Sequal to 2001's Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (which neither reviewer has played), Jak II is an exciting and action-packed ride — beginning platform gamers need not apply. It sounds harsh, but a few jaunts into this title and you'll see why.

After the events of the original Jak and Daxter, the two heroes are sucked into a strange relic of the Precursors — a Rift Gate. When the duo appears in a strange city, Jak is captured while Daxter escapes. Daxter finally shows up to "save the day"... two years of experiments later. Jak curses at Baron Praxis, the ruler of the city, and rips through his bonds using strange powers that all of the "dark eco" that Praxis exposed Jak to has given him. Jak and Daxter escape the palace, and soon after are drafted into the "Resistance," an organization opposed to the tyrannical Baron's iron grip of Haven City. Meanwhile, outside the city walls, a strange race of beings called Metalheads are laying seige.

Theogal: I really liked the story and how it was paced. While the player often seems to have a better idea of what's going on than the characters, it's done in such a way and with such quality that everything seems logical and consistent. The game uses a "mission" system (not unlike that of GTA3's) wherein you can do the missions that you want, when you want — at least most of the time. Certain missions are required to advance the story, and in fact all or nearly all of them must be completed, but any two people's paths through the game could look completely different.

Tiger Queen: The characters are well-thought out and three-dimensional. Everyone has a motive, which reinforces the message that Haven City is a dog-eat-dog kind of place, with a ruthless dictator in power and plenty of shady dealings going on under the surface — and sometimes right out in the open. And while Jak seeks revenge in a less-than-subtle, if not downright bloodthirsty manner, Daxter's personality (and drinking, and chasing of women...) is the perfect balance to keep the mood of the game light. There are plenty of side characters to encounter repeatedly, most of whom send you on more missions to advance the story (reminiscent of the "Mr. Johnsons" in the old Shadowrun RPGs), and it's a nice touch that all of them have distinct personalities.

Theogal: Jak II uses a style more cartoony than realistic, and that makes the player take the game a little less seriously than you might think you would at first. Each part of the city has its own look to it, but reused textures and objects mean that more often than not you'll have to look on the map to see exactly where you are. The game uses a 3rd person camera with a modicum of player control, and while you can move it about as you wish, it has a tendancy to do its own thing as well. Certain areas will make the camera move to a specified location and distance, and while often it's neither better nor worse than your standard action game, the addition of weapons to Jak II can make you wish that you could move the camera just that little bit out so that you could see where you're firing. There is a first person view available that is more than adequate for viewing the highly detailed terrain, but unfortunately it doesn't let you fire while in this view. The largest problem seems to be that the camera will not go through walls, requiring you to move into first person (from which you cannot fire) in order to, say, look 'round a bend in a hallway.

Tiger Queen: I enjoyed the character designs very much, and the detail put into the facial features, gestures, etc. From Ashelin's sexy strut to Krew's... massive presense, you get a very strong sense of personality in these characters, not to mention effort on the design team's part. Unfortunately, while the background graphics are clean and well detailed, it sometimes can be rather buggy about loading them — whole sections of land will occasionally disappear right in front of you if you look at them wrong during the process of jumping, say, between two floating platforms. I'd count this up to a small, ignorable glitch... except that it happened a lot. Like Theogal, I really did not appreciate the camera's tendency to jerk around a lot — and frequently get me killed because it pulled in right behind Jak when I needed to see what was behind him, or when it wouldn't let me turn it to see down a tight hallway because a wall was in the way. In my opinion, the camera tried too much to be like a movie camera — capturing all the action surrounding our gritty hero, but not being terribly useful in letting said hero see all those Metalheads that shoot at him from cover.

Theogal: Jak II's sound falls into two categories in my mind — good and bad. The sound effects are very good — they are believable but not over the top, and they aren't reused very often at all. The background music, however, was repetetive. While mood setting the first few times it looped, some fights or areas ended up taking long enough to require the music to loop dozens of times, and after that sort of repetition it was more annoying than anything else.

