While I played through each entry in the holy trinity of Playstation 2 platformers, the Jak series was the one I started with. All three entries were explored to completion before I ever laid a finger on Ratchet or Sly, and I thought the Jak games were among the finest titles available in the early 00’s (yes, even II). Still, the last proper Jak game was nearly five years ago. Sly’s resurrection is penciled in for Sucker Punch, Ratchet is to his third next gen entry, and Naughty Dog is busy with Uncharted, which begs the question, whatever happened to Jak?
Nothing, actually. Rather than make the trip to the current generation, Jak is taking one last (?) tour on the considerable ancient PS2 (and PSP) hardware this fall. How’s he doing? Well…
The demo consisted of two separate levels. One was dogfight that involves a fairly cool looking plane, piloted by Jak, trying to take down a flying fortress (of sorts). Standard guns and lock on missiles were complimented by a turbo boost and other standard mechanics of air combat. The draw distance was superb and the world was technically impressive, but the entirety of the experience reeked of been there, done that material.
The standard level faired a bit better. On the combat side, Jak retained his shotgun, but was granted a new weapon, the gun staff. which, honestly wasn’t too different from the standard rifle in Jak’s past. A few new eco powers were present, one that allowed Jak to jump really high and glide/hover down, and another, “eco construct” that allowed him to raise eco out of the ether and, essentially, construct platformers to cross previously uncrossable paths.
From the menu I learned that there are quite a bit of secrets and unlocks in the game, and the PR rep floating around told me that, narrative-wise, Kira was on an eco quest, and the different color eco she found would be given to Jak in order to grant him new powers. High Impact, as their previous work with PSP Ratchet’s have proven, knows what they’re doing with the PSP hardware. I had little doubt they will make something special of Jak and, hopefully, live up to his lineage, but the demo has me a bit worried; derivative isn’t bad and the game was never incompetent, but Lost Frontier wasn’t the Jak I expected.
