Jak X is stupid fun. Yep, that’s all there is to it. It has a lot of flaws, but sometimes just simply being fun makes up for it.
In terms of story, it’s actually a surprisingly fully-fleshed story for a racing spinoff. It has the usual jak standards: compelling story, good writing, dialogue and characters, great performances, all that fancy jazz. The new characters are also really entertaining. It’s definitely not up to par to the quality of the trilogy, but does it really need to be? Of course not, and yet they still went ahead and gave us a good story nonetheless.
Gameplay is the main attraction of this game and it’s quite the doozy. If crash got the kart racer treatment, jak gets the PG-13 Carmageddon treatment. The focus is on finishing 1st in races just as much as blowing the absolute living shit out of your opponents. Do some cars handle terribly when upgraded too much? Yes. Is the powerups balance non-existent? Yes. Is the track design 70% hit and 30% miss? Yes. Do all of these somehow combine for an extremely chaotic, fast and explosion-filled thrill ride that entertains you the whole way? Hell yea! And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Presentation is great for a racing game and it’s on par with the previous games. Character models and environment all look great, with the game running at a consistent 60fps. The effects are also not disorienting. My only complaint is that the cutscenes here are FMVs this time instead of in-game, and in the ps4 port, the compression is extremely noticeable. Doesn’t bother me too much, but it’s something worth mentioning.
Easily the biggest upgrade this game got over all the games in the entire franchise is the music department. HOLY SHIT! WHERE WAS THIS ABSOLUTE BANGER OF AN OST ON THE OTHER GAMES?! All the songs here are killer, no filler and they do an amazing job at pumping you with adrenaline while racing. Easily the best music in the franchise.
Overall, while flawed in many areas, jak x is just good old fashioned dumb fun that offers balls-to-the-walls racing, a surprisingly good story and a killer as fuck soundtrack as the biggest reasons why jak fans should check this game out.

Underrated Battle Racer. All-Time Favorite for me. What’s great about it, is the combat and hardcore speed combine into literally the most thrilling shit on the system. The weapons are balanced in a way that gives you a shot even in 3rd or fourth place. With an overcharge fire mechanic rather than some cheap super you’re allowed when you already hit last place.

A skilled player in first can circumvent even the “blue shell” type weapon. Then you have the racing, with a variety of slick tracks and different vehicle types to use. Your car gets slippery if you recklessly boost, or even hard turn, at high speeds. So u really gotta watch your ass. Much like the also amazing (and clearly more popular) Crash Team Racing from Naughty Dog, boosting kicks ass, and you get more for jumping, drifting, and nabbing blue eco.

The single player campaign heavily improves on CTR. Rather than awkwardly parking your ass on coins in an empty hub world to play a level, you just pick one of several missions on a menu. Earn enough medals, race in a big match along with a rival. And watch Jak and Daxter increasingly annoy a TV host. I’m grateful this game gives u one simple goal: win the race, win the fight, hold the potato. Unlike, “Crash Bandicoot and the adventures of collecting a bunch of letters in the corner and then having to win the race”.

Various missions include time trials with freeze power ups, death arenas, boost-fests, standard races, and reverse hot potato.

I just feel like there’s so much to praise here. The amazing fucking soundtrack and hardcore death race vibe is perfect for the edgy extremity of the Jak sequels, but they also have colorful, naturalistic race tracks reminiscent of Jak 1 (the best one) and glorious opera vocals.

“WAM BAM THANK YOU MAM”
“SEIMOS TAUGHT ME WELL!”
“Jaak! Are you crazy?! You ruined my story!”

Like bruh. They’ll never make another game like this? Naughty Dog will only ever make 3rd person Super Story Shooters? Damn.

If you know of any game that’s like this, or at least of racing games with strong solo campaigns then please enlighten me.

It's been a while since I played a kart racer that wasn't like Mario Kart... although I guess this is leaning towards more pure-racing type of stuff cause of the aesthetics? Idk, anyway, glad that the one I got onto during this marathon of mine, and even, 100%ed was a fun time.

I guess cause everyone's an adult age now, they added in some strangely sexual elements to the mix instead of keeping it strictly to romantic stuff. Not a problem per se, just funny to see Keira really, really wants Jak's tool now. On the note of writing note, this story is so strange, but not like Jak 2 where it was just a hodgepodge of different ideas being thrown in, but more like they really wanted to focus on the story still, and even upped the humor a bit (probably the funniest the series has been thus far, ngl), but then RIGHT at the last quarter it just sorta ends... basically any thread the story was lingering on in a hasten pace. Rayne, Krew's daughter, was told the news about his death, got all (weirdly yet also somewhat understandingly) got mad at Jak and the rest of the crew for keeping it a secret from her... and then the next cutscene they act like it's all good. It's very weird but nothing too bad, honestly I'd say it's the best written story of the series thus far cause it at least tells its tale well and good and not like, be sorta lackluster or have so many things going on at once.

