Finally a gameplay experience that compares to Ubi-Soft's Rayman 2--only with the emphasis on speed and bounce instead of the more quirky atmosphere of Rayman. Years ago, I suppose, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy would have probably been a pretty standard game: run here, power thing with orbs, run there, power thing with orbs, etc. It's a formula that might seem restrictive on paper, but Naughty Dog has provided enough scenario changes to keep the search for these things rewarding.
The game operates on the pretense that Jak and his little muskrat friend Daxter must collect power cells in order to operate certain machines or cross certain bridges so that ultimately Daxter can be turned back into his normal form. In other words, collect power cells until you are blue in the face and you'll beat the game. Power cells are retrieved by completing certain tasks in each of the areas that you visit--ranging from chasing gophers back into their little holes to collecting seven little boxed up fairy mosquito things in each level. It's shallow, right. Very shallow, but the game is fun so you keep collecting. The power cells are merely a means to moving Jak around in this 3D free-roaming world and feeling like you're getting something out of it. This does not particularly matter, though, because most of the goals Naughty Dog has set out for you to complete are great fun, especially when you start having to move back and forth between the levels. Usually this sort of back-peddling would be tedious, but the world that has been created here is completely seamless. There are no load-times between the different worlds and on rare occasions you can actually see the other worlds before or ahead of you from certain lookout points.
The graphics in the game are truly amazing too. While some of the textures may be a little bland and typical, the fluid nature of the game is absolutely astounding. The animations of the characters and enemies are completely fluid and wonderful. The amount of polygons Naughty Dog's game engine is able to squash onto the screen at one time is completely amazing, and one wonders how a system with only 32 MB can do this where some PC games, where just the video card has [at least] twice as much as that, can't even come close.
The sound effects are also top notch. I haven't heard voice acting that's of this quality in quite awhile and with the exception of one or two characters, it's the best I've ever heard. Daxter's comments throughout the game are generally amusing, though sometimes you have to wonder what exactly they were thinking when they wrote those. Every sound effect is clear and the music always fits the scene in an almost organic way. It's definitely a perfect match-up.
If you've been looking for a good platformer that isn't on rails like Crash 4 or Klonoa 2, Jak and Daxter is the best available. It inches past Rayman 2 because of its lack of loading time. This is definitely one of the more amusing games with rewarding gameplay to grace a system in quite awhile. How encouraging is it to see Naughty Dog take a chance on a completely new franchise on a next generation system? Instead of pumping out by-the-books renditions of the same game, Naughty Dog tried something new. Why don't other game developers do this? Of course, one could look at the abundance of breakable crates and Jak's spinner-attack style and assume that this just Crash in disguise, but look at the graphical advances and sound advances and everything else. Naughty Dog definitely has a formula, but they're not content to rest their laurels in one place like other developers who seem to think that a big name will simply sell their game and that's all they need to produce.
Naughty Dog has developed an excellent platformer here and if you've been wavering on whether or not to buy it, go ahead and pick it up. The world presented here is dynamic enough to deserve more than one trip through--especially if you just ran straight through the first time, which is certainly an option. There's tons to explore here, and if you're not interested, you're losing out. 92/100.
-Jake
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