Fantastic entry from the golden era of 3d platformer/collectathon games. Super fun characters, vibrant art style, and not bad (although mildly generic) story. It’s a shame 9/11 caused jak to get gun happy in later games
Played via the OpenGOAL PC port. For all intents and purposes, this is a recreation of the PS2 version recreated for PC played in ultrawide using a Dualsense controller.
A good time that immediately drew me in and tricked me into getting about 25 power cells before taking any sort of break. The first two thirds are great, the last third sorta just drags on but it still some decent platforming fun. Presentation is great, traveling through the world is impressively seamless. The music is typically ambient and works very well, with some more intensive drum and bass tracks for combat encounters. The combat itself is unfortunately shallow and grows old in areas like Snowy Mountain and Spider Cave. The hub worlds and their characters are fun to interact with, though they feel pretty empty once you truly get everything they have to offer. Voicework and character animations are truly something to behold and stand up great, even today.
A good time that immediately drew me in and tricked me into getting about 25 power cells before taking any sort of break. The first two thirds are great, the last third sorta just drags on but it still some decent platforming fun. Presentation is great, traveling through the world is impressively seamless. The music is typically ambient and works very well, with some more intensive drum and bass tracks for combat encounters. The combat itself is unfortunately shallow and grows old in areas like Snowy Mountain and Spider Cave. The hub worlds and their characters are fun to interact with, though they feel pretty empty once you truly get everything they have to offer. Voicework and character animations are truly something to behold and stand up great, even today.
Beni aldı çocukluğuma götürdü.
An innocently charming beginning to the Jak and Daxter series, the first game is a good caliber action-platformer including almost no load time keeping the world connected. Pretty neat for such an early entry on the PS2. Lost precursor city is probably my favourite area, while the boggy swamp is my least favourite. OST fits the setting but isn’t one I’ll particularly throw on casually. Really cool physical map that comes with the game too.
"A Classic Collect-a-thon From The PS2 Era"
One of Naughty Dog's earlier IP's, "Jak and Daxter" had an interesting beginning as a platformer focused on collecting as many items as possible. Its unique visuals combined a zany 3D art style with a wide color palate, and its quirky world filled with comedic characters mirrored the likes of Insomniac Games' "Ratchet and Clank". In fact, both of these franchises were created around the same time, and thus shared numerous qualities as both companies attempted to craft system selling IP's during the PS2 era. Was Naughty Dog's first attempt a success? Indeed it was!
"Jak 1" has a very simple gameplay loop - platforming involving jumping, diving, and sprinting around. You solve a few environmental puzzles here and there and engage in some pretty simple combat a la any of the 3D "Mario" games. You also try to collect as many eggs, flies, and orbs as possible in order to advance the plot.
The story is also simple - you're pretty much trying to stop some wizards from harvesting the power of "dark Eco", an element in the world that supercharges anything and everything it comes into contact with. Jak and his human-turned-ferret friend Daxter go on a quest within their community to save it from destruction.
This game is pretty basic mechanically, but man does it control well. Even a few decades later, platforming feels tight and responsive, and the combat isn't too shabby either. Completing platforming challenges is rewarding and slowly teaches you how to become a better player, and there's only a very short tutorial that breaks the immersion at the very start of the game. It's fun, easy to pick up, and progresses at a nice rate.
What's nice about this game is that it's a collect-a-thon without feeling repetitive or draining. I felt a decent push towards grabbing every item, but it wasn't necessary for completion. The game was smooth to play, and I liked seeing how each area managed to hide its secrets.
The game isn't without its flaws though. The story is pretty weak, and the characters don't have depth. The combat isn't too exciting, and pretty much stays the same throughout the game. There is also little point in collecting anything outside of a small, pointless cutscene and the inherent satisfaction of seeing your collection completed.
