Why the fuck did this game want to kick your ass so hard compared to 1 and 3? With all that talk about ND wanting the series to grow up with its fans, was there some super extremely deep metaphor here with the game's difficulty involving growing pains? Jesus christ man. I don't think anything will ever be as hard as killing those 40 flying guardsmen on the drill platform in hero mode outside of YS bosses.
>>320414057
Jak 2 is not a hard game, it's just that it's fanbase went from playing incredibly easy kiddy platformers to a game that doesn't hold your hand for once and they all got rekt by it.
Jak 2 is incredibly underrated, and is still widely hated by perennially butthurt retards over a decade later and it's a shame. More people need to go back and replay this game to see how fucking good it really is.
>>320414683
This.
A lot of people hate Jak for being edgy, but I like how everybody ignores how bland and dead he was in the first game. Not only that, but the guy was locked up and torture for two straight years. No shit he was gonna have drastic personality change. People call it a GTA-clone but that was when GTA was still sort of unique (sort of), so I fail to see how people can still call it that when the game is filled to the brim with platforming.
>>320414683
I, for one, loved the difficulty spike. It was one of my favorite games along with a few Ratchet and Clank games.
Loved it, probably mainly for nostalgic reasons. Still remember watching the commercial actually. Played a tiny bit of the first one.
I did the delivery mission where you get the first gun so many times. Really fucking raged.
>that mission with the camo metalheads
Came back years later with the Gameshark and finished the game
Hated the fuck out of the racing missions. I just thought Jak was bad ass and that was during my edgy phase so it was even better.
>>320414946
>It's not edgy because it has reasons!
>>320414683
No, it definitely is a hard game. I went back and played it when the hd version came out and I still couldn't beat it thanks to the street race mission.
>>320415450
>I didn't play the game but the cover art has him look mad, therefor he must be edgy!
How about you actually watch some gameplay of it first, or at least watch the cutscenes. The only thing edgy about him was wanting to get revenge for the shit he put up with, but even that isn't rubbed in as much.
>>320414683
It the best thing Naughty Dog has ever made and even if you don't like it you have to admit it's far better than Jak 3, unless your a casual who'd rather play a messy mini game collection over a solid action platformer, same thing with Sly 2 to 3 come to think of it.
>>320414946
I seriously cannot understand the mindset of Jak 2 haters. Jak 2 is a 10/10 game on it's own, and if you somehow cut out Haven city and pasted all the platforming missions outside the city together you'd be left with a pure platformer that was longer than Jak 1 anyways. Jak 1 was just really fucking short and unbelievably easy.
I also don't understand the hate towards his character. Jak in the first game was literally a design, that's all he was. He was boring and the game relied on Daxter for all characterization. Daxter is the exact same in 2. All they did was give Jak a fucking character. And personally I don't believe there is anything edgy about Jak at all, I like him even. I like the whole cast of Jak 2 and 3, lots of good interesting characters.
Jak 1 is a nice game but man has it become overrated by nostalgia faggots that overlook it's flaws and overpraise it's strong points.
The only want I can understand the Jak 2 hate is underage b8's wanting another colorful platformer, and not getting what they want, being butthurt about it, and overlooking the fact that what they got instead was actually really good, then giving up on the game and not playing it for the following decade, leaving their more mature adult selfs still with the opinions of butthurt 11 year old kids. That's what all their arguements point too anyways.
>>320415654
Broseph, it was edge as fuck. Killable NPCs, literally black scelera demon edgelord mode, AngerJak voice, story goes from light hearted romp through a fantasy world with sci fi elements to post apoc slum capital in a burnt out wasteland.
Game was high def edge. They also managed to maintain a ton of charm and humor as well. It was great. Having justification for its edginess does not diffuse the edge.
>>320416002
If it is indeed edge it's very low grade edge and I like it, it's a good thing.
I prefer Jak's character in 2 over him in the first game anyways.
Minor edge is better than fucking empty souless husk silent protag.
Also fuck you, the setting and the city where great atmospherically. It might have been dark but it was still incredibly cartoony type of dark and it was awesome.
