Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Naughty Dog - 2001 - PS2/PS3/Vita

Remember when 3D platformers were a thing? Prior to playing Jak and Daxter, I couldn't even think of the last 3D platformer I played. I think the Mario games are kind of singlehandedly keeping that genre alive right now. But back in the late 90s/early 00s, they were all over the place. Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time were some of my favorite platformers from this era, but I somehow never played any of the Jak games. I was a little hesitant to try Jak and Daxter because I didn't have the best experience with the last Naughty Dog game I played. But a friend of mine was insistent that I must play Jak and Daxter, and I'm glad I did. It's absolutely worth a look if you dig 3D platformers.

The first thing that struck me about Jak and Daxter were the quality of the animations in the game. They're cartoony and exaggerated, but they bring the characters to life so well. Now it may be because I was playing the PS3/HD version of the game and it's hard to tell what they retouched and what was original, but Jak and Daxter may have some of the best animation work I've seen in a game. Which is astounding, considering the game was released in 2001. Great voicework too, which was also not the norm for games made in that era. The NPCs are all full of life and personality. It reminded me a lot of characters from Psychonauts, another excellent 3D platformer that everyone should play. It was strange because while the characters and game world had great personality, I felt the overall narrative/story of Jak and Daxter was totally phoned in. I mean the main villain of the game isn't even introduced until more than halfway through the game. Very weird. 

At a basic level, Jak and Daxter plays similarly to Mario 64. There are several "worlds" and each world has a certain amount of stars to collect, or "power cells" in the case of Jak and Daxter. One major difference though is that the world's layout is totally seamless in Jak and Daxter. For example in Mario 64, the castle sort of served as a hub world and each level was entered by jumping into a painting on the castle's wall. And while there's still "worlds" in Jak and Daxter, it's all seamlessly tied together as one giant island. No loading screens or anything like that, which was probably pretty technically difficult to do. I thought this was pretty cool, until I realized one terrible design problem: it takes FOREVER to get from one area to another. In Mario 64, you could just pause and select "exit world" or whatever. Here you have to walk all the way from one area to another, and the game world is pretty huge. It was super annoying when I wanted to go back and visit the earlier areas to pick up power cells that I had missed. So much walking. This game is in desperate need of a fast travel system. There are a few teleporters scattered across the island, but they're too few and far between to be that useful.

Mechanically, the game is pretty solid. Occasionally I felt like the double jump ability in the game felt unresponsive, but aside from that it's a pretty tight platformer. The levels are all very unique and have their own distinct personality. Some have mini-games or vehicle driving sections that can be completed for additional power cells. I feel that variety and cleverness in level design is really important in a platformer, otherwise your game starts to stale very quickly. Jak and Daxter nails this aspect of good game design. Upon entering a new area, I never knew what to expect, only that it would be different from what I was doing before. 

Summary:

If you miss the 3D platformers of yesteryear and have never played Jak and Daxter, it's worth a look. It's got a high amount of polish and style, but some gaping flaws in certain areas. It does character design well, but forgot to write a story for them. It has variety in level design and a huge open world island, but forgot to include a good fast travel system for it.  I'll be interested to play Jak 2 and 3 soon to see if they corrected some of these flaws and improved on the foundation they laid with The Precursor Legacy. 

Final Fantasy X

Squaresoft - 2001 - PS2/PS3/Vita

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

I picked up the HD remastered versions of Final Fantasy X/X-2 on PS3 when they came out last month, and I replayed FFX for the first time in probably at least 10 years. I remember really enjoying when I first played it and I was worried my memory of the game would be greater than what the game actually was. But I enjoyed it quite a bit a second time around and it held up pretty well aside from the horrendous cutscenes. It's crazy to think about how Square just churned out hit after hit of amazing classic RPGs from this franchise in the 90s and early 00s and then to think about what garbage the FF series has given us since this game. 

A quick sidenote for those who never played a game in this series or are otherwise unaware: The stories and battle mechanics of each game in the Final Fantasy series are completely unrelated. Each game in the series has a completely new cast of characters and settings, and there's nearly always a different battle system with different battle mechanics and rules. The series has some common elements and reoccurring motifs; for instance there's usually magic or summon monsters and for some reason there's almost always a character named Cid that appears somewhere in the game. But you don't have to have played FF9 before FF10 or anything like that.

