Jak 2 needs to go down in history as one of the worst video game sequels of all time. Basically shat on everything the first game did well, and turned it into a poor man's GTA clone for edgy 10 year olds, with the worst gameplay I've ever experienced in the genre. Even traversing around the bland, grey city is made annoying by how shitty the vehicles are and how poorly everything is laid out. It's as if the devs went out of their way to half-ass or even quarter-ass everything. The checkpoints are legendary for being few and far between, and the gunplay isn't even passable by PS1-era standards. By chasing trends they ensured the series had no identity of it's own, and it's no wonder it fizzled out with the PS2.
The story is also disconnected and poorly laid out. Missions just sorta "happen" and everything feels inconsequential. The final boss just sort of dies, and the game just sort of ends. If I were to make my own Jak 2, it would continue to improve the 3D platforming mechanics that were already in place, and expand the existing world of the first game with new and interesting locations and ideas that hadn't been done yet. For what it's worth, the first game was a proper evolution of the titles that came before it, but those mechanics were cut short before they could be improved even further. It's a damn shame.
Not reading all that, Jak 2 is based and better than 3.
Thank you for your input, it means a lot to me. Feels good at night knowing you have the same voting rights as I do.
Somebody post the quote from the jak2 dev who said mario64 was obsolete or whatever
Are any of the other games in the series good? I played the first one for the first time last year and loved it, but I couldn't even finish Jak II because driving back and forth in that boring town just got exhausting. The only other game I've tried is the Daxter game on PSP which is kinda meh but I didn't hate as much as Jak II
Only played the first and second games, courtesy of their recent fan-made PC ports. Will play Jak 3 if that ever gets the same treatment, but from what I hear it's just more of the same and even more schizophrenic than Jak II was.
Jak X
Don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret.
this was the only one where the hero mode actually made a huge difference.
to everybody
what would you say is harder to complete, Jak II 100% (all 286 orbs) or Jak X hero mode 100% (all gold medals)?
Funny enough, the spinoffs (Jak X, Daxter) are pretty damn good. I'd even say Jak X is the best game in the series.
Daxter is great.
it's fine. I'm playing it now and I enjoy the platforming/run and gun sections. The game should have ditched the vehicles and driving. Guns were good to add. Having an open hub world you can traverse around to go to levels is good. i don't mind some of the additions or the change in tone.
>The final boss just sort of dies, and the game just sort of ends.
that is how games sort of work
In 8-bit Nintendo games maybe, but even Naughty Dog's Crash games had some sort of fanfare and an ending. Jak II ends on a whimper, and the final boss doesn't even die by your own hand. He just bashes his head on something. It's a complete farce.
he dies after you frick him up badly enough to the point where he can't fly straight and smashes into the rift gate. if he wasn't beaten up so badly, he would've he escaped, so it still counts as you doing it, even if it's a bit indirect. now the ending itself tries to tie-up the whole time-traveling plot point and set up the first game, which was a terrible idea to begin with, but it's a perfectly adequate and predictable way to wrap-up the mess they had created up to that point.
the game ends with you saying farewell to your mentor, two of your compatriots having a flirtatious romance scene and then a fireworks celebration at a bar. you can be disappointed with that but saying "where's the fanfare?" is an absurd lie.
Jak 1 just ends with Gol and Mia falling into a pool followed by Jak and Daxter dancing.
it's not correct to say that the jak games end without any fanfare. they all finish up with a light-hearted scene where the good guys are celebrating together. but then again, they are kind of lame when you compare them to the epilogues and funny endings from Crash.
To be fair, you can just skip the final boss in the first Crash game and have an incredible anticlimactic ending.
I remember that's the first ending I saw, because I was autistic about getting every gem before fighting cortex, and I was left incredibly confused when I saw the credits roll. Like wtf happens to cortex in that scenario? you just escape with tawna and call it a day, cortex gets to keep his lab and all in this alternate ending?
