Jak II was our first taste of Naughty Dog as competent storytellers, and in my opinion, is still the best implemented story and worldbuilding in any of their games. Gritty and "mature" without devolving into pretentiousness, while maintaining the admittedly juvenile humor of the first game to balance things out. It definitely has a very early 00s style about it, which I understand is not to everyone's taste.

Complimenting the writing is a strange mishmash of gameplay and story genres that absolutely shouldn't work, but somehow work perfectly. Is it fantasy? Sci-fi? Post-apocalypse? Dystopian? Yes. Is it a 3D platformer? Third person shooter? Action/adventure? Sandbox? GTA clone? Skateboading game? Also yes. And I fucking love it.