4 out of 5 stars

Naughty Dog’s second installment in the Jak and Daxter series, Jak II, was highly anticipated because of its successor, Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy. Jak II will be released soon on PlayStation 4 as a PlayStation 2 classic.

Jak II took a huge curve in the series when Naughty Dog decided to go for a more mature approach. Naughty Dog made the game similar to Grand Theft Auto, where you can go around the world and cause havoc. Jak II doesn’t take you through baby steps unlike Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy. Now there’s a mini map where it has marks places on the map where you have to go and do missions, but also get to explore the world just like Grand Theft Auto.

The world is now completely different from the original. Jak II takes place in the future of a gloomy city called “Haven City.” The city surrounded by enormous walls to protect the citizens, but the city is like a prison. While playing throughout the story, the citizens are forbidden to go into certain sections in the city, while being pushed around by krimzon guards. There’s even a mission where Jak goes outside the cities walls, where he turns on a water valve to give the city clean water instead of murky water.

The gameplay is almost as good as the first installment. In the beginning of the story, Jak and Daxter are waiting to go through a portal that they opened with the 100 power cells. Little did they know that the portal takes them to a dark future. When Jak and Daxter go through the portal, Jak was introduced to Errol (commander of the krimzon guard force), where Errol enforced guards on Jak to eventually do dark eco experiments on Jak.

While playing, you no longer collect power cells to beat the game. The objective of the game is to protect the city from metal heads and to overthrow Baron Praxis (the leader of the city). Metal heads are alien-like species that are trying to destroy all existence of the world.

Naughty Dog did a excellent job of making the player feel like they got rewarded. As you progress through the game, you unlock new kinds of guns with weapon mods that makes an enormous difference in the game. Also, Jak learns new special abilities that definitely helps you out when fighting hordes of metal heads.

Once again, the resolution was great, and there’s no sign of the pixelated textures, but the game lacks variation of color. Naughty Dog used dull colors that were not appealing to the players eyes. The colors gave the game more of a depressing look.

Naughty Dog stepped it up by making the dialogue entertaining. After the first installments dialogue wasn’t successful, Naughty Dog finally gave Jak dialogue, and gave the characters humor that made the cut scenes enjoyable to watch. The dialogue also made you have feelings for the characters that Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy lacked.

Although the game lacks variety of color, Jak II’s action-packed open world provides players with promising gameplay that you’ll never forget. This game is definitely recommended if you have a PlayStation 4 since the game is exclusive to PlayStation.