Jak II Impressions

Sony let us in on a "breakout" session with Jak II and the game's director, Evan Wells, at the company's E3 booth this morning. We learned quite a bit about the upcoming sequel to Jak and Daxter and the somewhat surprising new direction that Naughty Dog is taking with the franchise.

One look at Jak II and you'll notice that the game's tone is much darker than that of the original. Wells said that Naughty Dog wanted to expand the game's audience to include older gamers, and toward that end they've made the game's style, story, and characters much edgier than what we saw in Jak and Daxter. Jak will start the game having just come out of a two-year term in prison, during which he was experimented on heavily. He'll have new powers resulting from these experiments--you can transform him into "Dark Jak" during the gameplay, which alters his appearance for the ghastlier and makes him much stronger as well.

Every aspect of Jak II has been darkened. For instance, Jak now has access to a variety of firearms in addition to his standard punch and spin moves. This may come as a bit of a surprise to fans of the first game, which was pretty fanciful. Jak also speaks for the first time in this game, and he and Daxter will have a noticeably fouler vocabulary than you might expect. In fact, Wells said the game would most likely receive a T rating, so there will be no reason to try to keep it clean.

The game features a few other new gameplay elements as well. For one, you'll occasionally be joined by an AI ally who will fight alongside you. For another, you'll have access to a jet board that you can use to zip around and do a lot of Tony Hawk-like moves with. There will be a number of sequences in the game where you can use the jet board to fly through a level quickly, or you can travel on foot and take your time instead. Finally, you'll be operating in a teeming city full of people, and there will be quite a few hovercars moving around the city street. In a nod to Grand Theft Auto, you'll be able to knock people out of their hovercars and take a joyride if you want.

Based on what we played of Jak II, the game seemed to feel extremely similar to the original. The controls will be quite familiar to anyone who played Jak and Daxter--the jumping and physical attacks were basically the same as in the original. The new gun attacks felt pretty natural too, and a bit of auto-targeting helped out with aiming. Jak II won't have any real collectibles, such as the first game's power cells or precursor orbs, but you'll have to gather ammo for your various guns and dark eco to power up your Dark Jak alter ego.

When you're down on the city streets, it's hard to get a sense of just how expansive the world of Jak II is, but once you climb atop one of the game's higher buildings, you can look out over the entire city where the game takes place. Just like the first game, the sequel will feature no real load times--the levels will stream from the DVD as you run around. The city in Jak II is roughtly 20 times the size of the village in Jak and Daxter, and there are more areas outside the city, so explorative gamers should be occupied with just running around for quite a while.

After what we've seen, heard, and played, we're very eager for more of Jak II. The game is certainly a dramatic departure from the original, but Naughty Dog should be applauded for trying something new with the platform genre. Story-driven platformers with mature themes aren't exactly common, so the game will at least be unique. And if our experience with the game so far is consistent with the final product, it will be an excellent game as well. Check back soon for more updates on Jak II.