The Green Cup Grand Prix is proceeding apace. All we have left to do is close out the competition and stay on top.

Shouldn’t be too difficult.

It’s so odd to see a TV show host lose his cool and ask contestants what they think about possible death threats. I certainly hope that’s not some kind of foreshadowing to indicate he may have ulterior motives.

We’re almost finished with the Green Eco Cup, and once we are we’ll be halfway through the game. I hope Mizo is nervous because we’re ready to win the whole damn thing.

I can’t believe I missed that I still had a qualifier to do. Oh well. Mistakes happen. And assuming we go back for full completion, it’s one fewer race than we’ll need to complete later.

As far as the story is concerned, we still haven’t made any meaningful advancements. We still don’t know why Mizo is still trying to stop us. Thankfully, we’ll start to get some answers next time!

With each successful race, the competition only grows in skill. Fortunately, so do we! Right?

Right!?

Looking back on the tape, while theirs a floatiness to the vehicles in the game, a lot of what happened appears to actually come down to operator error. I don’t remember hitting the breaks to power slide as often as I did, but the footage doesn’t lie. And that might be a large part of my problem. Fortunately, that means it’s something I can work on.

Unfortunately, it means I’m colder towards the game than I realistically should be. We’ll just have to fix that as we keep going.

I don’t know what Shiv has against me, but I know he’s the leading cause of my losing races. And I’m going to make him pay.

I am starting to realize that I vastly favor events that result in large chains of enemy vehicles being felled by my own bloody hands. And to be honest, I’m not sure what that says about me.

Apologies for the wonky audio this week. I’ve installed a new standing desk, and the microphone was not set up properly to accommodate me standing versus sitting. I’ve adjusted it, so we should be fine next week.

As our rank grows, the number and types of events we can take part in continue to expand. We’ve got some new challenges on the docket, and Mizo’s men are still hassling us, so let’s take them both on.

Something I’m starting to notice about the story in Jak X is that the circumstances haven’t changed at all in the 4 hours we’ve been playing. New racers have been introduced to the game, but in general, we’re still forced to race in order to get the antidote from Krew, and Mizo’s gang, whoever he is, is trying to stop us for reasons we don’t understand. We’re picking up small hints and foreshadowing, but the actual plot has not meaningfully advanced in any way.

Of course, we’re so busy having fun on the track that it’s probably not an issue. The only reason it occurred to be at all is that when reviewing the footage, I realized that I didn’t have much to actually say about the cutscenes. I’ve been mostly focused on the action.

And I guess that’s kinda the point, so it might not even be a problem.

Though Jak X still remains an incredible game, it’s only now that I start to see one of the big cracks in its facade.

All aspects of game design are trade-offs, logical exchanges that must be considered in order to cultivate the type of experience designers wish to impart upon their players. And though the hyper-lethality and aggressive playstyle promoted by the game leads to engaging races where the winner isn’t locked in until they cross the finish line, it does come with drawbacks.

Sometimes players can make all correct split-second decisions, and lose the race because a stray missile or Peace Maker shot is aimed squarely at them just as they’re about to cross the finish line. It’s always going to lead to some amount of bad feelings when it happens, and there’s no avoiding that. However, when the race is five minutes long and it comes down to that final hit, that can be brutal to have to redo the entire race for another shot.

Part of this is exacerbated by the fact that even in those long races, the only portion of it that realistically determines the final result, assuming all drivers are performing decently, is the last minute or so. Everything else is more or less a preamble to that final minute of driving.

Fortunately, I’m having enough fun that I don’t care about that, but I can imagine feeling different if I wasn’t in the correct headspace.

As it turns out, my fears that Jak X wouldn’t be a fun stream game were unfounded. And since we’re enjoying ourselves so much, let’s keep going.

Perhaps the biggest improvement of this game’s Adventure Mode over something like Crash Team Racing is the way that we’re rarely playing the same types of events repeatedly.

