Jak X is a lot more frustrating to play than it is enjoyable, even with its fun story and beautiful graphics.
Doing so looks great, the explosions and firing weapons move smoothly. The game hardly ever lags, even when there are four or five cars firing ruthlessly at once. The environments give you a true sense of 3-D, the world beyond the track is almost fully explorable by the player, so it seems, but unfortunately, there is no way to get there.
The game's music is great, too. A mix of techno and heavy rock multiply the feeling of destruction and speed even further. The character's often shout out a cry of defeat or victory, which throws some emotion into the mix. The explosions sound great along with there looks.
The controls are very smooth and are simple to get the hang of, but the problem with this is that the racer is often moving so fast that the simplest turn could lead them into suicide. And this is where the game takes its downfall. All enemy racers stay hot on your tail, and those in front of you are never far. You feel great and powerful as your car often fires into first place, but then a sharp turn comes, and you slide completely around and start turboing back where you came from, passing all of your enemies, and then flying off of the road into the river. Once or twice this happens and its not that bad, but dying in this game gets so frustrating because most of the time you have to see a 2 second clip of your car on fire flying through the air, which shows off the games technical power, but gets extremely annoying as it happens over and over in the heat of a fast race.
It doesn't matter how long you are in first place, turboing ahead with perfect speed and handling, your foes are always right behind you. Die once, watch your car go flaming through the air, and you're back in third place, often worse.
The story of the game starts fresh, beginning a whole new adventure, but almost all of the main characters from the previous games return to race with you, and the cinematics are a treat for fans of the series.
The game includes many different cars, none of which are that much better than the last. There are a huge number of unlockables, including secret characters, vehicles, and behind-the-scenes clips. This helps to add a lot of time to the game. The online play is fun and easy to get into, and the split-screen is great with a friend.
Naughty Dog most likely made this game to start up a trend, three platformers and a racing game, first with Crash and now with Jak. CTR was a huge it, unfortunately this game was more frustrating than it was enjoyable.