Why I dislike Naughty Dog: The Jak Sequels
I'll admit, when I
started the Jak series when the HD collection came out, it wasn't the greatest
of introductions. I almost exclusively ignored Jak 1 because it had no guns and
it relied on collecting an x amount of collectibles to continue, which I wasn't
into at the time. Jak 2 and 3 engaged me more but something about them still
felt "off" to me. I felt like I wanted the Jak series to be something
like Ratchet and Clank since they looked so similar. It took me at least from
2011 to 2014 to beat all 3 games and I was lukewarm on the trilogy for a while.
Compared to other Sony platformers like Ape Escape, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and
Clank, the Crash sequels and the Spyro Sequels. Jak never appealed to me as much.
Then I played Jak 1 again on PS4 back in 2019 and I was much more
"experienced" and more "well rounded" gamer at that time. I
played a much bigger variety of games by that point and I also appreciated
level design in games more. All though my bias is still mainly fps games and
stealth games. Jak 1 came to PS4 not too long ago, and I heard it was very good
when it came to level design. For the most part, the game really holds up. Jak
1 had great level design and a really well done interconnected world which all
felt seemless to explore. Naughty Dog did a great job with what the PS2 can do.
My experience with collectathons were mostly just the Spyro and Ape Escape and
while I enjoyed those games, I feel like Jak hit the right balance of being
noob friendly for people who don't actively play the genre, while also being an
interesting game in it's own right. Spyro sequels in general can be quite
ridiculous in the amount of shit you had to collect at times but Jak felt much
more forgiving in the collectibles. Jak 1's level design was so well done that
I even got the optional Scout Files for the levels too which I normally never
do. Well, Jak 1 does borrow from other games, it does enough on it's own to the
point where it's still a good game in it's own right.
And boy this now leads to me to the Jak Sequels. I'll be straight up honest
here in that I haven't recently played Jak 2 and only played 3 and honestly? I
don't even want to touch the former, the lack of checkpoints is the reason why,
and before you call me a "noob" or a "casual", here's the
thing, Jak 2's game design is so unbelievably flawed like a super big empty
world to traverse, terrible combat, terrible missions, terrible driving
controls with mandatory races, terrible hoverboard controls, too many gameplay
aspects that isn't platforming, that the lack of checkpoints is just going to
make these problems standout more. You have redo large amounts of content with
the same sub par game design and it just makes the above mentioned flaws way
more obvious and noticeable. I like CoD campaigns despite their flaws but since
they have a quick roller coaster feel and they are checkpointed well enough to
the point where before the flaws really start to show, they are over and I
generally have a good time. Jak 2, is just a long ass mess of a game and it's
lack of checkpoints just make all it's issues more obvious. I'll admit, that I
don't demand a big challenge out of games but I can appreciate it when done
well, Crash 4 and from what I played of Shadow Tactics do a good enough of job
even if playing them exhaust the crap out of me. Jak 2 is not one of those
games.
Okay, I rambled about difficulty long enough, let's get to the meat to the
reason why I dislike the Jak Sequels. To put it simply, they are just souless sequels
that just cash in on what's popular at the time. I hate the word
"souless" but it fits the Jak Sequels well mainly because all they
did was just copy off other games and mixed it into a blender and hope they can
somehow create an identity out of it. They have the open world of GTA but you
can't interact with the world in any meaningful way, this is a problem with GTA
too but Jak, it's just more obvious since at least people who don't play games
much can enjoy raising the wanted level, kill random people and run over people
and do dumb stuff in GTA where in Jak 2 and 3, it's just open world because GTA
had it. The side missions are barely there and they are hardly anything
interesting. And to add off to all this, all the actual missions take place outside
of the open world meaning that the open world is just window dressing overall
and it could all be a level select menu. Then there is the errand boy nature of
the missions. Every mission just consists of Jak doing something for someone.
It's just, "hey Jak do this thing", "hey Jak do that
thing". It robs the character of any kind of agency and this is a problem
when the game is unbelievably story driven and the whole plot revolves around
the world getting destroyed any moment. It never feels like Jak is the one in
control of his destiny. This can apply to many open world games but these are
sequels to one of if not the best collectathon platformer I ever played, so
this was just pathetic to see.
