Jak X(cellent)

now it's fair to say there's division amongst two jak and daxter fans some people like that first game more than the others some people prefer the sequels but I think we can all agree that if you don't like Jack X I'm afraid you just a bit of a lame-o [Music] sorry it had to be me you had to tell you Jack X is so much fun it's probably some of the most immediate cathartic action Naughty Dog has ever made so of course I'm going to talk about it just so I can play it again I don't like the assumption that after I talk about major entries in a series that I should then be appointed to the role of spin-off janitor to talk about the kind of games that everyone sort of already know is that either all right or not very good games that have to be doing something a little more interesting for me to take note especially when they're not even made by the original developers anyway but Jack hex aside from being an excellent game I just want to play through again wasn't shipped off to another studio it was made by Naughty Dog and continues on from where the platformer trilogy left off surprisingly doing a pretty good job of following up and building on the characters in world previously presented if in a unique way it even ties up a few dangling threads that jak3 chose to neglect but before we can discuss that good [ __ ] I got a bone to pick with Jack X and the fact that it's cursed so apparently Jack X is one of the few ps2 games that has trouble playing on the ps2 slim model which I was unaware of before I started recording footage for this video the game kept trapping me in menus due to some auto save glitch forcing me to restart the console when it happened and eventually after beating a fourth of the game it chose to stop recognizing my safe file on boot up altogether in fact at that point it just chose to stop interacting with the memory cards at all so theoretically to reach that save now I would have to play on an original fat ps2 and I do have one of those just for some reason it's not really working anymore so instead I restarted the entire game without a memory card inserted and did it all in one sitting to get footage for this review which actually sped things up because without a memory card - the game won't freeze on that autosave glitch because I can't autosave now and this would be bad enough but this isn't even mentioning that this is my second copy of Jack X were working with the original I got when the game came out started glitching up and freezing after a year or so so I had to replace it so I have no IDE how good the ps4 port of Jack X is because I am not buying this game a third time but anyway other than that Jack Hanks does have some pretty impressive options for a ps2 game pal copies have a 60 Hertz which there's progressive scan and a proper sixteen by nine mode that actually shows more of the screen and doesn't just zoom it in like past Jack's calling its proper widescreen is still perhaps a bit misleading it's not actually making the resolution higher or anything it uses something called anamorphic widescreen where it creates a squished sixteen by nine perspective at four by three and then just stretches it out ultimately you're still getting about 640 by 480 it's an illusion this is the kind of widescreen Wii games use if you record a Wii and 16 by 9 through capture software that doesn't account for the anamorphic trickery you get what the games actually look like which is this this is what the games are actually outputting as before the console stretches them yeah but you wish you didn't know that now huh anyway how's this whole combat racing stuff then Jack X revolves around two main mechanics boosting and blastin boosting is achieved by grabbing items and hitting pads but you can gain considerably more boost by achieving high airtime and power sliding Naughty Dog of course are no strangers to some good old-fashioned boost racing jack exes like Crash Team Racing but with edge no seriously he's in the game boosting is of course risk reward you want to take those corners with speed and grace but while keeping control of your car so you don't spin off like a tit the faster you're going the more sensitive things get you don't want to be taking those corners too late or too early combat isn't that deeper anything here if you've got a yellow offensive weapon you shoot it at the guy in front if you have a red defensive item you shoot it out the back to cause chaos or to deflect an incoming projectile the depth really comes from your ability to prioritize what pickups to go for during a race in the heat of the moment items on the track are separated into four kinds health items to restore your vehicle boost pickups to add to your boost gauge offensive items and defensive items this creates a little more strategy than your average cartoon racer with randomized question mark pickups in those games the question is to go for the item box or not to go for the item box it's up in the air whether you'll get a weapon or a speed boost there are of course some of the factors to consider a lot of weapons and say double - do double duty is either offensive or defensive adding versatility to a given weapon but taking away precious decision-making out of the player's hands when it comes to picking the thing up one item box is potentially just as useful as another there's not much thinking about which to get just get the easiest to reach without slowing your forward momentum here it's up to you to make the choice of what you think you need the most in the heat of the action concerned with staving off attacks then go for the red defensive item or maybe you just want to keep your distance and boosters where it's at what's more important dealing damage immediately to the car in front of you or healing your right least double - introduced to the on-the-fly option to pick between item or - item not a huge choice but I'll give it some credit sure there are a few different weapons that get randomized upon pickup but you always know if there'll be defensive or offensive beforehand based on their color it's also worth noting that the weapon you'll get in this randomization does vary depending on your position in the race having boosts be their own items though takes them out of this randomization rubber-banding you can still pick up boost pickups in first place something the mario karts discourage at least you never feel like your ability to go fast is being reduced because you're doing too well putting the choice of what type of item to pick up in the player's hands I think really adds to the depth of this racer and of course if