Current Events > Playing Jak 2 (Spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just finished Super Mario Sunshine, seeing how this thing holds up.

Local man is GONNA KILL PRAXIS

daxter is basically vergil

One of my favorites games and one of my favorite series.

I got 5 Precursor Orbs coming out of that first escape section. If there were more in there then.. Oh.
Also this series' double jump -> air spin kick thing is the best.

Gotta say the random Krimson Guards going THIS IS A NO HOVER ZONE and SUBJECT FLEEING INTO SECTOR FIVE is some nostalgic stuff I completely forgot about.
Oh man and the precursor statues voiced by Shockmaster.

I considered making a joke about Krew but he's literally about to give me the first gun of the franchise so he gets a pass for now.

Yellow gun acquired, racing mentioned, Erol aknowledged.
The game is starting.

does the long jump after a roll hurt enemies? it does in jak 1. i haven't played jak 2 in years so i just don't remember. waiting for opengoal version to finish development to play it again

also i think you can quick burst shot right after the long jump roll (like yellow gun should do 2-3 shots right after) if not then it is for sure the punch move i just dont remember shit rn lol

Long jump doesn't hurt enemies.
The burst fire thing, if you spinkick an enemy and press the fire button he locks on to another enemy and shoots a few rapid shots.
You can do the punch and fire the red gun at the same time which is neat.

I'm probably just gonna do jump -> spin -> fire yellow gun all over the place all game.

Edit: You know what they don't have? A button that turns the camera to face the direction Jak is. I swear you find one Precursor Orb and get a hit of dopamine and you're doomed to spend the rest of the game spinning and twisting the camera.

This first Baron Praxis fight kind of comes out of nowhere.
The last interaction Praxis had with Jak was at the very start, he's talking with Erol about finding the tomb and conditioning the Metal Heads. He hears something on the roof and immediately he's in his mech ready to go fight it.
And then it ends and Praxis leaves as quickly as it started.

Yeesh that part in the forest where it rains boulders that try to stunlock you sucks.

Why's there a random building in the slums that just happens to have a magic precursor statue that gives you screen clearing dark attacks anyway?

How are you finding the difficulty? I remember Jak 2 being very stingy with its checkpoints.

Trelve posted...

How are you finding the difficulty? I remember Jak 2 being very stingy with its checkpoints.

It's definitely keeping me on my toes. It's coming at me from a few different angles. Rough checkpoints, timers and escort missions where losing your car insta-fails the mission. I just got a hoverboard parkour mission on the water sprung on me.

One mistake driving can really snowball and tank a mission attempt faster than anything. One bump and suddenly you're facing the wrong way, your machine is smoking, KGs are piling you.
I make it sound a little aggravating but I'm enjoying it.

The drill platform gun has fast X axis movement, slow Y axis movement and the Y axis controls are inverted.
...Why?

I like how edgy it got. Jak's 1st words are Kill PRAXIS!, they say piss a lot, and Daxter is constantly staring at that blonde bartender's cleavage lol

Oh I remember this one all right.
The bit at the slums where you get the crest thing then KGs absolutely pile you and if you go down to the water you instantly lose.

Edit: Done but to this day I want to know the dev intended strat for that. I was spamming the punch -> uppercut thing because it was creating some kind of grace period where the turrets on the KG ships were hesitating to shoot at me.
I've heard you can dark bomb into the water and take out the one shot turret but I didn't have enough meter.

Oh fuck that mission.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

seeing how this thing holds up.

Ashelin still hot as fuck.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/9/4/AAZsuhAAEVia.jpg

I saw on reddit. Never knew about this (assuming its legit).

also it sucks that i actually have a ps2 and the game but my tv doesn't take component or a/v input so can't play it lol

Took too many tries and a few deaths on lap 5 but the class 3 race is down.
I don't mind the track having some tricks up its sleeve or the shortcut jump being kind of finnicky but 5 laps just gets repetitive.