I will give Jak 3 this, it at least trimmed the open world down considerably to
the point where it's much easier to get around, where Jak 2 a good 55% of the
game was driving to the next mission point with the crappy driving controls.
The world still feels lifeless and boring compared to Jak 1.
Then there is the hoverboard. I don't have much experience with Skateboarding
games, so I will leave this short. What made the Tony Hawk games appealing was
that the levels facilitated all these cool and crazy tricks and rack up points
to get a high score. Jak 2 and 3 doesn't have this, it's just skateboarding
mixed in with platform challenges and it doesn't add much to the core gameplay
at all since the appeal of Tony Hawk is to mess around while Jak 2 and 3
literally has to shove in mechanics that feel out of place in a platformer.
Now here is the combat. This is what really grinds my gears. It's almost
amazing how Naughty Dog never got combat right until the Last of Us because
this combat system isn't good at all. First of all, it suffers from Ratchet and
Clank 2002's problem of the lack of strafing and all combat mainly consists of
is using weapons and tricks that can attack enemies from both left and right
because the player can't move left and right. In Ratchet 2002's case it's using
area of effect weapons like the grenade glove and the Tesla Claw and Jak 2's
case it was using the Assault Rifle spin attack and Jak 3's case, it's using
the Assault Rifle with bouncing shots because it covers the enemies from left
and right and as well as blindspots. Jak 3 gives you way more weapons than 2
but at the same time, you never get to actually use them much because the
game's mission variety feels so uneven but more on that later. In Jak 2, you
get Dark Jak but he is so useless since you rarely get eco energy to use him
and he's just not useful in battle since enemies use guns and you lose guns
when you are Dark Jak. In Jak 3, you get Light Jak but the only useful ability
he uses that you want to use is the healing since it makes the tedious combat
encounters go by faster. Then there is the enemies themselves, Novcanno said it
best in his Jak 2 video but the big problem with Jak 2 and by extension 3's
combat is that enemies have projectile attacks disguised as a hitscan. For
example, enemies will have attacks that will miss but every 3rd shot, you get
hit by them and there is no sure way of dodging them and some enemies literally
just hit without any way to properly dodge them, and this is what destroys Jak
2 and 3's combat. Compared to the Ratchet Sequels where you can strafe PLUS every
attack can be dodged since enemies use projectiles, Jak just feels like it just
added third person shooting because hey third person shooters like Max Payne
were popular at the time. People often bash tps games from this era but games
like Red Dead Revolver, Transformers Prelude to Energon, Suffering 1 and 2, the
before mention Ratchet Sequels, Max Payne 1 and 2 to name a couple at least
knew they were doing regarding combat encounters. Jak 2 and 3 just added third
person shooting because other games did it.
Now, mini games and mission variety. Jak 2 and 3 really suffer from having
variety for the sake of variety. There is so much other crap in both these
games that you would legit forget that these games are supposed to be
platformers. Jak 2 has a crap load of mini games, random missions that have
nothing to do with platforming and lots and I mean LOTS of driving. Jak 3 is
the example I will use when discussing this. In Jak 3, when you start the game,
you do some platforming and some shooting, then after that you do a bunch of
racing and mini games and then you get rewarded a fucking weapon mod. Wait,
what? I didn't even do any shooting for a while and I get rewarded something
that I don't even know gives me an advantage in combat? I haven't done combat in
a while. And Jak 3 is full of this, you will do a platforming mission once
every 6 missions if that and then it's back to more mini games and shooting.
The game is so ashamed of it's platforming origins to appeal to bigger
demographic that it's almost funny to me. The platforming can be pretty
enjoyable when you do it but you have to go through mini games, weak ass
shooting, driving and a bunch of other boring crap for you to get there. The
desert sections have even less platforming that the Haven City levels. There is
so much driving in the latter that I legit thought I was playing a racer
crossed with a bootleg version of Twisted Metal.
In conclusion, these Sequels are basically, the examples when I think of
"souless" sequels that missed the point and were only made to cash in
off trends than to make actual well made sequels. Hell, this feels like a
precursor to Uncharted in how it's more of a mini game collection than an
actual full on game.
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