It's great to see new life in an otherwise boring series.
Since I've never played Jak II and Jak 3, I have no idead what the story is. But that's not important. The gameplay is what makes this game so great.
If Jak X was llike anyother game, it would be closest to Mario Kart. It's an arcade style racing game with power-ups for your car, so that you can try and take out your opponents. There are quite a few differences as well, though.
Aswell as the normal races, there are some other events, which vary in quality.
This is where the game goes from good to bad, and back to good. There are demolition durby-style levels, where your goal is to try and kill more enemies than your opponents.
There are combat races aswell, which require you to kill a certain number or cars in a time limit.
The weakest part of the game is by fa the "Freeze Rally" races. You have a time limit to complete these courses, and to maximaze the time, you have to hit certain clock stoppers. The prolem is thta the tracks are so long that it's almost impossible to get to the finish line in time.
As you play the normal races, survival will depend on killing your enemies without being killed yourself. You can drive over yellow, blue, green and red powerups.
The yellow powerup gives you a random weapon to shoot the other cars.
The red power up gives ou a rear-firing weapon. These are important because they can be used to deflect weapons away from you.
The blue and green powerups are more technical. The blue gives yo a certain amount of turbo to use, and green will restore your health.
As you win races, you will win orbs depending on how many times you died, the number of cars thst you killed, and more. These obs are used to upgrade you various cars, to make you more likely to win.
There are some problems, though. The controlls seems to be unresponsive at times. Several times, I've been in first place in a race, but then suddenly my controlls lockup, causing me to crash and loose my lead.
I've also been in situation where I was doing fine, but then a icrash, and then suddenly, I'm facing backwards, and it seems almost impossible to turn around.
The amount of damaga this do is also questionalble. It seems that the number of hits you need to kill or be killed keeps changing. Even when you crash it odd. You could crash while you're going very slowly and die, but crash at a very high speed and come away with almost no damage.
The biggest problem is the difficulty. In order to be able to compete in another event, you need to get the gold medal in every event. With the problems and AI difficulty, that's a nearly impossible task.
Past the gameplay, the game looks and sound great. The music is good, but not distracting, and the sound effects all seem to fit the weapons. But, there talking can be quite annoying. Every time you completw a lap, some one will say "On lap finished." After hearing that in every race, it gets old, REALLY fast.
The graphics are also quite good. They're clear, and it always runs at a high frame rate.
If you already have a mariokart, then you might want to pass on this, but if your only system is a ps2, Jak X should give you some good times.