As for gameplay, it's VERY fun and addictive. While it took some getting used to, timing drifts, jumps, turbos, and all that fun stuff provides a consistent amount of dopamine, and a majority of it was just a blast to get done. Granted I heard coming in that it suffers from difficulty spikes, but honestly I'd say that more so applies to the last cup, Yellow Cup, having some... truthfully bad course designs being used. I'll fully admit to abusing save states there just cause I'm a stubborn POS and wanted to be done with them already. BUT, that's just the exception, as long as you upgrade accordingly (my advice? Just stick with the first two class vehicle unlocks, maybe the fourth one, from each cup and swap between them when the mission calls for it) and do stuff like brake-drifting and letting go of the accelerate when necessary, you'll be fine. My other issue is the fact that a majority of what you'll be playing are basically the same locales, with some different layouts. Sure, there's stuff to keep it from feeling totally the same, but a little more variety would've been nice.

I haven't really said anything about the previous game's OSTs just cause I thought they were good and fit their respective games well (though I thought Jak 2's was on the middling side), but this game's OST I actually feel compelled to find and transfer onto Apple Music just cause it's THAT good. You can tell the team listened to a bunch of different metal and heavy rock stuff like QOTSA considering those are not only used, and not only are there tracks that sound exactly like those types of bands, but cause Billy Howerdel from A Perfect Circle and Dean Menta who helped out with Faith No More for a bit were also involved with composition. Easily my favorite of the games' sound.

I figured I'd enjoy it a bit since Naughty Dog made Crash Team Racing years prior to this, and while I've yet to play it or the remake I do know how acclaimed that is for the (kart) racing fans, but I didn't expect to enjoy it this much. Makes me wish this also got a grand remake like CTR got, though Sony would probably have a pretty tight leash for it...

Following up the vehicular elements of Jak 3 with a straight-up racing game makes sense, and Jak X: Combat Racing does a good job in carving out its own spot. A bit like Wipeout or F-Zero, the high-speed intensity of Jak X's races and battles can be a lot of fun. It's not all about getting first, as the different challenges will test your drifting, boosting, and shooting capabilities. Some of these trials are a bit of mess, including one recurring type where you attempt to chaotically crash your way through oncoming traffic. The arena battles were also very hit or miss as I often found myself pushed up against an opponent, firing my machine gun in the hopes that his health bar would reach zero first. Fortunately, the controls work well and the handling is very good, so the better segments feel great.

The Adventure Mode also contains a reasonably interesting story that brings back all of the essential characters from the franchise, while correcting some of Jak 3's odd mistakes. It’s tempting to see this one through if only to see Jak and Keira's will they/won't they finally come to some sort of satisfying conclusion. I thought that the racing plot fit the world of Jak quite well and they found a suitable excuse as to why the gang would compete in such a deadly tournament. It's a nice addendum to the franchise that frankly serves as a better concluding chapter than Jak 3 did, even if the stakes are a bit lower.

Jak X's crippling flaw is the ferocious and frustrating rubber banding, where you'll never be able to put too much distance between you and your rivals even while boosting and turning flawlessly through a track. One item or slight slip-up and you are certain to drop a few spots in the pack, which is infuriating since it often feels like only the last ten seconds or so of the race really matter. Threading the needle with rubber banding to incorporate it smoothly while still making the game seem fair is tricky, and Jak X unfortunately misses the mark here. It's not a game I really enjoyed playing or could see myself coming back to for that reason. High-speed racing fans might get more mileage out of this game than I did, but I greatly preferred the gameplay style of the first three entries.

I genuinely really, really like this game and it might just be my favourite jak game: the racing mechanics are so damn fun with managing drifting, having two different items for attack in front and behind you, getting and using boost energy effectively, watching your health meter so much to keep track of leading to every race feeling constantly stimulating, the adventure modes entertaining and somehow for a racing game has a better thought out story than jak 3, the soundtrack's banging and fits the game perfectly, there's tons to unlock and play around with.