Still, it's a game that really showcases the quality and simplicity of platforming gameplay mechanics of the PS2 era, many of which were inspired by earlier Nintendo titles and continue to be a core component of modern platformers. The story and characters are pretty simple, but the presentation is great and the world is fun to explore. If future titles could expand the gameplay and story more, this series could really turn into something quite special.
Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great)
One of Naughty Dog's earlier IP's, "Jak and Daxter" had an interesting beginning as a platformer focused on collecting as many items as possible. Its unique visuals combined a zany 3D art style with a wide color palate, and its quirky world filled with comedic characters mirrored the likes of Insomniac Games' "Ratchet and Clank". In fact, both of these franchises were created around the same time, and thus shared numerous qualities as both companies attempted to craft system selling IP's during the PS2 era. Was Naughty Dog's first attempt a success? Indeed it was!
"Jak 1" has a very simple gameplay loop - platforming involving jumping, diving, and sprinting around. You solve a few environmental puzzles here and there and engage in some pretty simple combat a la any of the 3D "Mario" games. You also try to collect as many eggs, flies, and orbs as possible in order to advance the plot.
The story is also simple - you're pretty much trying to stop some wizards from harvesting the power of "dark Eco", an element in the world that supercharges anything and everything it comes into contact with. Jak and his human-turned-ferret friend Daxter go on a quest within their community to save it from destruction.
This game is pretty basic mechanically, but man does it control well. Even a few decades later, platforming feels tight and responsive, and the combat isn't too shabby either. Completing platforming challenges is rewarding and slowly teaches you how to become a better player, and there's only a very short tutorial that breaks the immersion at the very start of the game. It's fun, easy to pick up, and progresses at a nice rate.
What's nice about this game is that it's a collect-a-thon without feeling repetitive or draining. I felt a decent push towards grabbing every item, but it wasn't necessary for completion. The game was smooth to play, and I liked seeing how each area managed to hide its secrets.
The game isn't without its flaws though. The story is pretty weak, and the characters don't have depth. The combat isn't too exciting, and pretty much stays the same throughout the game. There is also little point in collecting anything outside of a small, pointless cutscene and the inherent satisfaction of seeing your collection completed.
Still, it's a game that really showcases the quality and simplicity of platforming gameplay mechanics of the PS2 era, many of which were inspired by earlier Nintendo titles and continue to be a core component of modern platformers. The story and characters are pretty simple, but the presentation is great and the world is fun to explore. If future titles could expand the gameplay and story more, this series could really turn into something quite special.
Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great)
3d platforming goodness
When you boil it down, Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is just kind of another run-of-the-mill 3D collectathon platformer. What I think sets it above most for me, though, is the quality of its execution. It's a very well-crafted and gorgeous game that sits next to Spyro the Dragon for me in terms of platformers that I could return to any day and 100% complete over and over again.
Gameplay:
In Jak & Daxter, you run, jump, and sometimes beat up enemies. The game has really good controls. Running feels smooth, the long jump and high jump feel good to pull off, the spin that hurts enemies and gives you extra time in air is chef's kiss, and there's even multiple uses for the punch button. The only thing that kind of feels off is the jump. It's not bad by any means and you may not even realize something is weird, but Jak's jumps do feel a bit heavy and it was something tweaked in future games. Things don't change themselves up much throughout the game, but they are kept fresh with temporary power-ups and vehicle sections. The power-ups come in the form of "eco", a magical force you can collect from various sources that gives Jak a different abilities depending on the color. They're used to perform different tasks like breaking boxes or opening doors. I do wish the concept was pushed a little further in gameplay, as yellow and blue eco are the only useful ones with red feeling like an afterthought. I do think the health pickups, in the form of green eco, are also annoying, since you need to collect 50 small pieces or one very very rare big piece to restore a single portion of health. The small pieces don't magnetize to you so you have to pick them up manually and I usually just don't bother. I guess it does beat the alternative of having health pickups being super prevalent at least. As for the vehicles sections, the controls feel fantastic and they're some of my favorite parts of the game. Racing around is thrilling and there's some interesting mechanics thrown in as well. Overall, a very solid moveset and skillset!
