What strikes me about Jak and Daxter is that a lot of people have heard of them, but at the same time not that many people have played a Jak game, and certainly not the very first game - The Precursor Legacy. This probably goes to show just how much of an influence the first Jak and Daxter game had on modern-day platformers. After all, there really weren’t any good genuine platformers on the PlayStation 2, or on any console for that matter except for games like Mario 64, Spyro the Dragon or Crash Bandicoot. It was Jak and Daxter that set a new benchmark for platform games on the PlayStation 2, and a lot of great games followed (let’s take the first Ratchet & Clank game to give just one example). Jak and Dexter: the Precursor Legacy is not my favourite game in the series (I played two of them :D), but still there is a certain charm to this game that makes you stick to it even after you finished the main storyline. I gotta say, the story didn’t stick to my memory much, probably because it wasn’t really worth much. But what The Precursor Legacy lacked in plot and fleshed-out characters, the game made up for with pure, clean platforming fun.
In Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy, you play as a mute protagonist - Jak – who together with his buddy - Daxter – went snooping around on Misty Island, and learned about two no-good figures planning to attack their village in time. Daxter fell into a pool of dark eco (eco is a form of energy) and changed into a furry little squirrel. When they make their way back to their master - the green sage - they go out on a journey to change Daxter back into his old self.
It’s weird, seeing as how even though Jak and Daxter just seen two shady figures scheming the destruction of their village, they don’t seem to care much when they come back to the sage’s hut. Oh well. This will play a much bigger role later on in the game, but for now, your only motive to keep playing is to change Daxter back into his normal human form. Or elf form. I’ve never seen humans with such ears….Are there people with such ears? I dunno.
So, we start playing. We start off in the village Jak and Daxter live in. Lemme tell you, the graphics were REALLY good at the time. In my opinion, a platformer without colorful visuals is a bad platformer. The draw distance is also quite large (for those of you who are unaware of video game terms, the larger the draw distance, the farther you can see in a video game). I ran around for a bit. When I stopped after running for a couple of seconds, Jak makes these funny running motions like “Hurry up, gotta go fast, must not tire!” XD As means of attacking enemies, Jak can punch forward, kick in circles (very similar to Crash Bandicoot’s tornado kick), and if you find yellow eco you can shoot fireballs at a safe distance. I wouldn’t trust your forward punch much, especially not when there is an edge of a platform behind the object you want to punch. Your punch sends you forward and you have little to no control over your movements while you’re punching. If you’re close to the edge, but accidentally press the ‘punch’ button, you’re dead. You’re dead, bro. Luckily, this game has no Lives, so there’s no harm here in a little Trial And Error. But anyway, if you need to defeat or break something, I’d advise you use the Bandicoot-esque tornado kick move; it hurts everything coming at you from all sides so you’re safe as long as you time it right, and you stay on the exact place where you execute the move.
Jumping can also be a bit tricky. At your disposal is an ordinary jump, a double jump, a high jump (L1+X button) and a faraway jump (L1+hold a direction+X button). Okay, that sounds much more tricky than it actually is, but trust me, it takes a while to master. You need to be at a decent running speed in order to jump over obstacles or cross small gaps. If you try to jump over a gap while standing still, you’re gonna fall. You can’t do it, fool! In order to jump over something, you need to make a running start. Or else you’ll die in a very cheap way. And nobody likes that.
This makes the game challenging, and at times, frustratingly hard. You know those platforms when you jump on them, they fall down? Well, this game has them to. And because jumping in this game is so difficult to master, you can count on you dying a lot. And further on in the game, the checkpoints at which you respawn become more and more scarce which makes this Trial And Error game all the more frustrating.
Searching for secrets and collectables is among my favourite things to do in video games. Finding and collecting secret stuff really urge you to go to places on the map you wouldn’t normally go. In other words, you see as much of the game as possible by reaching every place of the game map, that the designers didn’t make for nothing. For some reason, there aren’t many games that managed to do this right. Jak and Daxter, however, managed to get it right. Here you earn a power cell after completing a difficult task, there you need to climb a tower for a power cell and afterwards be rewarded with a nice view of the level map. More games should have collectables as rewarding to get as this.
Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy isn’t the best game in the series, but it still has good controls, colorful visuals and lots of replay value to make it keep its appeal. I give this game 3 out of 5… er… lost precursor artifacts. Yeah!
Pros:
- Colorful visuals
- The collectables are ingeniously hidden on the map
- Challenging, you won’t beat it in a day or two
Cons:
- Lots of frustrating cheap deaths
- Most characters aren’t very interesting, except for Daxter
In Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy, you play as a mute protagonist - Jak – who together with his buddy - Daxter – went snooping around on Misty Island, and learned about two no-good figures planning to attack their village in time. Daxter fell into a pool of dark eco (eco is a form of energy) and changed into a furry little squirrel. When they make their way back to their master - the green sage - they go out on a journey to change Daxter back into his old self.
It’s weird, seeing as how even though Jak and Daxter just seen two shady figures scheming the destruction of their village, they don’t seem to care much when they come back to the sage’s hut. Oh well. This will play a much bigger role later on in the game, but for now, your only motive to keep playing is to change Daxter back into his normal human form. Or elf form. I’ve never seen humans with such ears….Are there people with such ears? I dunno.
So, we start playing. We start off in the village Jak and Daxter live in. Lemme tell you, the graphics were REALLY good at the time. In my opinion, a platformer without colorful visuals is a bad platformer. The draw distance is also quite large (for those of you who are unaware of video game terms, the larger the draw distance, the farther you can see in a video game). I ran around for a bit. When I stopped after running for a couple of seconds, Jak makes these funny running motions like “Hurry up, gotta go fast, must not tire!” XD As means of attacking enemies, Jak can punch forward, kick in circles (very similar to Crash Bandicoot’s tornado kick), and if you find yellow eco you can shoot fireballs at a safe distance. I wouldn’t trust your forward punch much, especially not when there is an edge of a platform behind the object you want to punch. Your punch sends you forward and you have little to no control over your movements while you’re punching. If you’re close to the edge, but accidentally press the ‘punch’ button, you’re dead. You’re dead, bro. Luckily, this game has no Lives, so there’s no harm here in a little Trial And Error. But anyway, if you need to defeat or break something, I’d advise you use the Bandicoot-esque tornado kick move; it hurts everything coming at you from all sides so you’re safe as long as you time it right, and you stay on the exact place where you execute the move.
Jumping can also be a bit tricky. At your disposal is an ordinary jump, a double jump, a high jump (L1+X button) and a faraway jump (L1+hold a direction+X button). Okay, that sounds much more tricky than it actually is, but trust me, it takes a while to master. You need to be at a decent running speed in order to jump over obstacles or cross small gaps. If you try to jump over a gap while standing still, you’re gonna fall. You can’t do it, fool! In order to jump over something, you need to make a running start. Or else you’ll die in a very cheap way. And nobody likes that.
This makes the game challenging, and at times, frustratingly hard. You know those platforms when you jump on them, they fall down? Well, this game has them to. And because jumping in this game is so difficult to master, you can count on you dying a lot. And further on in the game, the checkpoints at which you respawn become more and more scarce which makes this Trial And Error game all the more frustrating.
Searching for secrets and collectables is among my favourite things to do in video games. Finding and collecting secret stuff really urge you to go to places on the map you wouldn’t normally go. In other words, you see as much of the game as possible by reaching every place of the game map, that the designers didn’t make for nothing. For some reason, there aren’t many games that managed to do this right. Jak and Daxter, however, managed to get it right. Here you earn a power cell after completing a difficult task, there you need to climb a tower for a power cell and afterwards be rewarded with a nice view of the level map. More games should have collectables as rewarding to get as this.
Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy isn’t the best game in the series, but it still has good controls, colorful visuals and lots of replay value to make it keep its appeal. I give this game 3 out of 5… er… lost precursor artifacts. Yeah!
Pros:
- Colorful visuals
- The collectables are ingeniously hidden on the map
- Challenging, you won’t beat it in a day or two
Cons:
- Lots of frustrating cheap deaths
- Most characters aren’t very interesting, except for Daxter