Tiger Queen: The voice acting in this game is simply excellent, with a few famous names in the cast. Jak's voice perfectly suits his grim outlook, while Daxter's attitude is portrayed as in-your-face without being obnoxious (or not unintentionally obnoxious anyway). Each character's voice fits them to a "T" — Krew's weezing accent, Samos' gruff paternal nature, Praxis' ranting speeches... every last person is believable, which is a charming balance to the cartoonish style of the game in general. Unlike a lot of modern games, where speech is so common and yet done by a cast that seems bored and sleepy, the dialogue and how it's delivered is handled impeccably.

Tiger Queen: This game is not for the beginning action gamer. It is in no way "easy" by any stretch of the imagination, and requires far more patience than most players probably have. It demands perfection continually, and sometimes the tiniest slip will cost you dearly. The missions generally require you to use most, if not all of the tools at your disposal, and it loses its "tutorial" nature very early on. Unlike many games however, it does not have "lives" — it will occasionally auto-save. The tendency to auto-save at some points and not others smacks to me of making some situations far more difficult than they need to be, and sadly the auto-saving feature cannot be turned off (and yes, it does get to be a problem in some cases — i.e., partway through the final boss battle after you've taken some hits and offloaded most of your decent ammo).

Theogal: The control is handled quite well in most situations. Weapons auto-lock (although you have to move to change where you aim) and Jak responds well to the controls he's given. The shifting camera angles can be a problem as he won't continue in the same direction when the view changes, but I got used to this rather quickly. My biggest gripe about the gameplay is in fact the enemy AI. While most of it applies to the minigames (which are handled in more detail the miscellaneous section), the enemies are all fairly straightforward and easy to predict. On the other hand, the AI for the inhabitants of the city is very good, although the troopers' "threat detection" (if you damage them they fight back) can be buggy at times. There are also some other weird bugs — for example, near the border between the canal district and the slums, there is a building corner where you can fly a zoomer (as the hover cars are called) through the terrain and if Jak jumps off the zoomer, you can explore what's behind the walls that form the buildings.

Throughout the game, you'll find Precursor Orbs — little levitating balls inscribed with strange symbols. You can use these Orbs to "buy" special features hidden in the game, including an art gallery and cinema scene viewers, as well as extra courses in the Gun Range and numerous other things. Unfortunately, while some Orbs are right there in plain sight, the majority are hidden in the various levels and areas that missions are carried out in. You can also get a great deal of Orbs by earning Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals in the various minigames, as well as by completing pseudo-missions handed out by the Resistance.

Tiger Queen: I've never played any game that had so many mini-games integrated into the story itself. The crossing of genres for these mini-games (skateboarding, racing, puzzle) is interesting, but more often than not requires skills that the player might not have. They can get very frustrating, very fast, and in those cases where you have to use your limited ammo to get through one, dying right after that can be a psychotic episode-inducing experience.

Theogal: The idea behind the minigames is that if you're good at other genres then you will be able to earn more Orbs more easily, and to an extent this is true. However, while the games are very well done (and well integrated into the story and gameplay), they don't quite live up to the quality of most commercial games of the same genre. The way the AI is handled, however, makes things very hard — in all but one of the races, you need not only beat a certain time (as is standard for most racing games) but instead you need to beat both a time as well as beat the opponent(s). While this is not in and of itself a bad thing, your opponent or opponents don't have a set range of times that they can get — instead they are exactly as good as you are, and no matter how fast you take the turns, the pack will catch up. This is another area of the game that demands perfection, and in a rather unexpected way.

The story and plot are very good and very well handled, especially for an action game of this type, although you might have to fight for an hour or more in order to get to the good plot bits. The graphics are also very good, although the graphics aren't of cinematic quality (they contribute more to the excellent atmosphere). While we would rate voice acting and sound effects as a 10 and a 9, respectively, the music is not up to par with what it should be. The gameplay was good, but the camera hurts the gameplay score a lot, and there were a lot of small tweaks that could have (and should have) been made, like the auto-locking. And while very well coded, some decisions were made about the minigames that didn't make a lot of sense and made them much more difficult.

Overall, the game has a feeling of being under play-tested, which damages it's playablity a lot. Fans of hardcore platform titles should give this game a shot, but fans of other genres and the faint of heart should probably (and sadly) avoid it.

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