Jak and Daxter
The Precursor Legacy
System: Playstation 2
Review written March, 2008
Jak & Daxter is a typical 3D platformer. Like Donkey Kong 64, it has you run around shapeless levels gathering doodads that are scattered about.
I think navigating platforms over bottomless pits is more exciting and engaging than collecting items in an empty (at least empty of obstacles), open field. The designers of Jak & Daxter must be aware of and agree with this view; that is why they chose as a climax the stage "Gol and Maia's Citadel", whose paths of rotating, shifting, suspended or falling blocks are reminiscent of Super Mario 64's "Tick Tock Clock" and "Rainbow Ride" (which in turn were among the better stages in that game). But they miscalculated by delaying such features until the final quarter of the game.
Perhaps humor is supposed to hold our interest until then. Jak's adventures begin when his best friend Daxter is transmogrified into a meerkat by some mysterious black goo (an environmental subtext is obvious but understated). As the pair journey to find sages that might restore Daxter, Daxter remains an arrogant smart ass whose new appearance is no discouragement from flirting with women. When you gain an important item, Daxter performs goofy victory dances, and when you die he quips sarcastic encouragements or lines like, "Better you than me!" His antics, however, are merely amusing rather than hilarious. Jak himself is given neither dialogue nor personality.
Nothing else is more compelling at the beginning. Games like J&D suggest an attitude that their very three dimensional nature, and associated expansive worlds and freedom of movement, is alone sufficient attraction. This complacence relieves their designers from considering (and thus utilizing) what advantages 3D could truly confer.
Videogaming's 3D mode is new enough that any challenges within it would require creativity and ingenuity to design, and fresh strategies and skills to overcome. But Jak is not challenging. 3D worlds can have more distant horizons to explore, and vast volumes where artifacts and treasures may be hidden. But compared to other adventure games, exploration in Jak lacks significance. The discovery of the sixth palace in Zelda 2, a culmination of a series of mysteries and untamed locales, is far more momentous than simply finding a few orbs out of two thousand, most often by simply wandering onto them, in Jak. Without form and focus, Jak's freedom resembles sloppiness.
2 1/2 Stars
