I finished playing Jak X on Friday (two days before this post), and now that I have had a chance to sit on what I have played, I have to say that I am extremely disappointed.

This is what I liked.

The racing itself, and the multiplayer. The multiplayer, for me, is a rush, even if I don't have online. Mother-Dear and me play for hours at a time on different modes, both of us screaming at the TV and getting really into it. I loved that. The music to go with was awesome, I'm glad of what they picked. The different modes that we played in (such as Capture, Assasain, and Turbo) were more or less innovative and were fun to do. And the customization was really fun. The physics of the actual driving I was impressed with, so I was actually paying attention to my powerslides, how fast I took a corner, and the terrain I was racing on. I liked the witty voice over's that you got to hear while you were racing (such as Sig saying "Wanna go boom? Haha!"), and it wasn't too much like you get in some racing games; I thought it was a good balance.

Here's what I didn't like.

EVERYTHING ELSE. Naughty Dog had given me such high expectations for this game because of Jak I-III. The storyline was origional, the animation almost flawless, and the gameplay was well balanced. So I had extremely high expectations. Adventure mode for me just didn't talk to me the way it should have. After the first six hours or so, I was starting to get board with it, and it seemed that the only incentive for me to finish it was to see the ending. Even though about half way through I thought I had figured out who Mizo actually was and more or less how it was going to end. That bothered me, because never before have I been able to guess the next cinematic, or be able to guess who was going to say what. If you've read my reveiws, you would know that I am big on having a good script. This one, to put it bluntly, sucked. There were numerous glitches as you got farther into the game; such as if you took a turn too hard and flipped your vehicle, the screen would black out and it would be like you died and respawned. That did't happen often, but it happened often enough to be annoying. I did not like the fact that we only got sabbatoged once. People are out to kill us for crying out loud! Jeez, we should be looking at different challenges left right and center!

Here's what I would add and improve.

A coulple of idea's would have been to bring Vin back, maybe to hack into opposing vehicles and sabbatoge them like they did to us, or too look up information on the next track for tips and tricks. Jinx would have been nice to have back too, he's one of the coolest underrated characters in the series. He could have rigged a track or two with explosives that only you knew where to find and avoid. At the beginning of the game, G.T. Blitz says no cheating, well wouldn't it be fun to burst his bubble and bend, nay, break the rules? And then there is the poison. On the last race, people finally begin to say that they're not feeling so hot. Now wouldn't it be cool if at random intervals in the game Jak suddenly had blurred vision, or his motor skills were slightly hampered so it would take more to turn and brake, with a slower reaction time? That would make it more real to me. Oh, and one more thing. What ND should have done was made you pay for inspection of your vehicle before every race. Can't afford it? Then there was a fifty-fifty chance that you're vehicle would be tampered with. Just those little quirks would have made the game so much more enjoyable, not to mention the top-quality cinematics and animation. There we go, I feel better after ranting and raving on how ND let me down. If ND makes another game (which they probably will because there are so many holes that they need to fill in), they had better get their act together and do something worth the fifty-bucks that I would gladly pay. It seems one of the only good things that came out of this game was that it gave me some new idea's for my fan fic. :D

Now, Mother-Dear plans on buying Deadlock on Tuesday when we go to the City, so when I'm done playing that, hopefully it won't disappoint me as well. GameSpot gave it a good rating, so my hopes are high, but we can see what high hopes can do to you. Put you into mild depression for a couple weeks.