FF10 (or FFX for you Romans) follows the story of a young man named Tidus who is a star blitzball player from the futuristic city of Zanarkand. Blitzball is some kind of crazy combination of football and soccer, but played underwater. It also serves as FFX's primary minigame. It's kind of broken and clunky, but the football fan in me enjoys it despite its faults. Anyway, in the game's prologue, the Zanarkand blitzball arena is suddenly attacked by a massive whale-looking monster known as "Sin". Sin magically transports Tidus 1000 years into the future to another world called "Spira". While searching for a way to get back home to Zanarkand, Tidus learns about the world of Spira and befriends some of its residents. He learns that Spira has always been under constant torment by the same Sin monster he encountered in Zanarkand. Tidus soon befriends a young girl, Yuna, who is training to become a summoner in hopes to obtain a summon monster powerful enough to destroy Sin. FFX's main storyline deals with Tidus, Yuna and her guardian's journey across Spira and their quest to defeat Sin. 

I found the story and pacing for FFX to be both very good. Now the thing that's an absolute trainwreck and nearly ruins the game are the voice acting and cutscenes. Final Fantasy X was the first game in the series to be voice acted, and it definitely shows. Each cutscene is more awkward and cringe-worthy than the last. You may have seen the infamous laughing scene on YouTube before. Yeah, that's pretty much how all of the cutscenes in this game are. Now the actual story that is behind these cutscenes is pretty good. But oh man, those cutscenes. It might actually be better to watch them on mute. You have to try to focus on what the game is trying to show you, not how the game is showing it. If you can't do that, you'll probably find this game's story pretty laughable. No pun intended. 

Final Fantasy X's battle system is pretty tight and well balanced. Information like damage, status effects, and weaknesses are clearly communicated to the player during battle instead of having to guess which enemies are weak vs. which elements or try to figure out whether the status effect spell you just cast was successful based on what color a sprite is. If you equip your party with the proper "sensor weapons", you will even see strategies on how to defeat specific enemies, their HP, and what their weaknesses are. It's the kind of useful information the FF series always used to hide in the background instead of telling you straight up for some reason. There's a good variety of enemies that all have strengths and weaknesses to different members of your party. For instance flying-type monsters need to be taken down by a ranged fighter, while Tidus' sword is effective on smaller more nimble monsters. Still others may be weak to magic spells and require a Mage to defeat. It's a fun, strategic turn-based battle system that will have you rotating your party members in and out in order to try to exploit enemies' weaknesses.

FFX is notable for not having a world map to explore, which is normally a series staple for Final Fantasy. I was afraid this would be too much like FFXIII, a game which I hated for having linear corridor after linear corridor strung together as level design. But you never really get that feeling in FFX. The level design does a good job with divergent paths and interesting things to do and people to talk to in all of the areas to make you forget there's no world map linking everything together. The level design and pacing is pretty good in this game... except for the puzzle solving sections in stupid cloister of trails areas. People who have played this game before know what I'm talking about. Tedious, time wasting puzzles with random arbitrary logic that you have to solve by trial and error. Terrible game design. Whoever put these in the game needs to be smacked upside the head. 

Final Fantasy X also is notable for being the first game in the series that was not exclusively composed by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu. It was a collaboration between him and some other dudes. It's still a excellent soundtrack, but it sounds different than a lot of the other games in the series, and some of it sounds very un-Final Fantasy to me. Most of the soundtrack has a very electronic and synthesized sound. Still good, just different. Standout tracks include The Main Battle Theme (Nobuo Uematsu),  Rikku's Theme (Nobuo Uematsu), Battle With Seymour (Nobuo Uematsu), Besaid Island (Masashi Hamauzu), and Illusion (Junya Nakano). It's easy to hear each composer's different style and which tracks they contributed to the soundtrack. 