you got what it takes you may want to take a chance of getting two items at once damn which may take a little more effort than getting the double question mark box sorry I don't mean to be dunking on Mario Kart here or anything I like double dash it's just that when I start a comparison it doesn't seem to end for like five minutes game design alerts making these choices on the fly while keeping your speed up with boost tricks creates an energetic and rewarding loop as you try and maintain speed while fending off foes trying to estimate what the most pressing pick up your car needs to stay ahead of the competition is and whether it will come at the cost of speed or the integrity of your ride that all said of course this is a combat race so we're inherently there's gonna be times where no matter how far ahead you are how perfectly you're making each turn and getting ahead of the competition at some point the randomizer gods are gonna give the guy behind you some mega ultra beam of death that's gonna blow you up sometimes no matter what you do it seems unavoidable that you're gonna get blown up at least once or twice per race and it's hard to really say how to get around that in this kind of crazy action race a type game but I think at the bare minimum these ultra weapons that get given to stragglers that just decimate everything in front of them seem like they don't really need to be here they can undermine the satisfaction of performing at your best when it seems like no matter how efficient your being and no matter if you win the race by a mile you still have to witness yourself getting torn to shreds at least once even in an otherwise successful race if I'm performing at my best and doing really well at the game I think it should be easier to beat a race without seeing my car explode I think I only got to experience that like once in my entire 8 hour playthrough the great thing about Jack X is that in that little meaty six to eight hour story mode things rarely get too tedious thanks to the exorbitant amount of modes the game throws at you outside of the grand prix cups that have you performing three back-to-back races you're unlikely to need to do the same type of event more than once in a row you have traditional races time trials with pickups that freeze the clock arena battles creature hunting challenges item hunt challenges special death races of different types even a capture the flag mode makes a young admittedly somewhat awkward appearance in the single-player what's prayed is only a few races absolutely require you to come first place to progress sure you're gonna have to come first a lot to beat the game but you can select from a lot of events at the same time so the odd one giving you trouble might not need to be completely mastered you may be able to skimp a bit on a mission you don't like too much as long as you have enough points across all missions to unlock the next Grand Prix bottleneck since you can still earn points for coming third or second you need 50 points to enter the Grand Prix for each of the four cups but there's up to 60 points up for grabs in each Grand Prix bracket giving you a few points worth of leeway this works great for a game with so much variety where you may not be totally feeling a given type of event I kind of wish I had mentioned this game in my video about Naughty Dog and non-linearity now because what you get here is a title without a lot of the time does give you quite a bit of freedom when it comes to picking from a number of events in any order you prefer the game's story gets away with this taking place mostly off the track in at the Grand Prix bottlenecks before I discuss that story though just a few words on presentation performance is pretty good and while the game doesn't look quite as polished as the more intimate jak2 got to be there's a few bland tracks here and there most of them are detailed and crisp enough to look at least especially nice when you're speeding past them that sounded more backhanded than it was meant to be environments in models they're good high quality late ps2 stuff cutscenes are pre-rendered though unlike in the trilogy which probably helped a naughty dog fill them with more assets but the inherent compression has made them age a lot worse than the clean and crisp look of the cutscenes in the other games of course a bit of compression can't room in one of the raddest opening cutscenes ever [Music] it gets better really [Music] Dex get in the car sorry one of my favorite parts of this titles presentation though is that Jack finally has bangers this game has a pretty epic Rock soundtrack that does an immensely good job adding to the adrenaline pumping thrills of the high speed racing [Music] the track steel and its various iterations like crash and burn being particularly memorable [Music] there's even a track with woes in it [Music] [Applause] [Music] so some certified lads Tunes up in here what makes Jack axe pretty special is that on top of being some of the most fun you can have in a non sim racer Naughty Dog didn't skimp on a cool little story for Jack fans to get hooked into as well Jack X takes place after jak3 and sees Jack in the gang invited to the reading of crime boss crews will the gang Lord yeah big is right he invites his closest associates which thankfully for us our characters we already knew and his daughter rain what follows is I think a pretty cool setup it's an excuse to posthumously bring back the excellent crew and he is an appropriate catalyst for this games events which are going to concern themselves much more with the crime underbelly aspects of the Jack universe and less with the fantasy political and world ending Cataclysm elements of Jack Jack and the gang are poisoned by crew and forced to win the crass City Grand Prix in exchange for the antidote crew wanting to one-up the major crime syndicate in crass city run by the mysterious mezzo who becoming apparent as the game transpires is intimidating competitors through his vast criminal powers to fix races and have complete control of the sports making Jack and Friends his only real opposition since they have no choice but to race for their lives which is cool makes our plucky heroes irreverent underdogs in this new CD world are you crazy the world's deadliest crime Lord is offering you a deal and you refuse what does crew have on you guys this is amazing folks if you're listening me so your days are numbered we'll win but we'll die trying partially when I was younger I was somewhat wondering why crash City hadn't been mentioned in the series till now nobody lives outside havens