Indescribable speechlessness is common when engaging with art. I often hear variations on the phrase “I need to sit on it" when people experience something they can’t easily come to terms with. We’re so used to this happening that we don’t think much more about it, but our brain’s inability to process something without time is fascinating.

If you’ve ever been around a baby, they often go through long bouts of perplexity. Expose them to something new, whether that be a piece of food, toy, object, or the outside world, and their face appears blank. Their mouth goes ajar and they wear this funny look, seemingly processing everything around them. This doesn’t always happen, but I’ve seen it frequently enough to wonder why it’s so common.

Life is complex and babies have it thrusted at them in huge chunks at a time. It's no wonder they're so confused at that age. Young brains have to unravel thousands upon thousands of phenomena that they eventually see as normal. My brother became a dad more than a year ago, and watching my niece look fascinated by the world has made me realize something: This perplexity isn’t exclusive to babies.

We are experiencing it all the time as adults when exposed to new things, but we might not recognize it as the same behavior because we already understand a majority of what’s around us. We can focus our attention on what we do know while our minds passively process that experience, and even if we think about it actively, it’s still surrounded by things we understand.

In art, we can call works that have this impact “thought-provoking.” They offer new perspectives on life and fresh methods of presenting the medium. We find in them unfamiliar ways of telling a story, crafting a world, or even reframing our views on what a video game can accomplish. This feeling can arise in many ways and you might prefer a number of synonyms to describe the phenomenon, but the idea is everywhere.

Time is required to digest these moments, because the period we spend experiencing something is only the beginning of our engagement with it. Actively thinking about it after the fact, alongside how it passively shapes us, are some of the ways those moments develop. Reflection is a vital component of any experience.

I made a similar metaphor when speaking to a friend about Jak II. I wasn’t shy in expressing how miserable the game made me throughout my 14 hours of playtime. Yet after finishing it, I claimed to be conflicted about its score because I thought I could reflect on it positively with time.

She then asked me, “why can’t you just admit that Jak II is bad?” She didn’t mean that in an objective sense, of course. She was simply referring to how frustrated it made me and how little I enjoyed playing it.

But those 14 hours I spent playing Jak II, regardless of them feeling like an eternity, were only 14 hours. I will spend the rest of my life, dozens of years, with the experience of Jak II permanently a part of me. I won’t be spending every moment of my future thinking about the game, but I do believe the ways in which an experience seeps into every other facet of your life is intrinsically larger than the limited time you spend with it.

Our minds are an enormous canvas, and everything we go through has something to contribute to that canvas. Those experiences shape us in one way or another, for better or worse, with some brushes having more bristles than others. And the experience itself is only the first of many paint strokes originating from whatever that thing might be.

Just this year, one show’s themes resonated with me so strongly that it has informed my future and could result in me making a monumental life choice in the coming years. Even if I don’t make that choice, it is directly responsible for me seeking to fulfill a dream by studying many hours a day, making language exchange calls a few times a week, and hiring a tutor. That 24-episode series, which took no longer than eight hours to finish, has already had its bristles in several other corners of the painting that depicts my life.

How Jak II will impact me isn’t fully in view yet, as completing it only reflected a fraction of its contribution. After all, I’ve spent far too long writing an essay on the concept of reflection because of it. I did not know this would happen when I first completed the game.

This occurs with everything, in often imperceptible ways, regarding each moment. Our tastes, interests, and methods of thinking are a result of what we’ve been exposed to prior. It’s not hard for me to link my favorite genres and styles in gaming to things I played during my most formative years, or my core values to my environment while growing up.

Formative years aside, art can still be educational and continues to shape me even in adulthood. Outer Wilds taught me that it's most rewarding when taking a breath and exercising patience, as the euphoria brought about by grasping at a solution is unmatched. I initially grew frustrated by its puzzles and resorted to Googling solutions, but when the Outer WIlds expansion launched, I beat it without looking anything up.

That initial playthrough taught me something: It revealed how much I value that sort of experience and I regret my lack of patience. I realized that I would’ve enjoyed the game more if I had stuck firmly to my own wits. In summary, that first playthrough of Outer Wilds gave me the tools necessary to experience similar titles (and its expansion) in my own way.

This overlong tangent has a function: It can be difficult to unravel our feelings. Putting them into words is harder.

That happened with Jak II. I’ve tried writing this review five times in the last several months. And I get an itchy sensation at the back of my head whenever I read the result. I’m seemingly incapable of putting my thoughts on this game into words. I assumed this was a result of me needing time to process the experience, but I’ve overestimated the nature of my perplexity.

How deeply I value reflection isn’t to say that I always have to come away from that period of contemplation with a positive outlook. Jak II’s existence confounded me for months. Its shift from a lighthearted platformer to a genre-blending Grand Theft Auto-clone brought my brain to its melting point. I entertained the possibility that I would return from that confusion with a favorable outlook, but that did not end up being the case.

It took me months to accept this, but when I did, I began working on this review. I initially had it separated into four chapters with a prologue, a section detailing expectations, another about the experience, and a finale analyzing thoughts upon reflection. I have several thousands of cut words not making it into this final review.

Some of that goes in-depth criticizing this game’s frustrating victory conditions, awful third-person shooting, minimal weapon variety, open-world boiling down to mindlessly traveling from one point to another, obnoxious sexualization, objectives lacking an organic function within the city, non-existent enemy variety, and repetitive music throughout Haven City.

I don’t want to write that review. Jak II just sucks. Aspects of this game are worthwhile, which is part of why I clung on for so long. Its desert slum occupied by ravaged sandstone buildings, jagged wooden bridges connecting fishing homes haphazardly built upon a river, and totalitarian cityscape constructed from dark metals with a vertical layer of uniform highways are unforgettable. Jak II is visually compelling from start to finish.

But beyond my appreciation for its world, the experience yields a shallow blend of popular gaming trends at the time. It is an amalgamation of mismatched genres birthed out of a harmless, colorful collectathon. The Precursor Legacy instilled a childlike joy within me, but this is an uninspired mess. I’ve spent months letting Naughty Dog’s off-kilter sequel simmer, alongside this unfinished review hanging over me, but it deserves no more of my time.