Mar's Tomb.
This to me is the Jak level. When I think of the franchise I think of this place and Jak 3's final boss fight.
Eager to see how it's aged.

Is it this one or 3 with the on rails turret section? I always got stuck on that.

Also, I absolutely love Daxter's humour in this game. Him and that fat dude have great chemistry

LeCh0nk posted...

Is it this one or 3 with the on rails turret section? I always got stuck on that.

Also, I absolutely love Daxter's humour in this game. Him and that fat dude have great chemistry

If you mean the Drill Platform level where big red Krimson Guard ships and jetpack guys swarm you, that's this one.

At the boss.
Holds up. That's a great level.
It's always giving you something to do. Electric water, the music puzzle, the thing where you have to keep track of the bugs, lots of parkouring up moving blocks and poles, the weird Daxter section where you run toward the screen. No wishing you had a minimap, no roaming around the forest looking for the last two invisible enemies.

All of it's pretty tame but the variety makes it feel like it was built to keep most people out and I like how this game probably has you conditioned to afraid of where the checkpoints might be by this stage.

Baron Praxis fight 2 is much better than 1.
Feels good landing a bunch of bombs rapid fire.
I like that something's on the line too and that he actually gets the thing and totally changes strategy for the last third of the fight as opposed to him getting the stone during the cutscene after.

That's a good fight. Love the Tomb of Mar in general.

I have an urge to go back and play all these games from my childhood now. I just know I'll probably lose the motivation to keep playing a few hours in, despite how fun it is. Being an adult sometimes sucks.

Oh man I either forgot or repressed that prison rescue level right after Praxis 2.
That's a hell of a welcome to the last third of the game.
Best soul crushing checkpoint so far as well. Unusual levels of KG aggression + 2 new enemy variants + repetition + a jetboard section with a blind right turn near the end.

I love the implication that early 00s Naughty Dog's playtester was the real thing too. Guy just played this and went "Yeah looks good, no nothing needs fine tuning, it's a fun ride that never tries to disembowel you for a prank."

Erol sighting!
Watching him like a hawk, trying to figure out how he went from this guy to his Jak 3 self.
Right now he's angry at Jak for giving people hope, he wants Keira to be his mechanic and he wishes he'd killed Jak but doesn't really mind because he can kill him on a race track.

I'm guessing Erol got under his skin fast because one instance of Keira complimenting Erol later and this is like the one part where Jak walks out and leaves Daxter to win the class 2 race.

Peacemaker Acquired!
But it's the Jak 2 Peacemaker and there is no Mass Inverter to be unlocked.
But it's still the Peacemaker!

This friendly Erol fellow wishes to partake in a merry contest of speed and reflexes which will lead us through the city via a trail of boost rings.
What could go wrong?!

Boy I remember that race being one of the hardest missions in the game. Gotta say you're making me want to replay the trilogy.

Took 20 minutes to get through it. Put me into the sitting-right-in-front-of-the-screen-squinting-fiercely stance in record time though.

I wonder what kind of compensation you get if the captain of the Krimson Guard (Famed for apparently being a highly skilled racer) carelessly runs you down with a zoomer in the middle of a street race.
After hitting the same Heart Attack Grill spokesman and having my vehicle fly off in the wrong direction a few times, I stopped feeling as much sympathy for the bystanders.

The Drill Platform titan suit level.
I remember this one but I don't remember if it's memorability comes from either being fun or difficult.

Tried replaying it last year and I have no clue how younger me had the patience for it

A bit of both.
It's pretty simple and I remember the game often wants me to get out of the suit and hit some switches.
That run back after you've busted up the computers is the part that sticks out. The checkpoint's really generous by this game's standards. Helplessly waiting for those really slow elevators while the timer ticks away is some real pressure though.

I like that you can stand on the outer rim of the fire platforms and not get burned.

