a bold new direction for the series, becoming an entirely new kind of terrible

There's a really fun platformer somewhere in there buried underneath a drab hub world even emptier than the GTA games it was ripping off, loose as fuck TPS elements, an endless onslaught of extremely frustrating driving missions (with the worst driving mechanics in the history of video games), and a tone shift more drastic than anything else in gaming. It's kind of a shame that when you get a simple platforming level it's usually actually quite good, but everything else drags it down so much.

A game that tries to jump on every trend of its moment, especially the ones least likely to improve a platformer. Jak is back, he's talking, and he's surly in a drab and gritty sci-fi cliché of a city pulled out of nowhere, where the player may experience just enough foul language for a T rating, a pointless rage meter, mediocre third person shooting, terrible open world driving, and maybe even a little linear platforming. Graphically and technically impressive it may be, but fun it is not.

It's a bit of a mess because it tried to steer this franchise into being fantasy GTA. It needed much more refinement before I could call it good. I did enjoy the new tone and the story had some decent moments despite, again, being a GTA clone.

Shit got dark. And really, really hard to navigate. A tonal shift is one thing, but making the driving mechanics impossible (and open-world intolerable) means my patience was tested way beyond its usually forgiving limit. I gave it a couple of good tries, but I've never finished this. Points for audacity, and some brilliance in fleeting platforming moments.

In a weird way, I like this more than the first Jak. I rate it lower because the game introduces a lot of new mechanics that aren't very good, the plot is dumb, and some missions are fucking obnoxious. Still, this game was a breath of fresh air because it provided something new to the platforming genre and was actually challenging (for better or worse). This shift was quite a ballsy move on Naughty Dog's part, and if nothing else, they deserve some props for even deciding to make this.