walls not a whole city I suppose it's not inconceivable there were other cities this whole time the Jack trilogies loosey-goosey light on details world building especially come the third game leaves basically any avenue open for follow ups but still it was kind of like okay what were these guys doing when we will save in the world racing I guess while jack 2 & 3 presented us with a bit of disparity between how Jack was presented heroically in cutscenes and the of Carnage he could perform in game play in Jack X the discrepancies between how the story plays out in the cutscenes versus the gameplay are so big I don't think you need me to point them out for you Jack and buddies are all good pals and the cinemas but get on the track and anybody is fair game almost makes you wonder if they could have made the wipeouts a little less unsurvivable to accommodate the story but I imagine having super sick wipeouts superseded the need for consistency between cutscene and gameplay even menus though have trouble staying in line with the cutscenes SIG's return in the cutscenes is undercut by him describing a mission to you before his first appearance hello Jerry's you about to experience my can attract most fools haven't figured and I think cleaver should stop talking so much [ __ ] if you turn your back on this track it'll bite you with shades have a go at it and we'll see if you're man enough to race against me after I owned him so hard in the Grand Prix he positioned himself as Jack's main rival and I was also looking forward to seeing that teased cleaver and viga duo but and guess that goat walks back if you can put to one side the whiplash in context between cutscene and gameplay though this is quite a fun Jack story that actually attempts to reflect on past games a little and develop the cast albeit in a weirdly subversive way at times which I'll soon get sooo first off Keira is properly back and paired with Jack again seemingly admitting the sudden Ashlin focus in 3 was a misstep and finally paying off their coupling since the start of the series Jack hey well yeah kiss her already sheesh oh yeah that's what I call a photo finish the fact they didn't do that in three is still weirdly baffling to me she even gets a little arc here about how she wants to race but say most won't let her and at least it's something for her to do though a woman's faces in the garage fixing cars girls shouldn't be allowed to do the dangerous thing feels like a pretty played out plotline even for 2005 anyway ultimately it's a positive story if a bit generic daddy I'm racing and that's fine oh yeah she's got her independence now join the team Jack story is where the interesting stuff is though this game actually tries to question some of Jack's prior actions and his tendency to leave a trail of corpses throughout his so-called heroic adventures yours truly has recovered documents that prove Jack was the cause of crew's death what Jack left him to die in a terrible explosion how heartless can you get it wasn't like that no no I think we can pretty much say it was a lot like that Jack came down here making sure due process takes place or anything so will Jack grow from being challenged like this in the greatest video game one-liners since System Shock twos now we get our answer you have a habit of leaving people to die don't you you get used to it all most respects this direction it's so brazen Jack X finally gives us some actual inner conflicts for the jack series to chew on after a bunch of games alluding to some but never actually following through and exploring any of it and right when you think Jack X is gonna present some meaningful change it just goes slice I just kind of got to respect it did they realize the previous games were lacking a bit in character development and then just decided to say yeah we did that on purpose go to hell whatever the intention was it keeps with the edgy vibe of the later Jack games it asks a more interesting question than those games did I think and follows through on it by going does it really matter though you know I think it's more honest to present an inner conflict for Jack and again a better one I think than what we've seen before and have the result be no change and just continued resilience self-belief rather than just saying he changed at games end not really filling us in on why this place is worth fighting for I like the admission that Jax makes that maybe we can do more with these characters and we can re-examine their actions but we're not gonna bend them into something they're not at the end of it all and have them change who they are at this point have them wallowing in self-doubt so they don't resemble themselves it has us ask some questions about Jack but then kind of stays true to the series and the character by going yeah but really who gives a [ __ ] because yeah confronting your mistakes but ultimately deciding not to change is still a valid direction a valid end point maybe we can acknowledge mistakes of the past but remain resilient to accomplish your goals sometimes you do questionable thing if you make bad choices and people go to you about your regrets on the way but that doesn't stop you from moving forward because at the end of the day I guess you get used to it [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TheGamingBritShow

Views: 286,465

Keywords: jak and daxter, combat racing, jak x, jak x combat racing, ps2, racing, kart racing, arcade racing, review, retrospective, naughty dog, last of us, jak 2, jak 3, jak 4, mizo, krew, sony, playstation 2, excellent, awesome, tgbs, analysis, thegamingbrit, thegamingbritshow, gaming brit

Id: 2L4bld_YfG8

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CombustionEngine]

Based on the one trophy in the last of us left behind it seems like ND is ashamed of this game or something. "Nobody's perfect..."

[u/crestfallen_warrior]

Regardless of if you like the fact it was a racer or not, do check out its soundtrack, it's pretty incredible! I think sony still use it for certain things like adverts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDmfDScLpvo

Also an unused track that is good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqNauq5AKGA

[u/llamanatee]

I loved this game as a kid, too bad there was a bug on the slim PS2s where the save icon would stay on the screen forever, meaning that when you shut down your PS2 it would result in some corrupted data files.

[u/Adorable_Octopus]

The biggest problem with this game was the autosave bug, which would require a reset, if you were lucky. If you were unlucky, it'd corrupt your whole saved game.