In CTR, most players finish all the normal races first, then the boss race of a given hub, before they can even think about the CTR challenges and Relic Races. All of the events of a specific type are discreetly handed out at roughly the same time, so we tend to do them in batches.

But here, the structure is different. As we accumulate medals, new events open up in a given Cup, and those events can be anything. We may do a Circuit Race only to be greeted by a Deathmatch or a Freeze Rally immediately afterward. This means there’s a constant variety and diversity that keeps gameplay fresh and exciting as we progress through it.

Additionally, while we still have to win the bulk of events, there’s some built-in leeway since we only need 50/60 medals per cup. If a particular race is causing us problems, we can be content to come in second or third and move on to something different.

It’s a smart way to make sure players don’t get bored or frustrated for long, while still allowing for challenging and exciting events.

Nothing can bring us down. We’re rapidly climbing the ranks until we can qualify for the Grand Prix. Onward and upward!

Though I find myself enjoying how aggressive and offensive Jak X is as a racing game, I do think there are a few issues with how aggressive it is that could put people off, and they’re worth mentioning.

While the emphasis on offensive weapons means that players falling behind always have a means of catching up, the reverse is that if they’re ahead, there’s a good chance they could be taken out and thrown behind without due recourse. The most obvious example of this is the ratio of front-facing to rear-facing weapons. In theory, if we have a rear weapon, we can always use it to deflect a missile coming at us. In practice, missiles always come in sets of two, while rear weapons like mines always come in sets of one. That means that it’s usually impossible to fully deflect a volley, and you’ll always at least take a few hits.

Additionally, most games of this nature, like Crash Team Racing, have systems in place to prevent AI-controlled racers from gaining access to the Blue Shell equivalent, the Peace Maker in this game. In the hands of a player, this weapon means that there’s always a chance they’ll be able to hit the person in front to take the lead. But when the AI has access to it, especially at the frequency we’re seeing it here in Jak X, it often means if the player takes first, they’re likely to immediately be taken out without almost no possible counterplay to stop it.

Even though I personally haven’t gotten frustrated by this yet, I see an alternate reality in which I am. And to people who do have that frustration while playing Jak X, I want you to know that I see and acknowledge you.

Whoever this Mizo guy is, he’s certainly doing whatever it takes to stop us from winning our antidote. Fortunately for us, his henchmen aren’t too bright.

We can take them.

One of the things I enjoy most about replaying a game like this actually, shocking does have to do with the story and writing. When we already know what the big plot twist is, it’s fun to replay it and watch scenes again in the light of the information. Things that might have read as off or awkward the first time around make much more sense in hindsight, giving us a brand new appreciation for how the latter plot points were set up.

Obviously, I can’t go into details now, but pay attention to how certain characters act. Credit to the team at Naughty Dog for frequently doing a good job at this.

Now that we’ve been given a “warm welcome” from the denizens of Kras City, I say it’s time to take the racing circuit by storm.

Let’s give these clowns a lesson they won’t soon forget!

Somehow, I forgot how good the driving feels in this game. Our vehicles have a weight and momentum to them that is extremely fun to manipulate through power sliding and effective use of turbo. It’s one of those things that’s hard to explain, but easy to demonstrate in action.

But that leaves the “combat” aspect of “Combat Racing”, and using weapons strategically can make a big difference. I like the innovation here of giving each racer the ability to hold two weapons at a time, an offensive weapon in the front, and a defensive weapon in the rear. No matter where we are in the pack, we always have a reason to have a weapon in both slots, to both try to claw our way further up the rankings into first, or defend our position from would-be aggressors. And when we’re at the front or the back of the pack, we’re still able to have a response ready for when that position gets threatened.

This does have the net effect of increasing the overall lethality of the game compared to CTR. In every race we’ve played, the top positions are fiercely contested throughout the duration, and the one in first is never fully secure. There are a few criticisms that can be levied at a game that skews its balance more heavily towards offense than defense, but I think those drawbacks are worth it for a more interactive match where no one ever truly feels like they have no chance to clawing back from disaster.

After all, it’s not over until we’ve crossed the finish line.