After wrapping up Drake’s Deception, I found myself unsure of what game I wished to play next for the channel and for Twitch. That’s when someone suggested Jak X: Combat Racing off-hand. I had been skeptical of doing it for the channel because I know some of the later races can be frustrating, but ultimately it still seemed like the best option.
So here we are, playing Jak X: Combat Racing.
Let us take a moment to acknowledge that the canon for Jak and Daxter has always been “loose”. Everything we take as fact is liable to be changed or contradicted by the premise of a future game, such is the case with Haven City being the last city on the planet. Turns out there is a whole other city that takes combat racing as the most important aspect of their culture. No, it doesn’t make sense. No, it doesn’t need to make sense, so let’s just go with it.
Once we do, the premise of this game is actually quite strong, giving our heroes and their allies ample motivation to continue racing when they have nothing else. After all, they’re literally die if they refuse to. It’s also perfectly natural for someone like Krew to issue this ultimatum from the dead, in the event that his plans back in the second game were interrupted. And in typical PS2-era Naughty Dog fashion, all of those stakes are established quickly, in the span of a few minutes, before we’re thrust immediately into basic tutorials to make sure we know all of the mechanics.
We’re off to a solid start. Let’s hope the game continues to deliver.
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