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.
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.