Yeah I was floored by how much I enjoyed this game it's definitely not perfect the game can feel a little janky in places like your vehicle deciding "oh slightly nudge something? better fuck completely out", the story mode's too easy and the ps4 version's not very good going from having a decent frame rate to single digits plus really fuzzy cutscenes, but yeah good game.

Is it wrong to say that this is my favorite Jak and Daxter game? This feels like the first time where Naughty Dog, post tone and storytelling shift, actually nailed the writing in this world that they've created. The stakes are high but not to the ridiculous "we're using time travel and other dimensions and whatever else we throw at the wall" degree that the previous games had. Instead Jak is fighting against seedy underground mafia shit after being poisoned from beyond the grave by someone he killed in Jak 2 and it rules. This is how I like my Jak and Daxter!

That being said, I do remember being oddly jealous of this game when it came out because I kinda wish we got a Ratchet and Clank racing game too. Yes I know there's racing minigames in the first two games, they're not the same, damnit!

I started playing Jak X thinking that I wouldn't enjoy it too much. Kart racers aren't exactly my thing, and it seems like people didn't like this as much as Crash Team Racing, which I only mildly enjoyed. I'm glad to say that I am proven wrong.

As a massive ND fan, I enjoyed the main Jak trilogy quite a bit, but I have to admit, I remembered very little about the story in those games. As such I wasn't expecting too much out of the story here. It's a okay story for a racing game, you won't get anything close to deep character moments here but I was satisfied enough with what it had. I especially appreciate how it ended. I was only annoyed with one particular detail near the end of the game, but that's really it.

Now to the meat of it all. The core of what makes modern ND games great are all here: relatively simple gameplay mechanics that feels much more satisfying than they should have, and a good variety of gameplay types that keeps the games feeling fresh from start to finish.

You will get killed a lot of times in the races, and the most exciting part of the game comes when you have to catch up to the other racers and quickly try to dispatch them. The vehicle combat is mostly about knowing when to use your obtained weapons and properly defending yourself with defensive powerups, but there's a lot of things in this game that makes blowing up enemies satisfying. The visual and sound effects of blowing up other racers are on point, and the surprisingly decent mid 2000s Rock soundtrack adds to the energetic "screw em' all" attitude of the combat.

The singleplayer campaign has many game modes, like the typical "race to the finish line" stuff, Death Races where you have to destroy as many vehicles as possible while trying to finish laps so you can get more points from each kill, and a capture the flag-esque mode. All of these mission types are good at the very least, and most importantly, it makes the campaign feel not too repetitive. Most of the "missions" in the campaign are in the range of 4-6 minutes average, which is great, because there's a lot of them to go through, and it can feel tiring if they go on for too long.

My complaints with the game are mostly due the faults of the mechanics. The car handling and physics aren't airtight, and it can feel annoyingly wobbly at times (especially in the horrible Haven City sewer track that has a lot of slippery surface). It will lead to losing situations that feels unfair, and it happens enough times to make me avoid the worst tracks in the game entirely if possible.

While you won't find a masterful racing game in Jak X, it will provide lots of dumb and explosive thrills, if you can vibe with its sufficiently edgy 2000s feel.

It’s really funny to me that both times Naughty Dog ended a trilogy by making a racer they made a game that I enjoyed more than most Mario Karts. I really enjoyed this game a lot. The driving feels really great and I love the variety in mission types in the adventure mode, it kept things feeling fun all the way to the end. I loved the effort they put into the story mode too, they made a story that fit right into the series and felt like a proper end, even if it technically wasn’t. The music is really great too, very 00s. Despite loving this series a lot I never finished this as a kid because my copy got ruined, so playing a game in a series I love for the first time felt surreal.

O jogo é um caça níquel, enredo poderiam ter melhorado, carros de isopor e aerodinâmica zoada (hehe), mesmo assim o jogo não é tão ruim. New Game+ tem uma dificuldade de dois players, nem invente de jogar com carro sem upgrade.

OBS: Joguem a versão Greatest Hits do PS2 pois corrige o bug de salvar automaticamente, caso jogue a normal, crie o save, reinicie o jogo e carregue o save, remova o Memory Card e coloque de volta para desativar o auto save e salve apenas uma única vez quando for parar de jogar.
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The game is a slot machine, plot could have improved, styrofoam cars and bad aerodynamics (hehe), even so the game isn't too bad. New Game+ has a two player difficulty, don't even think about playing with a car without upgrade.

NOTE: Play the PS2 Greatest Hits version because it fixes the auto save bug, if you play the normal one, create the save, restart the game and load the save, remove the Memory Card and put it back to disable the auto save and save only once when you stop playing.