4.5 out of 5 stars

Naughty Dog’s Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy was one of the most anticipated titles of the PlayStation 2 era. Jak and Daxter was recently released on the PlayStation 4 as a PlayStation 2 classic. Previously the game was remastered in 1080p for the PlayStation 3 back in 2012.

The Jak and Daxter world is made up of human elf-like species, which Jak is the main protagonist with his sidekick Daxter. At the beginning story, Jak turns Daxter from a human into a ottsel (a mix between a weasel and otter) after messing around with a bad substance called “Dark Eco.” Throughout the whole entire story, Jak doesn’t say a single word because in every cut scene when he goes to talk, Daxter would interrupt him and crack a bad joke.

Graphics in Jak and Daxter are well designed. Naughty Dog designed the characters to achieve a look that’s appealing to Asia and the United States. PlayStation 2 was known for it’s lack texture abilities, but in Jak and Daxter, the high resolution with variety of color, signals no hints of pixelated textures.

The gameplay is really entertaining. While playing as Jak, your goal is to collect 100 power cells and free the four sages that are trapped by Gol and Maia (the antagonists of the game) to beat the game. You get these power cells by exploring the world, helping villagers, destroying scout fly crates, and exchanging 90 orbs with villagers. Power cells are needed to power items to progress through the game. 20 power cells activates a heat shield for a hover bike to travel over lava. Then 45 to activate a levitation machine to move a enormous boulder out of the way. And finally you need 72 to upgrade the heat shield again to reach Gol and Maia’s citadel where you have to go through series of obstacles to free all the sages.

Naughty Dog designed the levels with a ton of platform jumps over bottomless death pits, a immense amount of enemies, and a lot of puzzle solving. The only problem with these massive levels is that there’s no checkpoints throughout the entire story. So if you were to fall to your death, you would start from the beginning of the mission and work your way back.

The performance of the game is phenomenal. With limited technology in the early 2000’s, Naughty Dog decided to create their own engine just to make the Jak and Daxter series. They also created their own language called “GOAL,” which was only ever used for their series. The game engine helped Jak and Daxter to be the first platformer ever without any wait time or loading screens.

Though the concept and performance was well executed, Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy lacks boss battles. There’s only three boss fights throughout the world, but navigating through levels makes up for the lack of boss battle’s because most levels can be time consuming.

Also, Jak and Daxter lacked good dialogue. Naughty Dog’s idea to not give the main character any dialogue was a mistake because Daxter jokes always fell flat, while most of the other characters weren’t very entertaining.

Even though the character dialogue is boring. Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy executes amazing action elements that guarantees entertaining gameplay. This game is definitely recommended if you have a PlayStation 4 since the game is exclusive to PlayStation.