Jak & Daxter is impressive for being one of the first games to feature a world entirely unbroken by loading screens.... okay, maybe "entirely" is an overstatement because in some places they just replaced loading screens with elevators and stuff, but still. The developers took great care to make the world feel seemless. The levels feel vast and connected. One part of the map can be seen from another part of the map and it's just so cool. There's a lot of attention to detail. The individual level design is stellar as well. Natural environments were crafted into excellent platforming playgrounds to explore and find the game's collectibles in, which are called orbs, powercells, and scoutflies by the way. Each area has a variety of challenges tackle and no two powercell objectives feel exactly the same (ignoring the ones where you have to trade orbs for powercells multiples times, I guess). The levels just feel so full and fleshed out with sights to see and people to meet, and it makes progression satisfying. I may have just gushed about them for multiple sentences on end, but I should clarify that not all of the levels (including hub levels) were created equal. Sandover Village? Very cool. Misty Island? Awesome. Boggy Swamp? A little bleak but fun to explore. Spider Cave..? Mixed. Volcanic Crater... Ugh. Luckily, the good levels are so good that the weaker moments barely matter! They still always make me averse to playing the final stretch of the game though...
Story:
Jak & Daxter's story isn't complex or anything (at least not in the first game LOL), but there is an interesting amount going on through the power of worldbuilding... which there still isn't a lot of in the first game. But still, all the eco and Precursor stuff going on fleshes out the world a bit and makes it feel like you're running through a place with a rich history. Most of the NPCs you meet aren't important, but they are each memorable and add a lot to making the world feel lived in. The plot itself is as follows: Jak and Daxter go poking around somewhere they shouldn't and Daxter ends up falling it a pool of dark eco. He is transformed into a creature called an ottsel, so your mentor type dude, Samos the green sage, sends you to meet a guy who lives all the way on the other side of the map to fix Daxter's problem. As you progress, you learn said guy is the villain (even though the game kind of tells you at the start) so your goal shifts from "saving" Daxter to saving the world. So yeah, nothing really interesting, but the lore and characters help fill the gaps. The context from later games picks up the slack even more.
Sound and visuals:
The sound design is pretty solid, though there is of course some audio mixing jankiness that comes with the territory of early 2000's games (It could also just be a problem with the ports I played so take it with a grain of salt). As for the music, it is phenomenal. The title screen theme will probably live with me for the rest of my life. Shoutout to the excellent voice acting as well.
As for the visuals, the game hits two homeruns at once while simultaneously scoring a touchdown. That's a big exaggeration, but it is definitely very good. As stated before, the environments are gorgeous and varied. Some places can look unnecessarily bland in terms of colors, but they're still all filled with interesting design elements. The huge draw distance makes every place breathtaking to look around as well. The character and enemy designs are also fantastic. Though many models haven't exactly aged the best, the designs still have a wonderful level of cohesiveness to them that adds a ton to the worldbuilding. The animation is top notch too, not only in cutscene but also in gameplay. The way Jak's animations flow into each other adds so much to the good game-feel. The art direction as a whole is one of my favorite of all time and has been my biggest inspiration as an artist.
Conclusion:
As stated at the beginning, the first Jak and Daxter game isn't anything that will knock your socks off if you're a seasoned platformer fan, but that doesn't mean you should brush it off. Between its great presentation and good gameplay, The Precursor Legacy remains a must-play for PS2 fans and lovers of the platforming genre. It has aged remarkably well and is pretty easy to pick up on the Playstation store, so it gets a strong recommendation from me.