>in the ruined temple
>see boulders falling down a cliff just up ahead
>platformer instincts kick in, expect the boulders to follow a simple, coordinated pattern and navigating them will be a breeze
>pattern is completely random
>>320416002
I never said it didn't get grimdark as fuck out of nowhere. I said it's stupid people say the game was shit because of it, and to call it a GTA clone years later was even more stupid considering that it had a lot of platforming to go along with it.
jak 2 wasn't hard, the dock mission everyone complains about is hard because you're not supposed to run through, you kill the enemies and walk to the destination.
It's easy as shit
>>320416281
>>320416442
A big problem with our attempts at communication is I keep using a word that is mostly used as a bad thing. I do not see edge as a bad thing. I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s and I didn't stop loving the over the top crap we had then and I don't hate it now. Jak 2 added heaps of edge but it didn't ruin the series by any means. When I say it was edgy its not an attack.
Also I remember it being called a GTA clone the year it released. GTA went from 0 games like it to every game taking on its format and Jak 2 was no exception. I ALSO don't call early 2000s GTA clones a bad thing. It was a massive event in gaming, what GTA3 did. And it was mostly good.
>>320415845
>Jak 2 is a 10/10 game on it's own
>90% of the fucking game is driving and racing missions
>vehicles explode for the dumbest of reasons
>literally, Shadow the Hedgehog: Jak edition, but faggots pretend to like it anyways
>that terrible RNG boulder cliffside level
>that terrible escort mission in the sewers
>that terrible relic mission on the docks
>awful third person shooter mechanics at a time when games like GTA and Ratchet and Clank existed
Fuck you, it was a shit game. They were better off when Jak was "Crash Bandicoot 2.0" instead of "muh grimdark cyber future racing sim"
>>320415706
It's the best PS2 thing Naughty Dog has done.
>>320414683
>More people need to go back and replay this game to see how fucking good it really is.
I did go back with the HD collection, and every game but the first was a fucking chore.
The first game was piss easy and I got platinum in like two sittings. The second game was hard, but for all the wrong reasons (clunky controls, worst types of missions all rolled into one game, lack of checkpoints, terrible aiming in a TPS). By the third game it was basically "Jak: Mad Max" and the series just completely lost focus and became boring. Jak 3 fixed a lot of the controls but the game was still like 50% fucking driving and racing mission bullshit.
>>320416790
Well that explains a lot. But as for the GTA clone thing, I understand that. It's always a thing that pops up after a game gets super popular. Dota-likes, Minecraft-clones, etc. I just think it's stupid that years later, and I mean over a decade later, people call it a GTA-clone and either refuse to play the game because of it or think that it is a carbon copy of GTA and nothing more. The game has some of the best platforming in the series. Jak 1 was a platforming paradise but Jak 2 really stepped it up in trying to be a video game that can offer a lot of challenge.
>>320416772
It was hard in that nobody expected the series to take that kind of turn. Well that and the combat. Everybody was used to melee, so when guns came into play people shat the bed and struggled.It was easy if you spammed the jump+spin+shoot combo with the yellow rifle.
>>320414683
I love all the jak games but 2 is not underrated, I'd say it's equal in terms of how many people consider it the best alongside 1
>>320415706
>it's far better than Jak 3
I disagree. Purely from a gameplay perspective, Jak 3 is the same as Jak II but with more toys. Light Jak is an excellent addition, and there are a total of twelve different guns that give you a wide range of options for approaching enemies.
Now, is the story better? No. I enjoy Jak II's narrative more than Jak 3's, and the abundance of vehicle missions in 3's first act is a little grating. But all the stuff you can do in Jak can do in the trilogy mark makes me enjoy it more than the second game.
>>320417225
>lack of checkpoints
fuck checkpoints in games. You die, you start the level over. Fuck you
>>320415401
...Really? The fucking camo metalheads mission where they can't even hit you is what you had trouble with, of all the missions?
>>320417812
>jump+spin+shoot
ya this shit is so fucking stupid, especially with the rebound upgrade, that I don't use it in my jak2/3 playthroughs anymore. I have no idea why it wasn't nerfed in 3
>>320416960
>90% of the fucking game is driving and racing missions
More like less than half but okay
>the rest of your post
Literally "I am bad at video games" the post.
>Third person shooter
Jak 2 is not a third person shooter. If you were trying to play it like one, it's your fault you're an idiot. You should be long jumping, spin kicking and doing that "shooting around in circles while in the air" move. You're gun is to do damage while closing range with people. That said the games aiming method is good, it's got a soft lock on that is great because it doesn't take the control of the camera away from you like other hard lock on systems do. It gives you precise control over Jak and the camera at all times allowing for much more precision than a shitty lock on and strafe system would have.
