Jak 3

""Jak is back to put the smack on the wacked pack!""

Jak 3 is arguably the best game to come out for the PS2 thus far. The reasons are myriad. It has huge, polygon filled environments, sharp, tight gameplay in just about every variety imaginable and an interesting, epic storyline to follow as you play. There are several modes of play found in this game and almost all are done very well.

The epic nature of the game starts with the story. Jak 3 takes place one year after the preceding game and all is not well in Haven city. The city is under siege from all sides and the populace blames Jak. His dark eco powers have made him a pariah. He is banished from the city and left to die in the wastelands. He is rescued by Damas, the king of the wasteland haven of Spargus City. Gameplay starts there. Your adventure takes place in Spargus city, the wasteland, an altered Haven city and several other sub-areas. This is a story of war on a terrestrial and a cosmic level. As the final chapter of the precursor saga it works very well. It is interesting even with the hackneyed secondary plot secret. The revelation concerning the Precursors at the end is well worth all of the less interesting parts of the story though.

Jak 3 is a versatile action game in the vein of Jak II. Jak 3 in fact plays like Jak II with tighter, easier gameplay and the addition of the Twisted Metal/Halo style desert driving. Jak 3 is not quite as challenging as Jak II as it has more restart points and more focused objectives. The controls are rock solid. You seldom blame the game for your character dying. Each mission is rather short in a good way. Although it may take you a few times to complete some objectives the end is always in sight. There are hundreds of missions in the game and they are spread evenly through various gameplay styles.

Jak's main mode of gameplay is transversing the game map. The biggest area of the map in the game is the wasteland. I believe that I read somewhere that Haven city is 25 sq. miles. The wasteland is supposed to be ten times bigger than that. However big it is, it's way too big to “hoof it.” You will need to use one of several armored, armed dune buggies to make your way around the desert. Each handles differently with different jumping capabilities, mass, boost levels and different armaments. A lot of the actual missions involve using the various buggies.

In Spargus City the taun-taun like leaper lizards are the preferred mode of travel. In Haven city you can still “jack” hovercars GTA style to make your way around the city. If you have a moral opposition to carjacking the city is littered with random parked cars. Later in the game you re-receive the hoverboard from the second game. Once you have it you can use it any time you'd like. The hover board is slower than the other modes of transportation, but much faster than walking. You have to use the hover board in quite a few missions, so you should try and become familiar with it.

About a third of the actual mission based gameplay is platforming. In this respect it plays much like the first game. All the moves from Jak and Daxter are here. You can jump, roll-jump, spin jump, high jump, punch, spin-attack and jump smash. Jak 3, like Jak II, is a more aggressive game than the 1st one. The morphing gun from Jak II returns. It takes four kinds of ammunition and is pretty effective in blowing away your enemies. This time around each ammo type has three different gun modes. The gun has a semi-auto lock that works pretty well and you will soon find that the gun will be you main mode of attack.

You are also given a powerful mode of attack in the Dark Jak mode. When Jak absorbs enough Dark Eco he can become Dark Jak. In this time-limited form Jak can “berzerker rage” his way through a crowd of enemies. Jak has several attacks in this form and eventually he earns a new fireball attack. Dark Jak is not as necessary in Jak 3 as he was in Jak II. The ease of the game added to the much more powerful and versatile stable of weapons means that you will rarely need this alternate form of attack.

New to Jak 3 is “light Jak.” In this form he can use four new defensive and platforming abilities.. In his light form Jak can slow time, restore his own health, form a protective energy bubble and fly. The flight power is really, really cool. It just “feels” good.

This time around collecting those precursor orbs is more fun than it was in the past versions of the game. As you play the minigames to collect orbs or just find orbs hidden in plain sight throughout the game you can actively use them to buy secrets. The secrets range from debug style options that make the game even easier to a mission selector that allows you to play any one of the central missions.

The variety of gameplay found in Jak 3 is astounding. Naughty Dog doesn't dip their hands in as many pots as they did in Jak II, But what they liked from that game is more refined here. All of the gameplay modes are done well and work within the structure of the game. You can platform, race, do some on the rails shooting, go on a contra style killing spree, pilot a mech, wander around the city GTA style or wander around the wastelands Twisted Metal style. Even the escort missions are fun here.

It's not just gameplay that Jak 3 excels at doing. The overall presentation of the game is fantastic. The game showcases high quality voice acting, amazing game engine generated cinemas with emotive characters, and very fitting music. The graphics are, when taken as a whole, the most impressive on the PS2 thus far. As in the other Jak games you can choose to play Jak 3 in Progressive Scan mode with Dolby Prologic II surround sound. It is not a quantum leap over the awesome Jak II though…until you get into the wasteland. The huge, open, beautifully stark environment of the wasteland is beyond anything that you have seen on the PS2. It's big country to the horizon with no pop-up or draw in. All of the stages are huge and polygonally robust. As always this new Jak has seamless stage transitions with no loading. Although they lack the texture layering that gives most games a realistic quality the textures are sharp and detailed. Jak 3 has a Konami quality AA filter and the largest variety of visual effects that I can remember seeing in a PS2 game. It even has some low-rez bump mapping in the form of burnished “pounded” ornamental metal objects found in Spargus city, bark on the trees in the forest, the sand in the desert, and various surfaces in the metal head nest area.

The character animations are fluid and smooth which is very complimentary to the high poly central character models. My only complaint is that half of the time, because of the large environments, the framerate runs around 50 FPS instead of its target 60.

Jak3 is not as evolutionary as its predecessor. It does not evoke as big a “WOW” as Jak II,which was my former choice for the “best game on the PS2.” In the end though, it is a tighter, less frustrating, more fun and more beautiful game than Jak II. Jak 3 is the PS2's answer to Halo 2. This is the PS2's epic game with huge seamless environments, the status of ultimate technological showpiece for its system and the systems best game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/04, Updated 07/31/06