When I was starting out as a gamer, I would usually stick with Nintendo franchises, and shun other franchises. I don’t know why, though. I think maybe because I thought they were just copying Nintendo and weren’t being original and such. Don’t ask me why I thought that, I don’t remember. Though there are some franchises that I’m a little iffy on, the most recent one I have been checking out is the Jak and Daxter series. I started with their first game, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the Playstation 2. So, how good is this franchise? Is it off on the right foot? Or is it off the wrong foot?
The whole plot revolves around our hero Jak and his furry friend Daxter as they set out around this huge island or set of islands to find the sages of the island. They want to stop an evil force, which is trying to take all the dark eco in the land to use it for their evil deeds. Yeah, it’s nothing that we haven’t heard a million times, but there are some things I left out for the readers or new gamers to find out for themselves.
This game was made by Naughty Dog. If you are a new gamer of today, then you would recognize them for their Uncharted franchise. If you are retro, then you will recognize them for their work in the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games. Since this is the same company that made the 3 best Crash games, the game play is in the form of an action plat-former. The game pretty much centers on plat-forming, since you basically get around by jumping from platform to platform. There are some minor puzzle problems, but there aren’t many of them. There are also enemies to take down, but the fighting system isn’t that advanced since it seems like anyone can master the controls. The enemy variety is pretty large, and it won’t get repetitive and boring, fighting the same enemies. The goal in each of the 4 worlds is to gain power cells and do certain tasks to get them, like offering 90 precursor orbs, or going through dangerous areas of the level. It all depends on where you are. You can also go back to earlier levels to get power cells that you couldn’t get the first time or that you missed. Some of the power cells are out in the blue, but sometimes they are tricky to get.
The graphics are not as impressive by today’s games, but back in 2001, it was pretty impressive. I kind of like how the whole game goes around the plat-former theme, since you mostly jump from one platform to another. When most games put in a plat-former theme, other aspects of the game usually overshadow it. So, as a plat-forming game it’s pretty good. The voice acting is pretty good too. Not the best, but it gets the job done by people like Max Casella, who does the voice for Daxter. The music is okay. They could have done better with it, but I guess they didn’t have a big budget for music.
This game does have a lot of faults in my opinion. You can get hurt and die too easily. To regain health, you need to get 50 green orbs, which is just tedious since each time you get hit, you get a full power cell taken away. Some challenges and some power cells are tedious to get through and find. I can’t see a little kid having enough patience to get through this game. Even though there is a lot of stuff to do to get power cells, they get really repetitive, and it seems like you are doing the same thing in every level. Driving a vehicle is a little awkward, since it seems hard to turn and not to die while on it, or crash into something. A lot of times that I have died is because of one thing, the double jump. It is very ineffective since you can’t jump through a lot of gaps without doing the double jump and the spinning move. It’s annoying as hell, and it’s just stupid.
Overall, as a plat-former alone, it’s good, but it isn’t my favorite. I was kind of disappointed, since I heard this game got a lot of awards and good reviews. Well, personally, I don’t think it’s the best thing ever, though I will recommend renting it. I am kind of disappointed that the first game isn’t as good as I thought. I guess I need to try out the sequels now.
This game gets an 8 out of 10.
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