Gameplay:
In Jak & Daxter, you run, jump, and sometimes beat up enemies. The game has really good controls. Running feels smooth, the long jump and high jump feel good to pull off, the spin that hurts enemies and gives you extra time in air is chef's kiss, and there's even multiple uses for the punch button. The only thing that kind of feels off is the jump. It's not bad by any means and you may not even realize something is weird, but Jak's jumps do feel a bit heavy and it was something tweaked in future games. Things don't change themselves up much throughout the game, but they are kept fresh with temporary power-ups and vehicle sections. The power-ups come in the form of "eco", a magical force you can collect from various sources that gives Jak a different abilities depending on the color. They're used to perform different tasks like breaking boxes or opening doors. I do wish the concept was pushed a little further in gameplay, as yellow and blue eco are the only useful ones with red feeling like an afterthought. I do think the health pickups, in the form of green eco, are also annoying, since you need to collect 50 small pieces or one very very rare big piece to restore a single portion of health. The small pieces don't magnetize to you so you have to pick them up manually and I usually just don't bother. I guess it does beat the alternative of having health pickups being super prevalent at least. As for the vehicles sections, the controls feel fantastic and they're some of my favorite parts of the game. Racing around is thrilling and there's some interesting mechanics thrown in as well. Overall, a very solid moveset and skillset!
Jak & Daxter is impressive for being one of the first games to feature a world entirely unbroken by loading screens.... okay, maybe "entirely" is an overstatement because in some places they just replaced loading screens with elevators and stuff, but still. The developers took great care to make the world feel seemless. The levels feel vast and connected. One part of the map can be seen from another part of the map and it's just so cool. There's a lot of attention to detail. The individual level design is stellar as well. Natural environments were crafted into excellent platforming playgrounds to explore and find the game's collectibles in, which are called orbs, powercells, and scoutflies by the way. Each area has a variety of challenges tackle and no two powercell objectives feel exactly the same (ignoring the ones where you have to trade orbs for powercells multiples times, I guess). The levels just feel so full and fleshed out with sights to see and people to meet, and it makes progression satisfying. I may have just gushed about them for multiple sentences on end, but I should clarify that not all of the levels (including hub levels) were created equal. Sandover Village? Very cool. Misty Island? Awesome. Boggy Swamp? A little bleak but fun to explore. Spider Cave..? Mixed. Volcanic Crater... Ugh. Luckily, the good levels are so good that the weaker moments barely matter! They still always make me averse to playing the final stretch of the game though...
Story:
Jak & Daxter's story isn't complex or anything (at least not in the first game LOL), but there is an interesting amount going on through the power of worldbuilding... which there still isn't a lot of in the first game. But still, all the eco and Precursor stuff going on fleshes out the world a bit and makes it feel like you're running through a place with a rich history. Most of the NPCs you meet aren't important, but they are each memorable and add a lot to making the world feel lived in. The plot itself is as follows: Jak and Daxter go poking around somewhere they shouldn't and Daxter ends up falling it a pool of dark eco. He is transformed into a creature called an ottsel, so your mentor type dude, Samos the green sage, sends you to meet a guy who lives all the way on the other side of the map to fix Daxter's problem. As you progress, you learn said guy is the villain (even though the game kind of tells you at the start) so your goal shifts from "saving" Daxter to saving the world. So yeah, nothing really interesting, but the lore and characters help fill the gaps. The context from later games picks up the slack even more.
Sound and visuals:
The sound design is pretty solid, though there is of course some audio mixing jankiness that comes with the territory of early 2000's games (It could also just be a problem with the ports I played so take it with a grain of salt). As for the music, it is phenomenal. The title screen theme will probably live with me for the rest of my life. Shoutout to the excellent voice acting as well.
As for the visuals, the game hits two homeruns at once while simultaneously scoring a touchdown. That's a big exaggeration, but it is definitely very good. As stated before, the environments are gorgeous and varied. Some places can look unnecessarily bland in terms of colors, but they're still all filled with interesting design elements. The huge draw distance makes every place breathtaking to look around as well. The character and enemy designs are also fantastic. Though many models haven't exactly aged the best, the designs still have a wonderful level of cohesiveness to them that adds a ton to the worldbuilding. The animation is top notch too, not only in cutscene but also in gameplay. The way Jak's animations flow into each other adds so much to the good game-feel. The art direction as a whole is one of my favorite of all time and has been my biggest inspiration as an artist.
