of my actual complaints revolve around the actual gameplay. Because as stated before, the changes you really need to make are so small and so easily fixable. But let's talk a little about the story. I didn't really like what we did with the tone in this game when I was young. It made me feel uncomfortable. It's pretty laughable now of course, as a 30 year old man. This game is for big boys, you see. I would really like for Sora to come up to Jak with his goatee and give him the good ol' "You're stupid!" like he gives edgemaster Riku. But it is truly an oddity. I can't recall such a vast change in tone happening from a game to its sequel. Clearly, someone at Naughty Dog had a vision. Good for them, I suppose. They made a crapsack world. If only it were more fun to actually exist in it. I'm fine with the actual events happening. It's basic but the plot is serviceable. We meet a couple movers and shakers, we do missions for 'em, and eventually we overthrow Mr. Krabs. That's all good and well.

The time travel stuff is silly because it really doesn't make any sense. Usually when you're doing this time loop sort of stuff, people aren't privy to all the info. So it feels extremely odd to me that there are times when we've literally got all the main characters in a group and we're calmly discussing over tea "Oh you're you from the past, I'm from the future." Some odd decisions there. We could totally go off script and change things, prevent the horrible future from ever occurring. But I guess not. It's not like we're being approached by some great sage from beyond time that warns us we must never meddle in preordained events. That just never happens, even though it's exactly the sort of thing you would expect in these circumstances to tie up the loose end of "why aren't we using the time travel to our advantage". What really would change on a basic level if, instead of this being the future, the portal had simply taken us to some other world? Precious little, in my opinion.

Overall, very frustrating. It would be one thing if the game were just janky and overly difficult. That's an understandable and parseable concept. We can speak on it, lament it, and move on with our lives. But it's the fact that nearly every fix would take minutes to implement. There's this weird glamour over the game. It could be some much better and more fun in every way, but it seemingly just chooses not to be. And it chooses that over and over and over. It insists upon itself. And I truly do not understand why. I have never in my life seen a more clear case of a game that desperately needs a butthole edition.

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