A FAR CRY FROM THE PAST WE KNEW
Also for: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PS Vita
See how far we've come. The original PS2-classic
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy reared its ugly head for
Playstation 4-owners in 2017, and showed everyone exactly how to make a decent
game a little worse. The PS4-version does little but adapt to contemporary screen resolution standards. It has no subtitles, hardly any of the desired configuration
options, and an overall unsteady control scheme allegedly worse than the
PS2-original's (I cannot confirm nor deny this myself). That is hardly the way to make a platforming game fun. Get with the times, man.
And it's baffling to me that a game can be released in 2017 - even if it
practically is a straight port - without an apparent option to change camera
inversion. Here, by default, the Y- and X-axis are both inverted, which is great for no one but the tiniest fraction of gamers. The X-axis problem is fixable, but you
won't find the solution on-screen: Go into the "Graphic options" menu, then
hold "up" on the D-pad, press R3, and Bob's your uncle. Just don't expect
any sort of feedback saying that the controls have changed.
Finally learning that, I was able to claw my way back into Jak and Daxter, a
game I haven't played since the mid-aughties. Naughty Dog's mascot
3D-platformer is sold separately or as part of the
Jak and Daxter Trilogy bundle, and at least this entry hasn't aged well
on many levels. Saying that, I admit it is still enjoyable enough to warrant a
playthrough, at least in the wasteland of new releases we're currently in. I wasn't
actively annoyed with it until the last few sections, where the janky and
unreliable controls made me replay long sections of the game.
The game is an unabashed collectathon without clear direction and a somewhat
vague end goal. You, in the role of Jak, need to stop an evil duo from
spreading a magical force, called dark eco, across the world. If unleashed it
will corrupt everything it touches. To stop them, you need to reach and enlist
the aid of the three sages of red, blue and yellow eco. The general tone is
lighthearted, with a bare-bones story deliberately brushed aside to make room
for the gameplay. It holds up decently to this day - as long as the
controls don't pull the rug from under you.
You run, jump and smash your way across a few worlds of wildly variyng
themes. Along for the ride is your sidekick Daxter, a human-turned-ottsel with an annoying
streak. During cutscenes, he constantly winks at the camera, or screams, or
tries his best to outperform whatever role Jar-Jar served in
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. He simply tries too hard to be
the funny guy.
Not that he has much competition. The pointy-eared Jak is a silent protagonist, which rarely appeals to me,
especially in a third-person view where you actually see the guy. And what's
the point of having a duo when one half is silent? It completely sidesteps the
opportunity to write great banter. Instead Daxter does all the talking, while
Jak does all the heavy lifting.
That lifting consists of running around and collecting power cells left behind by some ancient, extinct race. Some of them you obtain by
simply going to hard-to-reach places. Others are hidden away and can
be found only by carefully looking around. You get some as rewards for
surviving unexpected challenges. Some you can trade for, and some are quest
rewards - and on it goes. The list is long. A handy quest log in the menus
keeps track of ways to find more. Once you reach a certain threshold, you can
access a new hub world, where the collecting can continue.
It's a fun and challenging gameplay loop. Each hub world offers multiple
options and paths to pursue. Thankfully, the game is not very strict on power cell requirements. If you find one section particularly tedious or
frustrating, you might not even need to go there at all. Some of them rely on
obvious-but-fun puzzle mechanics, where you charge yourself with eco of a
certain color to obtain a timed ability. Blue makes you quicker, yellow allows
you to fire projectiles, green heals you right up and red makes you stronger.
A few offshoots allow you to play a janky arcade racer on a hoverbike (or a
"zoomer" as they're called here), which is tough and not always quite fair.
Other mini-games include fishing, turret shooting and sliding obstacle
courses. They are well-made, quite tough, and seemingly designed around
the notion of dying and trying again. I don't mind these, because each failed
attempt at least gets you a little closer to success.
To me, the late-game precise platforming parts is where the game starts to
falter. It matters little in the early sections where the checkpoints come at
decent intervals. But close to the end, the game starts to rely more on
verticality. Many rooms require you to climb and reach high ledges just to
grab a single power cell. It takes quite a while. If you miss a jump or pole swing
close to the top you fall, and no matter if you die or not, you must start
again from scratch.
This would have been completely acceptable if it felt like it was entirely up
to player skill. But sometimes the camera is too zoomed in on Jak to show
exactly where the next platform is located. And to make matters worse, the
double jump does not work reliably, often making Jak fall short of a platform.
Jak's ability to automatically grab on to ledges and bars also is down to pure
chance.
Combat seems added mostly because of genre conventions. You've got two standard moves; a
sliding punch - an awful move that often caused me
to slide off a ledge - and a whirlwind attack. None of them are upgradeable,
and none of them more powerful than the other. At least you can use the
whirlwinds to extend your jumps a little. The general notion is that you want
to avoid combat if possible, because killing enemies only works towards
restoring your health.
I would have liked the general level design if the game controlled properly.
It rewards your curiosity and experimentation well enough. The secrets you find by looking around with the camera, following a trail of platforms to detect a collectible at the end, is sometimes genius-level design. It's the getting there that occasionally sucks. The camera's inherent quirks, when paired with the unreliable
double-jumping and movement jank, makes for some infuriating moments. This is the flaw that brings (at least) the PS4-version down from good to half-decent.
Besides, the world and character design have aged poorly enough on the
technical level that it affects the aesthetics, however stylishly cartoony and
inventive they look. The maps offer a wide variety of cool monsters and visual
themes - like jungles, mines and snowy mountains - but early 3D art will never
speak to me the way old pixel art does. But I admit I do enjoy the general openness
and the attention to detail, like a day-and-night cycle that makes the world
shine with an ever-changing light.
Upon its original release in 2001, Jak and Daxter might have raised the bar a
little. But it will always remind me of a time when I nearly abandoned video
games altogether, due to the step back in visual quality and unintuitive
contols. Game designers were still testing the waters and were slow to reach a gentlemen's agreement on control schemes.
In the end, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is a mixed
bag. It certainly is neat for its time, and gets a lot of creative flourishes on
display. The lighthearted atmosphere makes me cool off quickly whenever Jax fails to double jump across the same gap for the third time straight. And
the game always has plenty of alternative paths for me to go down. I'm not really required to
make that stupid jump.
For the sake of posterity, I'm glad a new generation gets a chance to play the series. But I hate that the Precursors had a better time with it than the young ones ever will. Is that really the legacy we want to leave behind?
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