Conclusion:
As stated at the beginning, the first Jak and Daxter game isn't anything that will knock your socks off if you're a seasoned platformer fan, but that doesn't mean you should brush it off. Between its great presentation and good gameplay, The Precursor Legacy remains a must-play for PS2 fans and lovers of the platforming genre. It has aged remarkably well and is pretty easy to pick up on the Playstation store, so it gets a strong recommendation from me.
After their attempted failure of killing Crash Bandicoot, PlayStation bought Naughty Dog while developing their next IP for the PS2.
Releasing just over a month after Grand Theft Auto III, the open world works really well. Naughty Dog really understood the hardware so they were able to create a cartoon world with areas connecting to each other.
One of the best things is needing one thing and going off and doing a million other things which will lead you to the item you require.
Power Cells are required and you will do all sorts of things to obtain them. Fetch Quests, finding them on the floor, do quests for characters. However towards the end the remaining power cells are just fetch quests which could be a factor into a rushed development.
Bosses are simple and basic. The voice acting is alright. While Jak doesn't speak, Daxter is quite annoying and he doesn't get any better in later games.
This is a good start for the Jak and Daxter series and for Naughty Dog. Any fans of platformers should play this game.
Releasing just over a month after Grand Theft Auto III, the open world works really well. Naughty Dog really understood the hardware so they were able to create a cartoon world with areas connecting to each other.
One of the best things is needing one thing and going off and doing a million other things which will lead you to the item you require.
Power Cells are required and you will do all sorts of things to obtain them. Fetch Quests, finding them on the floor, do quests for characters. However towards the end the remaining power cells are just fetch quests which could be a factor into a rushed development.
Bosses are simple and basic. The voice acting is alright. While Jak doesn't speak, Daxter is quite annoying and he doesn't get any better in later games.
This is a good start for the Jak and Daxter series and for Naughty Dog. Any fans of platformers should play this game.
Good platformer. Love the rodent.
Still the tightest and best feeling double jump around.
I'm not a huge platform player, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I got stuck for a bit on the final level before the final boss. I wasn't expecting to like daxter as much as I did though. What a hoot.
There was a Naughty Dog employee who had a funny concept of Daxter racing the loading bar between every zone, this person got properly sacked from his job after pitching such an idiotic idea (source: trust me bro); Jak and Daxter doesn't care about wasting the players' time with trivial things such as loading screens, when it throws in a cutscene it goes "it's ok you can skip" unlike its contemporary Ratchet & Clank, except you're not going to because they're charming as hell revealing snippets of this mystical world. The music is somewhere in the background quietly jamming, doing its thing so it doesn't overshadow the main dish; the game never explains this but Jak is an acrobat master with flips and rolls that would make the Souls protagonists blush (especially the adaptability fool), Daxter seems like a gimmick that would get annoying quick but gives some funny lines and helpful advice every time you're stuck. The whole time I kept waiting for the catch, that one moment that's kinda shit so I can dog on the game but it never came, it's just ~5 hours of pure platforming fun that refuses to overstay its welcome. Play the pc port (yes, look it up) and enjoy one of PS2's finest outings in its definitive form.
This will forever be a childhood classic and my favorite nostalgic game to go back to and play once and a while, either on pc or playstation.
This is also one of the goats but out of the big PS2 mascot platformers, Sly Cooper wins out just a tad. Fucking love this game though and have finished it probably five or six times. The first game I played on PS2.
