In this jak game your in for a treat
It's worth stating that Jak X doesn't really bring anything radically new to the racing genre. It's all been seen and done a thousand times before. From the notion of picking up power-ups on the track to winning cups and unlocking new cars, parts, and drivers, it's all pretty standard stuff. But that's not a bad thing. Naughty Dog has paid attention to what makes a good, fun racer. The end result is an experience that works very well. There are times where you'll hit a wall when running certain events, and even a few times where you'll want to break your controller into small hate-filled pieces as the CPU A.I. cheats you out of a gold medal, but you'll keep coming back for more until you win. And ultimately, that's the hallmark of a good racer.
There's a story behind why Jak and company are competing in the "Combat Racing Championship" which unfolds nicely through the game's bulky single-player adventure mode. I'll not ruin the ins and outs of the plot, suffice it to say that unless they succeed, Jak and his teammates will wind up as worm bait. Adventure mode is split up into four distinct cups. You'll need to work your way in a linear fashion through the various different styles of races in order to earn enough points to unlock the next cup, and so on and so forth. Needless to say, the more points and races you win, the more credits you earn, enabling you to purchase upgrades for your cars.
Winning gold medals is the key to unlocking new content in the game, ranging from a variety of new cars to brand-new customizable parts, new events, and even hidden drivers. Each car has four statistics that can be upgraded by spending credits, including engine power, turbo boosts, and acceleration. If you're going to shoot for a perfect 100 percent completion record in each cup, getting a maxed-out ride together is a necessity. There's a wide variety of race styles to be completed, including a standard circuit race, turbo dash, freeze rally, time trial, and deathmatch to name but a few.
The racing engine is reasonably solid and the default control system does a good job of mapping the relevant acceleration, brake, and specials keys in a comfortable manner. There's a slight sense of bounciness at first as you adjust the vehicles handling styles, but as you put more power into the upgrade system, the cars become more responsive and handle themselves much better on the tracks. One niggling point for me was I'd sometimes crash into a wall, or miss a turn and end up spilling over the side of a track, only to become stuck for a short period of time. Reversing or resetting the car was a little bit sluggish, which means that you're pretty much guaranteed to get back into the action in 6th place no matter what you do. It's kind of annoying, but not too bad once you accept it's going to happen