Paradise Lost
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier continues the mascot duo's adventure, but leaves us wondering if they should have just stayed put.
Published: December 1, 2009
It's a little strange, too, because the rest of the game seems hell-bent on recycling the same bits ad nauseum. Quick, have Daxter go streaming toward a plane or turret and have him button mash and QTE tap his way through way too many segments! Go fly out to the same area and shoot down planes for scrap! Take out these flying fortresses or chase this plane for about five minutes longer than you need to! Fight the same groups of enemies with a wonky camera and hit detection that favors them over you even though you clearly hit first! Like creating pillars with your fancy new Eco powers (but don't turn into Dark Jak, that's not allowed), cool, you'll do it until you don't. Ditto performing superjumps and teleporting.
I'm being a bit dramatic here, but for every instance where I thought, "oh, hey, this is kinda neat," it was run into the ground. Just wait until you do the final boss battle where you have to rinse and repeat so many times you'll pray that it just ends already. Or don't and save yourself the pain. Even the game's upgrade system, which allows Jak to boost his health or weapons with collected Eco or the ability to trick out any of the handful of ships you collect along the way with better weapons or more shields seemed like it was either too stingy with rewards (Jak) or didn't favor committing to anything (Planes) so there was no sense of investment.
That's not to say the game can't be fun; clearly the air combat sections were a favorite of the dev team (there's almost a 50/50 split between them and the normal platforming), but they often dragged on too long or were peppered with too few checkpoints to keep them a breezy distraction from the normal hop 'n bop action. Even the smattering of side missions found in the hub cities felt like you were just scooting past a bunch of filler to get to an interactive section -- hell, nothing breaks, man, even though you can attempt to smash away.
Maybe it's just that things are so far-removed from the rest of the Jak world, but I felt myself struggling to get into the story. Much of the Jak/Kiera romance is forgotten, the double-crosses and re-introductions of characters were pretty obvious and by the time I was done, I didn't really care about anyone -- even the usually awesome Daxter, who was more bumbling and annoying than usual. It's quite possible to skip Lost Frontier and not really miss the greater story arc, which is a shame. Then again, things were fairly well bookended by Jak 3, so I'm puzzled as to why there was a need to press on with things.
Regardless of all my whining about platforming or story or over-use of some basic concepts, there's no denying that High Impact's familiarity with the PSP hardware is paying dividends. The cities seen in the game may not be quite as densely populated as in the PS2 outings, but they're still rife with detail. The texture work in these areas especially is both varied and seriously high-quality (some of the platforming areas? Not so much). That the game streams everything constantly proves the dev team was committed to trying to keep everything as close to the PS2 games in terms of tech as possible, and they've done a very, very good job in replicating things for the small screen -- cutscenes included.
The audio, though, isn't quite as comparable. The soundtrack definitely takes a page from Hans Zimmers Pirates of the Caribbean scores, and that's most definitely not a bad thing -- especially given the characters in the game. There's a definite swashbuckling feel to the action, but while there are obvious bits lifted from the other games in terms of noises made while jumping or spinning or attacking, the rest of the game's monster sounds or enemy quips don't add enough to a headphone-powered listen. The vocal performances are solid too, but maybe it was the writing; I just didn't feel a sense of attachment. They certainly aren't bad, though, and put most games to shame.
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier just feels... limp. I question whether the series even needed another outing, and certainly now wonder if it should be handled by anyone other than Naughty Dog going forward. High Impact Games clearly has some talented folks working for them, but the last two games have shown an alarming lack of ability to harness the subtlety of other teams' creations. Here's hoping their next effort will be a new IP, because they aren't doing existing ones any favors right now.
