Jak 2
For Jak II, Naughty Dog has gone back to the proverbial drawing board and reworked the formula. Where J&D was bright and beautiful, Jak II is mostly dingy and ugly. Where J&D was relatively light-hearted, Jak II tries to be dark and brooding. And, where J&D was a straightforward platformer, Jak II is a mixture of various types of gameplay. What we have here is an extremely different game from its predecessor. Unfortunately, these new elements seem to have been thrown in merely for the sake of being different, and the result is a confused mishmash of ideas that is more banal and frustrating than fresh or exciting.
Living in the City
One of the major changes is the addition of a huge central hub, a city, where you'll be spending your time between the actual levels. It's large and easy to get lost in, and the map in the corner is less helpful than it should be since it always rotates with the camera. (A more useful, statically oriented map is available in a sub-screen, but is annoying to have to call up regularly.) The city serves no purpose other than to add some padding between levels and let the game have a car-stealing element. The scores of generic citizens wandering about are meaningless graphical embellishments -- you can run them down, ignore them or murder them, it doesn't matter. And unlike Grand Theft Auto III, there is nothing of interest to find in this city, and so no reason to want to explore it.
Big city, big annoyance.
Having realized these things, I was sick of this sprawling, ill-conceived metropolis within the first hour, and spent many boring minutes wandering around until I mastered the little spinning map. Now it just takes me three to five minutes of schlepping to get between the few hotspots where missions can be had. Then it's another walk/ride to the actual mission starting point. This might have been alright (maybe) if the vehicles didn't handle like boats, but they do -- there's not much joy to be had in cruising. Oh, and once in a while you'll get a mission in the city. These are a real treat, both because of navigational concerns and because it's so easy to die. Jak can take four hits at most, and suicidal jetbike-mounted police don't hesitate to kamikaze his hapless vehicle. Bad pigs!
I wanted to ditch the city as soon as possible