3.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of Jak 3.

The end of the Jak and Daxter trilogy. I’ve always thought this was the weakest of the three, but on this playthrough, it was undoubtedly my favorite. It’s sad that Naughty Dog moved on from this franchise, after a solid racing game, of course; as was their tradition, I just wanna know where’s my fucking Uncharted racing game? Jak 3 is when they really seemed to fine tune everything, and really hit a healthy stride. There’s still a lot I don’t like, but it’s a good game. For some reason, they decided to use the numeral 3 instead of Roman numerals like they did in Jak II. I mean, who cares, but seriously, why? The game picks up two years after Jak II ends, and the opening scene is Jak and Daxter getting dumped as in the desert wasteland cus they did something bad in Haven City. Solid opening for the game, and it introduces us to a new city and half of the games hub world. A desert city called Spargus, and it’s accompanying desert to go with it. Haven City still shows up halfway through the game, but it’s waaaay smaller, and streamlined for the better. I gotta say, I absolutely love this move. Jak II’s map was so fuckin boring, moving around it became such a chore, and while some players may find traveling through the desert area boring, I loved it. The lore of the Jak and Daxter world only thickens in this outing, and it’s great. I really do love the world these games are set in, and I wish Naughty Dog would have done more the way Insomniac kept making Ratchet and Clank games. There’s some fun cosmic jokes at the end of the game, and the wider world has some Dune and Mad Max vibes. I did not like Jak’s character in Jak II, but now that he’s a little more established, I was totally fine with the surly, unstoppable action hero that Jak has become. Daxter is still in fine form, the character in this trilogy that refuses to quit. Keira, a character that’s been a will-they-or-won’t-they love interest for Jak since the first game, has been sidelined this time around. I read online that it’s because of voice actor changeover, Keira went from being a somewhat major character to having like four lines. It’s not like the voice actor is bad either, it’s Tara Strong for gods sakes, I guess the developers just felt like it would be too jarring of a change. This game plays better than its predecessors. Combat, platforming, the JET-board…the controls and physics are so much smoother. The hover vehicles are still here, and they control more or less the same way, but the main vehicles spotlighted in Jak 3 are essentially souped up dune buggies. And yes, by the grace of god, they have wheels. No more slidey, horseshit racing on those goddam hover bikes. The driving missions in the game aren’t perfect, but they’re fun. My big gripe with this game is there was just way too much fat. They introduce light and dark eco powers, a sort of energy source that shows up throughout the series. The powers you’re given are so underutilized, that the game has to give you prompts almost every time they’re used. The abilities given were just wholly unnecessary. The game rewards players with gun mods and upgrades pretty frequently, and it never really feels rewarding or earned. That being said, the weapon options increase from four guns by endgame of Jak II, to 12. 3 for each colored eco type, and color types share ammo. Some of the guns are great. The guns are really unique, and I certainly had my favorites. Running through areas mashing the fire button with the Beam Reflexor, a bouncy bullet gun, was so much fun. I will say, you become pretty overpowered a little too quick. I rarely worried about ammo depleting or having any serious trouble with combat encounters. This ties into a bigger issue with Jak 3 as a whole. The developers definitely listened to criticism of Jak II, and significantly lowered the difficulty. Sometimes to the better, like with racing challenges and mini-games; but to the worse with combat. I had very little problems burning through this. The challenge was just sort of gone. Again, like with Jak 2, I did not get that sweet, sweet platinum. Foiled again, by those fucking Precursor Orbs. This time around, it was more a thing where I got to the end and had 30 left to find. There’s no indicator of where they could be, just lost in some obscure area of the game. Aside from going through every area to find them all, I don’t know what I could’ve done. So that’s annoying, but they’re meant to be tough to find, and used as currency to unlock art viewers, cheats, unlimited ammo, weapon upgrades, stuff like that. The Orbs aren’t as difficult to get this time around, but there are way more of them. I just really didn’t want to spend the time to find them all. Just to reiterate, I fuckin love the world of Jak and Daxter. It really does have a unique flavor to it. I’m going to play the racing game and Lost Frontier, the latter of which is an often maligned sequel that Naughty Dog did not make. I’ve never played it, and I don’t have high hopes, but I just want more of this world. Maybe in this age of reboots we’ll get a new Jak game. Fingers crossed. But for now, we’ll have to settle for this original run. While I don’t really feel like it holds up, it is undeniably an essential piece to the PS2 era of mascot platforming. Give it a whirl.