Class 1 race.
I wonder if either Jak 2 or 3 make a Trial and Erol pun at any point.
Let's have a nice clean race. No exploding me on lap 5, no origins of the franchise's final villain. Good luck, AI racers that I get unlimited retries against.

Edit: "I want more than just to win, eco freak! I want YOU!" - Erol, whose character has taken another unexpected turn.

There goes an odd character that I get a kick out of some reason.
Between him and Deathborn, maybe evil racer who comes back as an evil cyborg with an insane plan is just an easy way to appeal to me.

May the reconstructive surgeons be swift and aware that there was only one r in Erol.

Praxis' Palace.
Okay no beating round the bush. This is a pretty rough checkpoint.
Maybe it's not that bad and I'm just terrible with the jetboard. Both seem plausible.

Edit: Just beat it. That might be up there with the prison rescue and the seal piece at the slums.

Krew! Finally something I can use the Peacemaker on without feeling like I'd be wasting ammo! Dark Jak and the Peacemaker really haven't been seeing much usage this run.

With Krew down I guess I'll be helping Sig escape that giant bug thing very soon. There was a water level with the titan suit somewhere round here too.
Edit: Yep, sounds like it.
Edit: Oh huh the titan suit water level and the Sig level are different parts of the same level?

Water section wasn't bad at all. I just ran for it.

Sig underport level was a pretty harsh checkpoint.
Long jump to Sig -> block puzzle -> chase section with weird camera -> block puzzle that makes you do an awkward feeling jump -> another block puzzle -> another longer chase section with a much worse camera.
Death at any point has you do the whole thing over.

The minimap is telling me I have enough Metal Head skull gems for another power. Took it long enough, game's almost over isn't it?

Turns out it is. Next level is the Metal Head Nest. Look at this Malachor V looking hellhole.
I gotta say, I like how the color scheme and the skull gems are all that unites the wildly varying types of Metal Head.
It's like they prey on other species, Metal-Head-ify them and add them to their ranks.

Beat Metal Kor in one go.
I was expecting to need another go. I was running laps of the room collecting skull gems and ammo, then I filled up on yellow ammo without much damage and figured screw it I'll give it a go.
Dash punch -> uppercut to dodge the projectiles, jump spin shoot for all the mooks in the room.
For the last phase I just dark bombed him then emptied the Peacemaker.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how this holds up.
It can actually fight back against my years of practice and familiarity with platformers. That alone is the best part to me. If this and Mario Sunshine have told me anything it's that I really miss when games used to have crazy difficulty spikes that completely walled off progress through the game. It really helps some of these make an impression. As soon as I got that slum key piece and Erol challenged me to that race around the city I got that feeling of uh oh I definitely remember this and the game is better for it.

I'd make some small tweaks.
-I'd make the zoomers a little more durable and rebalance the whole skull gem upgrades system because I know there's a giant Dark Jak power after the invincibility one and I have no idea how you're supposed to get that on your first run through.
-There were a couple of missions like rummaging around in the forest looking for invisible Metal Heads that just dragged on.
-I'm not sure where the devs wanted me to stand or point the camera during the ones where you have to protect Samos either. Felt like every glance in one direction, he got blindsided by every other direction.
-I wasn't using Dark Jak much at all because it takes so long to charge so I'd definitely want it to charge faster so I wouldn't feel like I was potentially wasting something so valuable. Peacemaker ammo was a similar kind of deal.

It also feels kind of strange that the game spins its wheels with the first two Baron Praxis boss fights and then right near the end it starts running through all its villains. Krew, Erol, Praxis and Kor all drop in quick succession. It's not a boss rush but I like the game using a villain death every few missions to make you feel accomplished for how demanding some of the later missions are. Seems like a really basic thing but I don't see a lot of games with fixed difficulty that's willing to get this rough.

Even stranger though, there's a Naughty Dog logo on a game I have compliments for. Truly bizarre.

In the end he didn't kill Praxis, but he did kill the guy who killed Praxis so I'd say he breaks even.