PS2 GTA's had fucking awful shooting mechanics. Don't you fucking dare praise that garbage. R&C3 suffered way to much for being too much of a shitty strafe shooter, but even in that you could still play the game not using lock on. This is why R&C2 is much better than 3.
>muh docks muh sewers
Just use the hoverboard. Idiots like you are why games holdhold. Thanks for ruining everything faggot. Figuring out that literally the entire game was built with the hoverboard in mind, but you didn't have to use it if you didn't want too was such a great moment. What you faggots basically tried to do in Jak, would best be described by doing a knife only run in classic Resident Evil, then complaining it was too hard.
>>320416002
Fucking hate all those edgy as fuck games with killable npcs thats why I only play bejeweled in my safe space
>>320414683
It's mostly hard in the fact that the vehicle controles are a piece of shit so you're fighting witht hat way more than the actual objective.
any mission that wasn't the mission with the infinetely spawning enemies or vehicle missions only took me one try.
Jak 2 is not underrated, it has a very shitty overworld and a good 1/3rd of the missions are "drive a vehicle because we at naughty dog finally got our driver licences!" The other missions and the platforming are great, but everything else inbetween doing missions is tedious as fuck. Also the shooting mechanics are wonky as well.
If they just made the game linear, just going straight from mission to mission immediately instead of traversing a boring empty overworld, and if the setting wasn't a blatant "we want the GTA audience" it would be a lot more well regarded.
I played Jak 2 as of recently and it's something that I can't picture myself ever replaying, while Jak 1 and 3 I can.
>>320417812
>>320418025
>not punch jump punch shoot spin shoot
>>320418101
NPCs are not the same as mobs, bru. Also read the thread.
>>320418238
no it's punch jump punch spin shoot, you got an extra shoot
>yfw dsp aced the dock mission by just getting on the damn jet board
>>320414057
Jak 3 had:
>More checkpoints
>Bigger health bar after upgrades
>Light Jak healing
>OP weapons like Beam Reflexor, Plasmite RPG, and Needle Laser
>Improved jetboard mechanics
>No aerial traffic, making driving missions easier
If Jak 3 only had the weapons and health bar of Jak II, and removed Light Jak and any checkpoints, it would be a much harder game.
>>320414057
My favorite 3d platformer
How can you have trouble in this game when all you do is equip the yellow gun run up to shit spin and shoot and clear out pretty much everything in 2 cycles of that?
Once you get over the low ammo count, the Peace Maker is a really fucking good gun. It has the long range of the Blaster Rifle but with an AOE that takes out enemies near where the shot landed. Really good for handling huddles of enemies that like to shoot from a distance.
>>320418049
>Literally "I am bad at video games" the post.
Nigga I finished every Souls games. I have a god damn plat trophy in Jak 2, doesn't make it not shit. The difficulty was from poor mechanics and clunky controls, not any actual inherit good gameplay design.
>>320418049
>Jak 2 is not a third person shooter.
HURR DURR it's not a TPS because you platform and use melee attacks too! Guess fucking what, Ratchet and Clank was a platformer TPS too with melee attacks and it still did BOTH better than Jak 2. If you're defending this shit you're literally being an autistic nostalgia fag.
>>320418049
>>muh docks muh sewers
"I don't actually have an excuse for objectively bad game design so instead I'll just say muh a bunch of times"
Yet escort missions are ALWAYS the first thing on people's shit list of bad parts of video games, but it's literally okay when "muh" edgy grimdark super cool game I played when I was 12 and had shit tastes did it!!
>>320418238
>implying I didn't hoverboard, jump off then dive attack, then used the bounce from the dive attack to spin and shoot
Gotta style all over those guards.
>>320418430
Well of course. Jak 3 had a lot of cheap shit.
>light Jak to heal all the way back to full health or make yourself immune with a shield
>insane amount of hp
>tier 3 peacemaker literally wipes out every enemy on screen
>tier 2 and 3 rifle clears hallways by itself
Game was boring as fuck. Jak 2 was more interesting
It's not as much difficult as it is needlessly frustrating because a lot of missions just aren't well thought out and the combat is so imprecise. The flaws come down to bad game design instead of actual intended difficulty curve.
