I understand the need to put something in the game that breaks the jump/kick gameplay once in a while and making the vehicle fly better would probably make it more fun. Whether it’s the racing or the obstacle course navigation parts of the game, I would not be disappointed if they were removed from the game in favor of more platforming. I found those stages to be one of the less enjoyable, since the vehicle doesn’t handle that well and it takes some time to get used to its controls. There are stages in The Precursor Legacy that make Jak and Daxter ride the Zoomer, a hovercraft created by the protagonists’ friend, Keira. I lied a bit before, when I said that the game is all about platforming. I’m all for difficult platforming sections in games like these, but the gameplay can’t get in the way of performing them and I felt this was occasionally the case here. It’s not that bad in The Precursor Legacy, but it did annoy me a few times. The checkpoint systems from the previous decade were nothing like they are today so dying often meant going back to the start of the stage. This resulted in tens of attempts which mostly ended with our hero falling into the abyss and me having to restart a whole section of the game. In certain places, I was not able to position the camera in a way that allowed me to properly feel out the distance Jak needed to jump. One major problem I had with the game is depth perception, which was often caused by suboptimal camera control. Having watched some clips of the PS3 version of the game, I have to say that the Vita version looks worse and suffers from occasional frame drops. Graphically, the game looks like it should for a 12-year old PlayStation 2 game. As you can see, the story is pretty generic but the character design and the voice acting are executed very well. Obviously, things don’t go as planned, and the same person who was supposed to change him back emerges as the main villain of the game. Because of this, Daxter is turned into an ottsel, and he and Jak, with the help of other characters, start their quest to turn him back to his human form. In some kind of fantasy world, two friends witness a strange ritual, after which one of them falls into a pool of mysterious dark eco. I didn’t find the plot of the game that interesting but that’s not what platformer games are about (right, Mario?). Granted, the difficulty gradually increases from stage to stage so it’s a good idea to start with the easier ones. Even though not all locations are accessible to the player from the start, there are plenty of places to go, and the order in which those stages are completed is for the player to choose. One thing Jak and Daxter improves on, when compared to other older games in the genre, is its open world nature. It’s exactly this lack of extra features that I find compelling about this game. The controls are also simple so it really takes just a few seconds to get going. The whole game revolves around the premise of scaling the environment, defeating enemies and looking for collectibles, nothing more to it. If it’s an old-school 3D platformer game that you’re looking for, I don’t think there’s many better choices than Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. Well, 3 days, 4 hours and 45 minutes later, the Platinum was mine and now I’m really looking forward to beating the remaining two games in the series. I was out on holiday and with no Internet access to grind the Killzone: Mercenary Platinum, so I decided to give the platformer a go, not expecting anything and feeling that it would take me just a couple of minutes to go back to Spelunky or Stealth Inc. Luckily for me, the HD remake of the Jak and Daxter trilogy was made available to PlayStation Plus subscribers last September in Europe. Still, having played and platinumed all three of Drake’s adventures, and having enjoyed The Last of Us more than other games last year, the names Jak and Daxter didn’t really ring a bell. Sure, I played Crash Bandicoot many years earlier but I didn’t recognize Naughty Dog until a friend recommended a little series called Uncharted to me. I got my PS3, my first Sony platform, just three years ago and I wasn’t really familiar with all the studios and IPs that PlayStation had to offer. I am a relative newcomer to PlayStation gaming.
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