Having never played Halo growing up, I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy the series with no nostalgia. Fortunately Halo: Combat Evolved proved that good game design is timeless.

There was something oddly heavy about the movement that took a while to get used to, but other than that the game was a blast to play from the beginning. Shooters live and die on the feel of the guns and every gun in Halo is unique and gratifying. Except the assault rifle. That one just sucks.

Most of the levels are pretty solid. Unfortunately the game has a lot of maze-like interiors with identical looking corridors which I struggled to navigate and often I wandered in circles for a frustrating amount of time trying to figure out how to progress. And while I don't think reusing levels is automatically bad, I didn't think it was done in a way that added to the game and it just felt like padding, possibly because the developers started running out of time.

I do think this game is subject to a bit of overhype from fans, but I don't believe it's overrated. I think you just had to be there at the time to feel the transformative effect it had on console shooters. Without that context, it might be puzzling why it's so revered when nothing it does seems that crazy today. I wasn't there, so I'll never really get it. But ultimately it's still a great shooter that stands the test of time.

Jak 3 could easily be my favourite 3D platformer ever if it kept the quality of its first few hours through its entire runtime.

The game starts with a bang: Jak and Daxter are exiled to the desert wasteland, and find themselves in the forgotten city of Spargus, where they have to prove their worth to the citizens while unraveling the mystery of an impending apocalypse. It's deliciously intriguing, and I love the early game missions where you venture across the wasteland. Jak 3 improves just about every aspect of gameplay from Jak 2, most notably having much better checkpoints and gradually increasing Jak's health pool throughout the game. Jak also gets way more guns this time around, which are pretty fun to play around with, but some are way more powerful and make others just about obsolete. The desert vehicles are a cool addition that give the game a sort of Mad Max vibe, but a lot of them handle like crap so only a few are really viable for missions. Like Jak 2, it's a mixed bag, but Jak 3 has the edge in consistency. The biggest improvement is eliminating the brutal difficulty spikes.

But sadly Jak 3's development was rushed to get it out the door for the holiday period, and it's evident in how front-loaded it is. About halfway through the game you can see where the developers started running out of time. The maps and missions get more repetitive and in some cases are obvious reskins of Jak 2. The Light Jak powers are a cool idea but they didn't get the time to be fleshed out properly; they only have a use where they're needed to progress. The story, which starts off strong, also goes off the rails.

I give Jak 3 a high rating because I still love it in spite of all of these issues. It at least gives Jak and Daxter the conclusion they deserve, while still leaving the door open for future games. It's more than can be said for some other games in this genre.

Jak 2 is an abrupt left turn with very mixed results.

It's popular to call it a GTA clone, but that's selling it short. It's still an action platformer at its core. It just has a lot of other things stapled onto it, some good, others not so good. The jet-board is a genuinely great addition that works so well because it expands Jak's platforming abilities, and I think the guns fit in nicely with Jak's moveset. You just have to learn how to combine them with Jak's basic abilities to get maximum effectiveness.

The vehicles, however, are a mixed bag. I think driving through the city is fine as a concept, but where it stumbles is the streets being too cramped, and how easy it is to get into a fight with the cops. You will spend a lot of time running from the police in this game. There is also a lot of racing in this game, which is an extension of mechanics that were already in Jak 1, so it makes sense. But the race vehicles have quite finicky handling and they're also frustratingly fragile. A couple of missions have you take control of a mech suit, and they are some of the worst missions in the game. There's also a handful of minigames, which aren't terrible but aren't great. In general, Jak 2 is at its best when it sticks to its platforming roots.

Next to its suddenly edgy tone, Jak 2 is most notorious for its brutal difficulty. Checkpoints are few and far between, and Jak only has four health points. Sometimes the game is a reasonable challenge, but certain missions are just total ass and make me wonder if they were even playtested. This combination makes Jak 2 one of the most frustrating games I have ever completed. I loved it when I played it in spite of this, but I'm not certain I'd have the patience for it if I tried to play it again now.

The saving grace of Jak 2, besides its strong platforming missions when it actually commits to them, is its well crafted story and world. Though it initially seems like it's only trying to be dark and gritty because it was cool at the time, Jak 2's cyberpunk dystopia is actually remarkably well thought out, with plenty of memorable characters. It was not Uncharted where Naughty Dog began to take storytelling seriously; it was Jak 2. Despite its apparent eagerness to distance itself from Jak 1's lighthearted tone, it still respects Jak 1 and incorporates it into the story. And though some of the edgy humour is definitely juvenile and a bit cringe, there are also jokes that are actually funny.

Jak 2 is an interesting time capsule of early 2000s gaming, both in tone and gameplay trends. It was common for 3D platformers, such as Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Ratchet & Clank, to tack on a plethora of minigames and extraneous gameplay mechanics, either as an experiment or simply to be bigger than the games before them. But I think the 20-30 years since those games came out have made it clearer that less is more. Of those games, the ones that have aged the most gracefully are the ones that keep their focus centered on their core mechanics, and employ other mechanics sparingly. And Jak 2, along with Sly 3 and Spyro 3, is one of the plainest examples of this.