The soundtrack to the HD version was remixed, which I was a little disappointed in. Even though it had been 10 years since I played this game, I have the soundtrack on my phone and listen to it all the time, so some of the remixes were a little jarring to me. The HD remix soundtrack grew on me eventually, some tracks are more subtle and little less "in your face" than the originals and probably more appropriate in certain areas. But at least include the option for me to switch back to the old ones if I want!

Summary:

Overall FFX is a pretty solid game. Solid battle system, excellent soundtrack and good story. Terrible voice acting. I would actually recommend it as a good entry point for newcomers to the series if it weren't for those cutscenes. As it stands though, I'd probably tell Final Fantasy newbies to start with the masterpiece that is FFVII. It's may not be as polished, refined or pretty looking as FFX, but at least it doesn't have this in it.

Okami

Clover Studio - 2006 - PS2/PS3/Wii

This is unfortunately one of those “best game no one has ever played” games. Okami is a very artistic, creative and refreshing take on the "Legend of Zelda" formula. You play as an incarnation of the Japanese Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu, who has returned to the land of Nippon incarnated as a white wolf to save the land from the evil 8-headed dragon serpent Orochi. Everything from the art style, to the musical score is highly Japanese culture infused. But it's more along the lines of ancient Japanese history, folklore and religion than like Japanese anime, for instance.

Art plays an important role in Okami. Early in the game, you'll meet up with Issun, who is an artist, painter and muse. Issun kind of serves as the game's narrator and Amaterasu's voice, the same way the fairy in a Zelda game would. Issun and Amaterasu soon come into the possession of the "celestial brush". It is a magical paintbrush that allows Amaterasu and Issun to perform miracles and is also Okami's main gameplay device. It allows the player to essentially freeze frame the game and paint on the canvas that is the current image on the screen. So for example, after unlocking the wind ability for the brush, painting swirly lines in the sky will cause wind to blow, which may turn a windmill that unlocks a gate blocking your path or something like that. Or in combat, drawing a slash through an opponent will cause a magical sword to appear, cleaving an enemy in two. It's an interesting gameplay device that is both the game's main puzzle solving mechanic and fighting mechanic and also fits in perfectly thematically with the game.

Most of the gameplay in Okami is puzzle solving and fighting with the celestial brush. The brush is used to "perform miracles" which usually involve restoring and healing wildlife or feeding animals. Doing these tasks gives Amaterasu more "praise" (experience), which can be spent to upgrade Amaterasu's stats. Honestly the combat system in Okami was kind of "meh" for me. You pretty much just figure out which brush technique works well on which enemies and then you're good to go. There's not a lot of challenge offered by the combat here. If you're playing Okami, you'll be doing it for the visual style and the presentation of the game's story. Okami's focus on storytelling is pretty strong and the game can get fairly text heavy at certain points. Actually I believe the game's opening cutscene and text bubble intro take a good 10-15 minutes to get through. So if story isn't your thing, you may be put off by the amount of reading you'll need to do. But Okami tells a pretty interesting and unique story. As someone not too familiar with Japanese folklore or the Shinto religion, Okami's interpretation of these things was pretty interesting and fascinating to me and kept me playing through the end.

I don't think I've ever been so positively struck by a game's art direction. Everything in the game has that large brushstroke accent that you typically see in classical Japanese paintings. It makes the entire game look very stylized and painting-ish. Very cool. Check out the screenshot below, click to enlarge it. The art style of this game is a huge plus, and I'm not someone who typically cares about that kind of stuff. It's a great case for art style being more important than realism in games. The excellent soundtrack further helps in immersing the player with the use of traditional Japanese string instruments, wind instruments, and drums. I'm sure the instruments all have specific names, but I'm too lazy to look them up. Here's a sample of the soundtrack. Awesome stuff

Summary:
Okami is a very refreshing and unique experience and it's a shame more people didn't play it when it came out. It's definitely worth a look if you're a Zelda fan or are looking for something very different to play. As long as you're aware of the amount of text reading you'll do in this game, you won't be disappointed.

Shadow of the Colossus

Team ICO - 2005 - PS2/PS3

Shadow of the Colossus is another one of those artsy games that I know is probably just not meant for me. I don’t exactly know who this game is meant for though; I think nearly everyone I've asked about this game has either never played it or found it unremarkable. Yet I frequently see this game on lists of the “best games of all-time” and lists of “games as art”. Games as art? Yeah, I could see that. One of the best games of all time? Ehhhhh I don’t know about that.

