So hey, it's not like there isn't some motivation for the racing, nor is there a considerable lack of story. In fact, Naught Dog is cramming over 45 minutes of video into the game to help push the storyline along. None of this will detract from the main game, however, which is comprised of about 100 events split across 24 classic circuits and eight arenas, usually with about 6-8 different events apiece.

The arenas were huge (think a half dozen football fields all lashed together), and offered plenty of destructible goodies, but in a nice little twist, one of the gameplay modes Naughty Dog showed us, was more about blowing up drones than the other player, which made for a slightly more frantic dash to get to a couple specific points on the map.

Tracks, however, are where the bulk of the game will be played, and the developers employed some nifty streaming technology to make the games infinitely longer than they ever could have if they just buffered the whole track into memory. Races can actually span multiple tracks, so you might race from the city streets, down into the sewers (which is another earlier level), and then back up into a different part of the city, all streamed from the disc to make for some lengthy, intense duels.

Actually blowing stuff up is rather simple; each vehicle (there are 12 in all, each with very minor differences in speed, handling and so on) can pick up weapons littered across the track in either offensive or defensive flavors; the more of the same type of power-up is picked, the more powerful they become, a nice touch. As you gun down other racers, you'll also accumulate Dark Eco, which can then be applied to your racer as both weapon upgrades and custom builds for your machine from a baseline frame.

The upgrades can be something as basic as some paint (accomplished by custom mixing a color by holding down the button in each of the red, green and blue swatches until you like what you see) or a decal, or some impressively varied panels, wheels, spoilers, cockpits, and so on. With literally thousands of parts and combos, the differences not only affect the look, but the way physics play off the vehicle. That and the thing will look completely unique when you finally take it online.

Online multiplayer isn't an extra mode or something to do when the single-player game runs out, it's treated almost like an online extension of the main game, providing you with almost as many challenges as you'd get in the offline mode, and infinitely more variety in the kinds of races and racers you'll be up against. We goofed around with traditional Deathmatch modes where the focus was on kills, but there was also Turbo Dash (think Burnout-style races where boost fills a super weapon's juice the longer you stay in turbo) and Artifact Race (where random checkpoints plus random spawn points mean lots of desperate driving) modes that we sadly didn't get too much time with at the show.

We were also treated to a little talk of how Jak X will link up with Ready At Dawn's Daxter. Just owning (or having a friend that owns one if you have the other) will automatically unlock some characters from Daxter in Jak X as soon as you connect the USB cable. Actually beating Daxter, if all goes according to plan, will unlock even more goodies. It's not completely clear if/how the PS2/PSP crosstalk will work for Jak X to Daxter, but we were told there are at least plans.

There's so, so much that we didn't get a chance to really get into, but hopefully we can get our hands on a version of the game that's a little closer to final before it hits stores to give you more details. For now, dig on the scrumptious screens and keep your eyes peeled for more info.