Great platform for the playstation 2 era. Little problem to control the camera. I had some trouble to know where to go without a guide. Still good and not to hard to get the platinum.
incredible passing totally did not expect to just plop down on the couch and only get up when i had the platinum (i did take breaks to eat and pee pls be responsible god dammit)
Um dos piores plataforma em 3D que já joguei.
I had this game as a child, I 100%'d this game as a child, multiple times over. It became something of an every-other-year ritual, having played it and platinumed every subsequent HD remaster or re-release, and they're all perfectly fine versions, but my most recent replay was on original hardware, using a cheap crappy scaler box. I 100%'d the game in two sessions, and this game's hold on me has never wavered in almost 22 years.
Is it as technically impressive as other first-party platformers for the PS2 like the Ratchet or Sly series, or even its two sequels? Certainly not. Does it have an amazing storyline? Not particularly, but it's a good story told with just the right amount of levity to make it feel like a great start to Jak's overall journey through the main trilogy, as well as a great standalone tale.
I understand it's by no means a perfect game and all, but it's still a meaningful game to me, and I can excuse some issues, like its nature as a collectathon meaning you can very easily find yourself trawling a single level multiple times over for a single fucking precursor orb, purely because of that.
Is it as technically impressive as other first-party platformers for the PS2 like the Ratchet or Sly series, or even its two sequels? Certainly not. Does it have an amazing storyline? Not particularly, but it's a good story told with just the right amount of levity to make it feel like a great start to Jak's overall journey through the main trilogy, as well as a great standalone tale.
I understand it's by no means a perfect game and all, but it's still a meaningful game to me, and I can excuse some issues, like its nature as a collectathon meaning you can very easily find yourself trawling a single level multiple times over for a single fucking precursor orb, purely because of that.
another nostalgia game but the revisit left me kinda eh, it's a comfy game but overall doesn't blow my mind much
good level design, great movement options even if they don't fuckn explain them to you - was probably more intuitive when you had the physical game booklet outline all the button combos you could do to get jak flipping the right way n shit.
there are a couple iffy bits i was straight up not a fan of - Volcanic Crater is apparently infamous for being a fucking terrible hub and the fact that you have to constantly go in and out of Volcanic Crater to Spider Cave or whatever is so fuckn shit. both of those levels suck ass. upper echelon of 3d platformer regardless
short too. 10 hour 100%. perfect. bite sized. we like that
there are a couple iffy bits i was straight up not a fan of - Volcanic Crater is apparently infamous for being a fucking terrible hub and the fact that you have to constantly go in and out of Volcanic Crater to Spider Cave or whatever is so fuckn shit. both of those levels suck ass. upper echelon of 3d platformer regardless
short too. 10 hour 100%. perfect. bite sized. we like that
One of my favorite platformers and one of the quintessential ps2 games. Great music, atmosphere, world, pretty much everything in this game was amazing, especially for its time. A true trailblazer of the ps2 era. I always wondered why the sequel had to take the dark and gritty approach, when I think the style of the original was good in its own right. Regardless, this game is a classic. The platforming and collecting that’s what made this game so great. Love it sm
A fluid and frustration-free experience that left me appreciating this classic even more than I already did.
I miss 3D Mascot Action Platformers.
Good music, good gameplay, fun story, just an overall good time. Took about 10-12 hours total.
Good music, good gameplay, fun story, just an overall good time. Took about 10-12 hours total.
My childhood game.
Good simple open world platformer, fun voice acting for Daxter and a simple but great soundtrack.
Playthrough recommended.
Good simple open world platformer, fun voice acting for Daxter and a simple but great soundtrack.
Playthrough recommended.
When people talk about the best PS2 games and not mention this I vomit on the inside
spider cave still scares the shit out of me
childhood classic
This game was AHEAD OF ITS TIME, the fact that you can play it from start to finish without a single loading screen is crazy, the game itself is very enjoyable, had fun 100% the game, highly recommend.
yeah. im jaking off.
No tiene las 5 estrellas porque no dice que va a matar a Praxis