The Context

You know, for a long time, I thought Naughty Dog and Dirty Dog were the same thing. In fact, I still did until about 3 minutes ago! It turns out those super awesome sunglasses I had as a kid didn’t have anything to do with the Crash Bandicoot creators. The sunglasses were probably found on the road (I was often picking up “interesting” things off the street) and it even had bite marks on the sides. I thought I was uber cool and I’m relatively sure they hold the longevity award for any pair of sunglasses I’ve ever owned.

To my knowledge, Crash Bandicoot was the first console game I ever played. I was seven when I first uncoordinatedly stumbled my way through a world in which everything wanted to kill me.

Now, at twenty-six years old, I’ve come back to Naughty Dog to try my hand at the Jak & Daxter Series. I felt I knew what I was in for, and I wasn’t wrong (yay me).

The Game

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was a chore. I’d planned to play through every single game in the trilogy, one after each other because that’s just what I do. It’s a Simone-thing. Don’t question it.
The controls were familiar to the point where I felt like a kid again, but that’s where the happy times ended.

Daxter is a royal pain the arse (strike one).
I’ve outgrown the puzzle element of platformers (strike two).
Please tell me what I’m supposed to do (strike three).
I’m lost again (OUT).

I got to Boggy Swamp before “giving-in” (Simone-style) to look up a walkthrough. Boggy Swamp is approximately 50% through the game, maybe more. By this time, I was running out of orbs to further my progress, so I had to backtrack through previous levels to get them. I have patience for this. No problem. I enjoy grinding. Except that I didn’t know how to physically get back to the other levels because my sense of direction is poorer than an EIT student and my memory for story is non-existent.

I will say that I was all over the vehicle challenges like a fat kid over cake. I chose to spend extra time one-hundred-percenting those levels because they were genuinely fun and had generally good, predictable handling.

But by the time I got to the Spider Cave I was at my wit’s end. I’d spent approximately four hours (over a month) finishing this world and halfway through, I resorted to a YouTube walkthrough. The lowest of the low, I know.

This level was NOTORIOUS among Jak fans as the most infuriating world in the game, but I did complete it. I had to.

However, like with all hard things, it made me re-evaluate my life. I’d been playing Jak & Daxter for 8 months now. And I had a small pile of other PlayStation games I’d challenged myself to get through. At this pace, I’d finish them after I turned 30, because in all honesty, Kingdom Hearts I & II were going to take me at least four years at this rate.

So, I abandoned it. Morally, it was hard. I hate abandoning any project. And if it were an Xbox game, I would have finished it without question. Because my self-worth is tied to the achievements I collect, obviously. I don’t care for PlayStation achievements, so I had no lasting visual evidence that I’d given up. Hehe…

The Future

I’ll be skipping Jak II completely with a clear conscious and going straight to Jak 3 which is apparently the best one. As of writing, I’m 22% through the game, so watch this space for my next review. I can tell you now it will be more positive than this one.