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Review by: GenoForPrez
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Reviewers Score:
9 / 10
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Posted: January 09, 2006
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Jak
3
System: PS2
Genre: Adventure/Third Person Shooter + Racing
Overall Rating: 9/10
Too much doo-dad collecting, but still pretty fun.
Review:
Storyline: 9/10
This game concludes the Jak and Daxter trilogy and answers a lot of
questions about the series in regard to the identities of Jak, the
mythical warrior Mar, and the mysterious "precursors". The
story begins with the city exiling Jak into the desert wasteland since
many people have grown suspicious of Jak's ties with the villians in Jak
2. They begin to feel that he may be partly responsible for the war. And
so Count Vegar, the game's villian, resolves to exiling Jak. But not
everyone agrees with the decision, including Ashelin, who secretly keeps
tabs on Jak and contacts him from the city. While in the desert, Jak is
discovered by Kleiver and Damas from the wastelander's city. They take
Jak back to their city and force him to prove his strength in an arena.
Through the game, Jak will fight for both Spargus and his new wasteland
allies while simultaneously unlocking secrets to the world and to
himself. There are a few surprise twists to the story, including one
very huge one, which I think some people probably wouldn't like. But I
think it was good story-telling and am glad the writers chose to do it.
Gameplay: 8/10
It's somewhat difficult to review the gameplay here since the game has
so much variety in its missions, but overall I'd say the gameplay is
great. Jak keeps his typical moves which include the spin attack,
uppercut, long jump, high jump, punch, etc. And he definitely keeps his
ability to transform into Dark Jak. The game also introduces some new
guns for Jak to tote around, some of which pack a serious punch. I was
fond of the Reflexor mod, but there are a total of 12 guns to choose
from, and they all have their own special kick. Jak 3 also establishes
Jak as not only a character who has been touched by Dark Eco, but a
character who can channel both dark and light energy. Consequently, Jak
gains some new "Light Jak" abillities. Also returning is Jak's
Jetboard which is used very often in the game, so it's wise to hone your
skills on it right away. The game also relies heavily on operation of
vehicles, most of which have some type of a gun mount. You will often
find yourself racing through the desert in the middle of a sandstorm,
blasting away at marauder vehicles who are trying to shoot you/ram you
into a fiery death. I also liked the Secret Unlock system where you
collect the skulls (or "skull gems") of defeated enemies and
cash them in to play skill games which earn you dark stones that can be
used to unlock secrets. Secrets are not cheats, but are rather
"bonuses" such as extra ammo, detonation duration, extra
vehicle toughness, faster jetboard, etc etc etc. It was a good system. I
liked it.
A fair amount of complaints or things I think could have been improved.
First, I wasn't always fond of the camera angles and the lack of control
over them. Through the entire game, the best you can do is move the
camera from side to side or in and out a bit. You absolutely cannot
raise the camera for a top/down view which is annoying when you're
trying to determine the length of a jump to decide if you should use a
standard or a long jump to scale it. Second, I think Jak's light and
dark abilities could have been used a little more. They don't receive as
much attention as I think they should have and I found it really
annoying that in the places where you are required to use those
abilities, the programmers would have you automatically transform to
Dark/Light Jak or else (or in addition) they would flash a large message
on the screen telling you specifically what to do. No matter how many
doors you break with Dark Jak, you will always get the "use dark
strike to break doors" message, even in the last levels of the
game. It's insulting to your intelligence. Third, the vehicles were
waaaay too sensitive. I applaud how realistic the driving was, but I
think they tried a bit too hard. When you're driving on sand, I realize
it's easy to spin out, but when a wide, non-violent turn on flat sand in
a car with huge traction spikes on its tires causes you to spin out?
Come on now. You have to give us something. And finally, the game
relies quite a bit on "doo-dad" collecting. You know the type.
Fly through all of these rings in time. Collect all of these little
thingy-ma-bobs in time. Kill all of these bad guys in time. You'll see a
lot of that type of thing. I usually frown on that. Lacks ingenuity.
Audio: 10/10
Very good audio in the game. The music is mostly subtle when in towns or
"safe" areas, usually falling to mere ambient sounds with a
sort of "wind chime" tune playing in the background. The
battle themes always arrive right on cue though, and are very effective.
Graphics: 10/10
Excellent graphic work, especially in the cutscenes. The one thing about
the graphics that stood out to me the most in the game was the use of
light. There were a lot of places in the game where fire would cast a
red glow on things, or where you would enter a dark room and the lights
would gradually brighten. And of course, they used the engine that
causes the game to continuously transition from day to night from night
to day, etc. They were very effective at having the day/night engine
cast different lighting on the scenery and the characters. They also
used a new tool for facial animations in this game which turned out very
well, especially in Count Vegar. It adds an extra pinch of realism to
the characters and greatly helps character development.
Replay Value:
9/10
Despite my complaints over the incessant collecting of doo-dads, I would
recommend this is a game with good replay value on account of its
variety. Every mission in the game is a little different so that you're
never quite doing the same thing twice. After I finished this game and
went back to the earlier levels to see how much I'd improved since the
beginning (always a fun thing to do), I got that feeling like "oh
wow, it's been a looong time since I've been here" and in a couple
places I even thought "oh wow! I forgot about that part!"
which is always a good sign for replay value. |
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