It beats me why they didn't just copy Ratchet & Clank 2 if they wanted such a focus on gun-based combat in a system designed originally for platforming.
>>320414683
literally one of my favorites
>>320417914
Weapon upgrades are overrated,they were either 'I aim for you' shit or too gimmicky(anti gravity was cost unefficient and the R.Y.N.O thing was too optional,The only cool upgrades were the thunder minigun and the pulverizer upgrades.)
>>320414683
>>320414946
I forget how fucking young the average /v/ user is until I see posts like this
It was and is a difficult game. People didn't hate it because it was hard, they just didn't like the major shift in tone; the switch from progressive platforming & puzzle-based exploration to GTA lite certainly didn't help. And yes, GTA was almost as huge then as it is now. Vice City's release was a massive event, followed by a deluge of copycats.
It wasn't the first time ND had ripped off successful game mechanics and, as we now know, wouldn't be the last, cough Uncharted cough. Before Jak II, CTR was a Mario Kart reskin (it was fucking awesome, but that's beside the point). In the late 90s/early 00s there was a lot of rivalry on the internet between Insomniac Games fans (Spyro trilogy, Ratchet & Clank) and ND (Jak/Crash). The latter produced what were arguably the more commercially successful series by a small margin, but ND's lack of originality was always a point of contention. The original Spyro and R&C trilogies are now widely recognised for their innovative level design and technological achievement considering the limitations of their respective platforms (I read a good article about how Mark Cerny really challenged them to push the envelope on the first Spyro game, simple shit like making the horizon seem infinite). The Jak series remains controversial.
So there
I remember being impressed you could see the dirigible in the swamp from the top of the Precursor Temple, or on the mountain top. Actually, knowing that I could see the whole world and not be divided up by obvious loading screens was cool beyond all belief when I was kid.
>>320418620
>I finished every souls game
not him but everyone has, the souls games are "hard" like the dock mission is, if you're a retard who rushes in you'll die
>>320414683
I love Jak II but it still has a handful of bullshit moments.
Most of the game isn't that hard, but sometimes it can be a real cunt.
The checkpoints are definitely a big factor.
ITT: shitters can't get good
>>320419617
>comparing Souls trial and error / "tread with care" approach to literally infinite spawning ranged enemies, wonky controls, one hit kill water drones, and terrible TPS mechanics in a TPS
Wow, imagine being this autistic about a game people recognize is objectively shit
>>320420031
>dock mission
>infinite spawning ranged enemies
found the retard who tried to rush through, each ship has like 3 guys and you fight one at a time
>>320416960
>90% of the fucking game is driving and racing missions
Sounds more like Jak 3 m8
>>320420031
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv7aXzM7DZc
that vulcan gun was really fucking strong with those hitscan bullets
>>320420308
That mission was so easy.
Even if you did it the normal way without using hoverboard it wasn't that hard anyways. it's one of those levels where you know that if anyone complained about it they were an absolute shitter.
>>320420308
If only I knew this when I was a teen.
I remember hitting my controller a lot.
>I win, Jak!
>drives into his death
What did Erol mean by this?
>>320420635
why the fuck was this guy the big bad of 3 anyway?
>>320418430
>Light healing allows you to heal on the fly
>Available early game
>Light Eco drops like confetti
>Final boss
>Here's a light well! Have fun not dying ever.
Light Jak was cool as shit, but fuck it broke the game and removed all semblance of challenge
>>320420507
Ammo was pretty rare tho.
>>320420796
It was an easy fight even without using that, halfway through the game I forgot what button input it was to heal with that and I never even really needed it, the game beefed you up like fucking mad.
>>320420721
He went even more bonkers than he already was when he turned into a robot and got into contact with the Dark Makers.
But really, does it matter? His hammy performance was awesome.
>>320419327
Kek is that why there where so many apearances of the other franchises in the separate games?
Regardless of how we all feel about Jak II, we can all agree that the story in Jak 3 was trash and the ending was a slap in the face.
Right?
>>320420635
Errol knew he couldn't beat Jak as a meat popsicle, so he had to become robot.
>>320421259
No.
>>320421259
Not really,The king said some 'don't leave a marine behind' shit but that was because he knew no one would risk saving jak, so he hid In pride,and then the he was your father all along part was pretty built up,especially If you played the second one.