Yeah, he's just kinda left to his devices and continues fricking things up while Crash fricks off with his smoking hot gf to whofrickingcares island.
game was disappointing, but I still like around 80% of the missions. unfortunately, it is one of those games that will piss you off a lot at some point in your first play-through no matter what, so I don't mind people here venting about it.
It deserves to be remembered as a great sequel to a great game, that pushed the gameplay and challenge to new and interesting levels. But unfortunately it has a group of people working around the clock to discredit it.
More evidence that gaming died when it became too mainstream. Liking Jak II should be cause for dismissal.
Jak 2 is less-mainstream than plenty of older games, so I don't really know what point you're supposedly trying to make (if anything). It seems like schizophrenia to me, so I cannot really be heavily invested.
If you can't comprehend the obvious, I don't know what to tell you. Let me spell it out for you.
"Zoom zoom with shit taste play old shit game. Zoom zoom with shit taste not know old shit game is shit, so zoom zoom think it good!"
It's pretty obvious what you're attempting to say. But it fundamentally proposes axioms unilaterally which I do no agree with, therefore it's schizophrenic and I'm not invested.
I always liked 3 the least. Not because it's bad, but because it simply feels easier.
It is easier. Part of this is adjusting for Jak II's schizophrenic difficulty (good) and part of this is that the second yellow gun is ridiculously OP. Once you get it, there is no reason not to spend the rest of the game spin-jumping and spamming that thing bar a few specific enemies that aren't weak to yellow and all the mini-games where none of your skills are relevant at all.
>"Zoom zoom with shit taste play old shit game. Zoom zoom with shit taste not know old shit game is shit, so zoom zoom think it good!"
A zoomer is more likely to prefer Jak 1 because it's a piss easy game where you check shit off a list.
Jak 2 filters grown men to this day, it's basically Naughty Dog's equivalent to Super Mario Bros. 2.
I remember Jake 2 being the first time I was disappointed by the direction of the vidya industry and I was like 12 or 13.
I consciously thought to myself, "making Jak edgy is extremely gay and moronic". nevertheless, I beat the game and still feel the same way to this day. it is still gay and moronic
ikr? we have this same thread very often.
>previous
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/10329438
I wish we had some more Jak 3 threads if anything, but it doesn't seem like as nearly many people ever got to it.
Jak 3 used to be my favorite in the series. Then after a replay it was the OG. Then after a different replay it was Jak II. I do think that Jak 3 has some ideas that Jak II desperately needed (Light Jak, desert driving, checkpoints that mean something) but also that after awhile it was just throwing too much bullshit at you (all eight new guns in particular, way too many minigame style missions).
I love the whole Monk Temple/Volcano sequence every time though, plus the Mines and getting to Haven City Again, and the Dark Maker Tower where the farms used to be. What are some of your likes and dislikes?
>after awhile it was just throwing too much bullshit at you
this was the main takeaway for me. real shame too, because I thought most of those ideas were pretty good, but not all given the time to develop. It felt like Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin just wanted to ram through every last one of their ideas, because it was their last Jak game. If they had just focused on further developing like the top 30% of mechanics, shit could've been great.
as for the game we got, I liked Act I quite a bit, but going back to Haven was such a drag. the temple, volcano, mines, and sewers were pretty decent, but it sucks how getting even the most basic weapon upgrades trivializes the combat, on top of now having light AND dark jak abilities. they could've made some really interesting enemies that would've be resistant to certain gun mods to improve the combat. Most of the mini-games didn't bother me too much, but the ones that did really soured me on the whole concept. Like that fricking pac-man shit was the worst one in the whole series.
Vehicles were alright. the buggies were better than zoomers, but that's really not saying much. most wasteland missions I liked, but the basic traversal was pretty annoying. why did they have to muck up a nice, quiet drive by spamming you with those stupid marauders? there were a few moments where I was driving along the coast, where none of them spawn, and those were some of my best memories of the game.
absolutely, jak 2 was killer and loved by every kid I knew who also liked jak 1. homosexual zoomers are just trying to sound hip
There’s a reason why people focus on third party exclusives for the PS2. Sony’s first party output during the sixth gen was largely bad.
