JAK II: RENEGADE REVIEW

Technically, the game is just as wonderful as the original. Smooth and detailed graphics, no loading screens, top notch animation. It's a shame that the game itself is a bit of a let down.

Firstly, much of the game is spent driving around the main city in hover cars, which sounds like fun - but isn't. The cars are far too difficult to handle, with the sluggish turning circle being the main problem. (And because the atmosphere is so dark, you can’t see where you're going half the time.) And when you’re frantically trying to get from point A to point B in one of the many timed missions, you’ll spend so much time looking at the map you’ll quickly run into another car or run some poor citizen over - thus arousing the local constabulary.

Ah yes, the guards. The city streets are filled with them, who will hunt you down if you so much as sneeze. Many games have ‘safe’ zones in between the missions, and there’s a reason for that; it’s to relax players, allow them to explore and get them ready for the next task. In Jak II, the jumpy guards in the main city just make me want to get out of the place as soon as possible.

Also, many of the game’s missions are just the wrong side of challenging vs. frustrating. I consider myself to be not-so-bad at these games (in my twenties having grown up with these things, etc. etc.). In 1986 I wouldn’t have minded tackling the same mission fifty times in a row- nowadays I find it plain annoying. Coupled with this, restart points are too infrequent. You can’t believe how frustrating it is to get to the end of a level and come up against a “what do I have to do here” challenge ...only then to pick the wrong strategy and have to replay the last ten tedious minutes.

Like a number of recent games, Jak II makes an attempt at bridging between multiple genres (e.g. skateboarding, racing). It's a good attempt, but Naughty Dog would do better to either focus on the genre they're good at (platforming), or at least attempt at making all the sections playable. Much of Jak II seems to say “look what we can do with this cool engine” rather than focusing on what makes the game flow correctly.

Finally on my moans list, the camera seems to have gotten a lot worse since the first game... either they've done something with the camera engine or the level design is such that it makes the camera appear to misbehave more often. (When will they learn...!)

Sorry if this sounds overly negative - I have great respect for the technical achievement in this game – even if the engine is largely unchanged since the original. But Naughty Dog will have to focus on gameplay a lot more in the next game if they want to win me back to Jak.