>>320421150
Yeah, both companies worked in the same building at one point
ND/Insomniac lore is best lore
>>320421259
The narrative in 3 just felt weird and disjointed all throughout. Particularly when you started hopping back and forth between haven and the wasteland.
>>320419327
There's no denying Jak II wanted the GTA style, but to consider it a copycat of GTA is absolute bullshit. Tell me where in the GTA series do you get a mission to platform across a temple of floating rocks, moving poles, and boss battles with platforming elements to them.
>>320421421
>>320421779
I mean how the Dark Makers come out of nowhere, the Metal Heads somehow manage to fucking destroy Haven City in no time flat without a leader and the Precursors are actually comic relief rats like Dax :^)
Oh also Keira fucks off for 99% of the game basically and Jak steals Torn's girl with no real explanation or build-up
And don't forget "THE Mar?"
Game was great. They balanced the mechanics just right so that dying over and over again never felt like a chore given how fast it was to get up and running again. Had they had something like BBs load time every time you died though, well...
>>320415548
Get good
>>320416772
>you're not supposed to run through, you kill the enemies and walk to the destination.
This, fucking this. There's a very apparent pattern that opens up if you kill them all and walk slowly.
>>320422452
I never understood that part.
How was Jak also Mar exactly?
>>320423272
who knows, the timeline was fucked in 2 and they even joke about it
>>320422452
>>320423272
Thank Amy Hennig, she's a shit writer.
>>320423272
That was just Ashelin being confused. Jak's birth name was Mar, that's it.
>>320414683
The difficult wasn't a huge deal, but JAK 2 had a LOT of problems, first and foremost being the vehicle controls. Combining floaty vehicles with large amounts of traffic and adding a GTA style mission system where you had to drive back and forth between locations was a pain in the ass. Jak and Daxter's system of traversing several areas and coming across side-missions within each area felt more natural and organic, making the whole game flow together better.
Also, Jak and Daxter didn't have a mini map because each area was designed to be traversed without one, so you could focus on on your surroundings and appreciated them more instead of looking for icons on a mini-map and hoping you didn't crash into anything whilst driving a car that feels like a golf cart on an ice rink.
I liked Jak and Daxter better because it was better designed overall, not because I have an aversion to difficulty or asinine stories that take themselves too seriously.
That blast bot theme in jak 3 though
The R&C series is objectively better than the J&D series.
>>320414683
>Not a hard game
I just tried to beat the final boss after 10 fuckings years and still couldnt senpai.
>>320424015
good god git gud :^)
>>320424015
POP THE HOVER BOARD ON THAT NIGGUH
>>320424015
Really? I beat him on the 2nd or 3rd try last time I played and I suck at video games.
>>320424015
Just climb up the cliff and he won't be able to hit you
>>320425610
How the fuck do you do it?
Also, i keep running out of ammo when i get him down to half health
>>320425750
High jumps up the cliff face. There should be a step in the corner.
I loved the fact that dark jak straight up advances the bosses to their next phase if you use dark bomb./blast on them and it works on every one.
>>320426163
I'm not sure what you are talking about. This happens in Jak 2?
>>320426491
Dark bomb is powerful enough that it hits for a bar of damage on bosses.
>>320426163
Dark blast was so fucking useless and it looked terrible, too.
>>320426631
I was imagining hitting them somehow made them more powerful (dark eco against a dark eco enemy). Never mind.
The first fight against Praxis was the best boss battle in the game, imo. Nice scene setup and the weirdness of his mech thing made it more imposing, along with his quotes.
>>320414683
>>320415208
>>320415706
>>320415845
>there actually are people other than me on /v/ who liked jak2
what the fuck
along with KH2 and DMC3, jak2 definitely belongs in my top 3 ps2 games
I'm going to replay through jak 2 and try to 100% it or at least come very close, how much precursor eggs were required to unlock hero mode?
>>320427165
200, I think.
Maybe 285, that might be Jak 3
Those bullshit cross-city speeder races where you had to dodge randomly spawning pedestrians and vehicles were the worst part of the game
Anyone ever notice that the kg had kill quotes? Sometimes if one killed you they'd say something like "Another notch for my gun."
>>320429013
Youre speaking of that one everyone struggles with. The rest are easy. But that one was just bullshit.