Especially true if you’re from the U.S. and don’t care about soccer or Gran Turismo.
we have known for this for 20 years. zoomers are too moronic to know and understand the difference.
I really like the art direction. It's impressive how they did it so well on the hardware.
Jak 2 PC port is in beta testing. Can't wait. I love Jak 2 and 3
1 and 3 suck too. It's just exploring a world that looks like a generic clusterfrick and with a moveset that feels like shit compared to Mario. Then in 3 you just're mostly shooting like a braindead moron
What is it like hating fun as much as you do?
it literally has better gameplay than the PS2 gtas. the only thing you can really hold against it is the shitty traffic design which admittedly is a huge pain in the ass.
>the gunplay isn't even passable by PS1-era standards
this is flat out wrong. go back and compare. jak's light aim assist combined with analog turning is hellva alot more playable than shit like syphon filter. in the context of light platformer combat it's fine.
Syphon Filter (the psx trilogy) is a joy to play. Aiming sensitivity is perfect and you will be scoring perfect headshots after 20 minutes of getting used to the gamepla, but you have to use the dpad. Analog was a gimmick with those ps1 games.
>Syphon Filter (the psx trilogy) is a joy to play
no
>Aiming sensitivity is perfect
no
you just need to get good anon
You need to have your head examined.
Wow, Nice argument there buddy
Go back
>getting filtered by a kid's game
Filtered shitters ITT. The ND Jak games + Daxter are all great. That other PSP game was trash though.
I played 1-3 for the first time ever last year and felt the same way. The first one was a decent action platformer but 2 and 3 tried to be GTA and Tony Hawk and too much racing shit. Was probably better at the time but has objectively aged like dog shit.
>the gunplay isn't even passable by PS1-era standards
You shit at the game or something?
Jak 2's gunplay is basic, but it's pretty damn good for early 3D games thanks to how it mixes it with the actual gunplay. Punches flowing into a gun shot is always great.
But did he ever kill Praxis?
No.
kek gotta love the based jak 2meister, filtering shitters for over 20 years
go back to Ganker rasslin homosexual
we don't sign our posts here
im guessing here is where the game ended for many (or not long after this)
https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Jak_II_missions
just looking at the mission flowchart, there really doesn't seem to be THAT many where I could imagine someone rage quitting. off the top of my head the worst ones I recall were
>Blow up ammo at fortress
>Get seal piece at Water Slums
>Sewer escort mission
>Underport Mech/Sig missions
>Any racing mission
there's other bad ones of course, but those the ones I'd bet cause 90% of rage posts. For me the ones I most despised were the racing, but mostly because they also made them side missions that were significantly worse.
for nearly all missions that gave me a lot of trouble at first, it turned out that I was being moronic and just taking a bad approach. like for hunting metal heads and blowing up the eco wells in 2 minutes, I didn't realize initially that I could open up the map to plan my route and look up enemy locations. pretty much every mission has a "proper" way of doing that is very consistent, as long as take a bit of time to consider your options.
I don't like the alternate perspective missions because I have poor depth perception and physically struggle with the angles and movement they go with, especially during the second chase with the giant metal head. It wouldn't be so bad if the game wasn't awful with checkpoints.
I think those ones are pretty universally hated. I also disliked the one Daxter mission with the spider chase precisely because of that reason. he has different momentum compared to jak, which takes getting used to, but instead of giving you some time to adjust, the game just dumps you in a forward facing chase sequence. you can't even tell which way you're supposed to go initially, since it's the first time the game forces this perspective on you. And for people who never played any Crash games, I'd imagine they were doubly confused. ND completely botched the first playable Daxter moment of the series.
