Believe it or not, I started to replay Jak and Daxter. It's not like I'm in the mood to play it again, but I had started a review and I realized that some things I wrote were in vague general terms. So, I wanted to see if the playing the game would jog my memory. (Warning: This post might just be a lot of aimless rambling, since one of my goals is just to get as many ideas about this game down as possible)

Unfortunately, it has just pointed out why I had to be kind of vague. I said before that the beginning of the game is just "run around and collect crap that's all over the place", and that really is accurate. There just isn't more to say. Oh, there are a couple of "activities", like getting a power cell from a bird, or pushing cattle into a fence, or catching fish. But they're either over extremely quickly (the fish), boring or pointless (the cattle), or are so insignificant (the cell from the pelican; I think there's a blue vent near by to help you speed up and reach it faster, but I beat the pelican before I activated the blue vents) that they're no improvement over just running around.

One thing I'm trying to do now is pay more attention to the voice overs. Believe it or not, I actually had no idea when I first played the game what was opening the eco vents. I also missed Daxter's clue to punch the pillars up from below. That also means that in the entire game, I never ever had a use for that rising uppercut move.

Anyway, back to the collecting. Like Donkey Kong 64, there's SO MUCH crap everywhere that every few minutes you play you'll get a few things. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm already over 20%. I wonder if some people would find the game "fast paced" as a result of this.

But it's just so unfocused, and there's no significance to finding things. Finding something in an old school adventure game, whether a new dungeon, or a life bar extension, or a new weapon, was much more significant than just finding one out of 2,000 orbs. And often, there was something to finding an item. A maze you'd have to go through. A puzzle you'd have to solve. A mystery you'd have to piece together. Now it's just "run around and you'll find stuff".

I think even for things in older games that you'd just "find" felt more significant than in a modern treasure hunt. I might have to think about the reason for that. Maybe it was just the rarity of the items. When I stumbled upon the necklace in the water way in Crystalis, I thought that was a cool surprise. But even if there's one well-hidden orb in a world in Jak, who cares? There's no surprise in finding one. And you couldn't remember it later even if there was. It all starts to blur together.

I wonder if the motivation has changed as well. It seems like in a treasure hunt, getting the items is the point, while in an older adventure, what you had to get through to get the items was more the point, while the item was either a Macguffin (like the triforce).

Alternatively, since the point of Jak is just to get a bunch of crap really quickly (so that you can finish 10% an hour), it seems like the appeal is just to keep getting to the next part, seeing what comes next... rather than enjoying what you're playing at the time.


"Any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
-Orwell