Jak 3 could easily be my favourite 3D platformer ever if it kept the quality of its first few hours through its entire runtime.
The game starts with a bang: Jak and Daxter are exiled to the desert wasteland, and find themselves in the forgotten city of Spargus, where they have to prove their worth to the citizens while unraveling the mystery of an impending apocalypse. It's deliciously intriguing, and I love the early game missions where you venture across the wasteland. Jak 3 improves just about every aspect of gameplay from Jak 2, most notably having much better checkpoints and gradually increasing Jak's health pool throughout the game. Jak also gets way more guns this time around, which are pretty fun to play around with, but some are way more powerful and make others just about obsolete. The desert vehicles are a cool addition that give the game a sort of Mad Max vibe, but a lot of them handle like crap so only a few are really viable for missions. Like Jak 2, it's a mixed bag, but Jak 3 has the edge in consistency. The biggest improvement is eliminating the brutal difficulty spikes.
But sadly Jak 3's development was rushed to get it out the door for the holiday period, and it's evident in how front-loaded it is. About halfway through the game you can see where the developers started running out of time. The maps and missions get more repetitive and in some cases are obvious reskins of Jak 2. The Light Jak powers are a cool idea but they didn't get the time to be fleshed out properly; they only have a use where they're needed to progress. The story, which starts off strong, also goes off the rails.
I give Jak 3 a high rating because I still love it in spite of all of these issues. It at least gives Jak and Daxter the conclusion they deserve, while still leaving the door open for future games. It's more than can be said for some other games in this genre.
The game starts with a bang: Jak and Daxter are exiled to the desert wasteland, and find themselves in the forgotten city of Spargus, where they have to prove their worth to the citizens while unraveling the mystery of an impending apocalypse. It's deliciously intriguing, and I love the early game missions where you venture across the wasteland. Jak 3 improves just about every aspect of gameplay from Jak 2, most notably having much better checkpoints and gradually increasing Jak's health pool throughout the game. Jak also gets way more guns this time around, which are pretty fun to play around with, but some are way more powerful and make others just about obsolete. The desert vehicles are a cool addition that give the game a sort of Mad Max vibe, but a lot of them handle like crap so only a few are really viable for missions. Like Jak 2, it's a mixed bag, but Jak 3 has the edge in consistency. The biggest improvement is eliminating the brutal difficulty spikes.
But sadly Jak 3's development was rushed to get it out the door for the holiday period, and it's evident in how front-loaded it is. About halfway through the game you can see where the developers started running out of time. The maps and missions get more repetitive and in some cases are obvious reskins of Jak 2. The Light Jak powers are a cool idea but they didn't get the time to be fleshed out properly; they only have a use where they're needed to progress. The story, which starts off strong, also goes off the rails.
I give Jak 3 a high rating because I still love it in spite of all of these issues. It at least gives Jak and Daxter the conclusion they deserve, while still leaving the door open for future games. It's more than can be said for some other games in this genre.