In Shadow of the Colossus, you play a nameless hero who has traveled via horse to a faraway temple to bring back the life of some other nameless dead chick whose body you brought with you. The game doesn't tell you how she died or why it’s important to you to bring her back, which seem like kind of fundamental storytelling details to me, but whatever. Some mystical disembodied voice in the temple tells you that if you kill the 16 giant creatures known as colossi that inhabit the surrounding land, that it will somehow magically bring the dead chick back to life.

So the gameplay in Shadow of the Colossus consists of traveling to the various colossus lairs and trying to figure out how to take them down. For each one, you’ll need to figure out where their weak point is and then figure out how to climb up on the colossus and strike it. This usually involves knocking the colossus down or using the environment to climb up on it or something like that. It’s kind of like 16 boss fights from a Zelda game all strung together in a row. If you’re like me, you’ll get a really strong sense of repetition playing this game, which was kind of a turn-off. Plus the colossus fights are usually quite long, which I guess gives a feeling of epicness to the battle when it’s finally over. But if you die or fall off of the colossus while climbing it, you’ll probably get frustrated with the slow pace of the battles like I did.

Summary:
The game does have a few bright spots though - it conveys emotion with very little dialogue which is always cool to me. And figuring out the puzzles on how to defeat the bosses is kind of fun even though executing them can feel kind of tedious. I've seen the soundtrack to this game given a lot of praise across the internet, but the overly epic orchestra sound doesn't typically do a whole lot for me. When new games boast that they have a “fully orchestrated soundtrack!!” my response is usually “well that sucks”. It's not bad I guess, but it's no DKC2

I’m now going to drop some mild spoilers about this game’s ending, so if you’re thinking about actually playing Shadow of the Colossus, you may want to stop reading.

The ending to this game is insanity. Complete insanity. It’s not clear or understandable what happens or why it happened at all. I guess “open to interpretation” is the polite thing to say, but I’m going to stick with “insanity”. It's just so bizarre and abstract and doesn't serve to wrap up the game or conclude the story in any satisfying way. Just weird random crazy things happen to all of the characters. The end. I've heard ICO actually does have a really good ending, but Shadow of the Colossus has kind of scared me away from playing ICO. I still have it on my “games to play” list though, so maybe I’ll finish and review it one of these days, but don't count on it

Resident Evil 4

Capcom - 2005 - Gamecube/PS2/PS3/Wii/X360/PC

In order to help commemorate the release of the “Ultimate HD Edition” of Resident Evil 4 on Steam this week, I figured I’d post about how awesome this game is. It's actually difficult for me to put my finger on why I like this game so much. On paper, it seems like a game I would absolutely hate. The story is pretty much ridiculous. The puzzles feel tacked on and unnecessary. There's instant death quick time events in cutscenes. All things I hate. Plus it's a shooter, and I'm not usually enthralled with action/shooters. But somehow this game really won me over and became one of my favorites.

Resident Evil 4 marked a huge shift in the franchise's gameplay. RE 1-3 were really more pure survival horror games. Ammo was scarce. Enemies were scarce, which made it more intense when you encountered one. Aiming was kind of awkward which gave a real sense of vulnerability. The emphasis was on atmosphere and trying to creep the player out. I liked these games, especially the first Resident Evil. RE4 is a very different kind of game. There's enemies all over the place, the controls are tight, and the emphasis is on the shooting and action. It's a different kind of fun. It still does atmosphere sort of well through the first half of the game, but kind of abandons it through the second half in my opinion.

What I think this game does very well is variety. Variety in enemies, variety in weapons, variety in locations and so on. While I think RE4 does some sections of the game better than others, at least you never get the sense that you're doing the same thing over and over which I frequently get while playing shooters. There's the atmospheric lonely feeling of the village in the beginning of the game, the creepy cultists in the castle, the unnerving bizarre science experiments in the laboratory and the over the top action sequences near the end of the game.