Can confirm I was filtered by this segment as a kid. Still need to go back and play it.
it's baffling how someone approved it given that it's only the 4th real mission (not counting meeting Kor). And it's entirely because of that stupid green filter and fish eye effect they use to frick with your perspective. It made it so hard to see the tripwires and where you were going, that I had to stand really close to the TV and just long jump it while tanking hits. at least that part is brief, and the rest of the mission is not too bad, but it leaves a nasty impression compared to the previous and subsequent missions.
I was stuck on that for such a weirdly long time as a kid but I powered through. It definitely caused me the most problems of everything. For a few weeks my Jak II experience was mostly beating my head against that wall or exploring the very small part of the city you could access at that point in the story.
Just replayed both 1 and 2 courtesy of OpenGoal, and I gotta say, nah, you're wrong, get filtered, shitter.
Jak 1 is boring as shit collectathon garbage. Jak 2 may have shamelessly tried to cash-in on the success of GTA, but at least the combat and exploration and mission variety are much better than Jak 1 collectathon garbage.
My thoughts exactly.
Even more proof that GTA contributed massively to the decline of gaming. The "boring collectathon garbage" played objectively better and is about 100x more fun to play, because everything you do in Jak 1 has meaning. You are always collecting something, always accomplishing a goal.
In Jak 2, 80% of the time you're just driving around a boring ass grey city bumping into shit and wrecking your bike/car. It's a joke. If you think Jak 2 is more fun to play your IQ is no higher than 90 and you must also enjoy watching paint dry. Have better taste in games, Black person.
>You are always collecting something, always accomplishing a goal.
skinner-box brained moron. The actual mission and world design of Jak 2 was miles better, it just didn't have little stupid ass collectibles littered around everywhere to fuel your ADHD-riddled brain.
The missions in Jak 2 are absolutely moronic. Most are either "just reach this spot that's 5 mins away!", or "kill this enemy!". And are incredibly basic if you analyze them for more than second. You are Exhibit A as to why gaming should be gatekept from morons. They reuse the same three tiny maps ad nauseam and they call it a game lol.
>And are incredibly basic if you analyze them for more than second
and yet still much more complex and difficult than "bing bing wahoo jump on these platforms to get all these stupid fricking collectible trash and then repeat"
Jak 1 has no interesting platforming design or challenge, it's literally just a giant number go up skinner box for morons (same with most collectathons)
No not more complex, not even a tiny bit more. All the missions in Jak 2 aren't even as complex as Crash Bandicoot levels. They require no skill, the devs just made them obnoxious by making the checkpoints shit. You like shitty games, friend, and therefore your opinion is discarded.
they're two completely different approaches to gameplay. it's like arguing whether crash or spyro is better. There's plenty of room for both, since it's a choice between a focused action game vs a laid-back exploration game. some like just one and hate the other or like/hate both of them. it's all fine.
as for jak, I liked both jak 1's collecting and jak 2's mainline mission structure. where I think that 2 dropped the ball hard was with the side missions, which were mind-numbingly tedious, with a few of them being far more frustrating than any one story mission.
when daxter said "stupid precursor CRAP" i got really scared that i was gonna get in trouble
still sBlack person at this one every time
I feel like the game never gets enough credit for these real time cutscenes with high production values. Regardless of the plot, they had some superb voice acting, direction, and animation. The best ones were the short and funny ones, like the pipe one and precursor temple ones.
The one thing that made the biggest difference for me in terms of enjoying the game was just learning how to drive properly (in racing especially). That smoothed out many things, even the driving between missions didn't seem like a chore, not only because it was going quicker, but I also liked seeing how far I could get without fricking up. What really sucks is that the game starts you off in arguably the worst section for driving.
>What really sucks is that the game starts you off in arguably the worst section for driving.
Fricking this. The slums are a shitty first impression. Literally every other area in the game is better to drive in.
Which mission filtered you OP?