There are lots of unique and memorable experiences in RE4. There's everything from being trapped in a cabin with legions of zombies trying to break in to running from an invisible monster through dimly lit sewers. There's even epic gigantic boss fights and a few vehicle sections as well. It's not as nerve-wrackingly scary as the first RE games, but there are a few jump scares scattered throughout RE4. There's a sort of fun metagame of deciding which weapons and items you'll take with you with limited inventory space. And deciding which guns to upgrade and which upgrades to purchase is fun too.

Summary:
It's just good old zombie killing fun. Check it out

Silent Hill 2

Konami - 2001 - PS2/PS3/Xbox/X360/PC

I was thinking a bit about how I railed against Journey and Brothers for having gameplay that isn't “fun”. The strength of those games lies in their unique storytelling methods. Then I realized one of my favorite games kind of falls into that same boat. Silent Hill 2 is a classic survival horror game and one of my all time favorite games. Don’t worry about playing Silent Hill 1 before 2 or anything like that. 2 has very little to do with 1 other than the setting of the game being the same.

Silent Hill 2 a psychological horror game, not an action horror game like most modern horror games. Think Amnesia as opposed to Left 4 Dead. In Silent Hill 2, you’ll play as James Sunderland who has just received a cryptic letter from his wife telling him to meet her in the town of Silent Hill. The only thing is that James’ wife has been dead for 3 years. So you’ll explore the town looking for clues as to why you received a letter from a dead person.

This game is not fun to play. It’s really not, at least not for me. The game rarely gives you ammo for your weapons, so you’ll spend most of the time running away from monsters and stressing about ammo conservation than shooting them. And being lost in the town, which will probably happen a few times to you, is kind of frustrating. But these two mechanics are included by design and are how the player is supposed to feel. At least I believe that’s what the designers intended for the players to feel.

A lot of this game’s design and story elements may seem random and coincidental at first, but after finishing the game, I looked back and realized quite the opposite. The story is very tight, and even some of the smallest details I first thought to be random turned out to have strong meaning and relevance. It’s one of those games that I kept thinking about days after I had finished it, just mulling over the story and realizing how every little detail fell into place to make a complete narrative. This game does a masterful job of communicating narrative elements through gameplay, through symbolism and through level design. It’s an experience that’s completely unique to the medium of video games, and I've never really played anything that communicated ideas like that before or since.

Summary:
My main knock against this game is that some of the puzzles feel kind of tacked on and out of place and why dear god why is there not a mini-map..? But if you can handle the frustrations of a slower paced game and are a fan of psychological horror, Silent Hill 2 is a memorable game to experience. It also has an excellent soundtrack if you’re into ambient music

Persona 3

Atlus - 2006 - PS2

Yeah, this was a weird one. I had never played any of the other Persona games or any of the Shin Megami Tensei games for that matter, so I had no expectations here. Persona 3 is a very Japanese role playing game - keyword Japanese - about a teenager balancing high school life by day and dungeon crawling by night.

At the beginning of the game, the protagonist discovers he has the ability to stay awake during the “dark hour”, a hidden hour that takes place during midnight between days where monsters come out and attack sleeping civilians. He joins a group of vigilantes who combat these monsters and who also have the ability to stay awake during the dark hour. The group teaches him how to summon his “personas” which are summon monsters that can be used during combat. Most of the members of this vigilante group also happen to be students at his local high school as well.

So half of the game is spent at the high school, learning and making friends with students which somehow magically affects your battle stats somehow… I don’t know. And the other half of the game is spent dungeon crawling during the dark hour. The battle system is very slow, repetitive and grindy which was annoying to me. The high school sections were… interesting, I guess, to put it nicely. I don’t think this game was quite my cup of tea. Its writing is very Japanese, if you know what I mean, and a lot of it is… just… weird and off putting. There’s a boss fight in the game where you literally battle against a monster who is just a model of a painted naked woman with her legs open. I’m not kidding! Who decided to put this in the game? It’s weird and creepy.

Summary:
The battle system was too grindy and repetitive to hold my interest, but I could see how hardcore fans may find this game interesting, I guess. I just don’t think it’s for me.