In this episode, we tackle some of the most challenging and infamous missions that Jak II has to offer. Many children, playing on their PS2s in 2003, would grow frustrated at these missions.
*gulps*
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Isn’t that the way of stream luck? The most difficult challenges are wrapped up in a mere few tries, and the simple tasks on our plate take forever because we miss one critical detail that would totally solve all of our problems.
It just demonstrates that the jet board is the best gameplay addition to the Jak and Daxter formula, and they should have made more use of it.
It’s been a while since we’ve found ourselves back in the Arena, because I’ve had such mixed feelings about it. When talking about how issues with the client with friends of mine, one of them mentioned Historic Brawl as a possible solution. For those familiar with Commander, Historic Brawl is basically their attempt to put 1v1 commander on the client, except that Planeswalkers are also legal commanders.
With that in mind, I could think of no one better suited to lead my deck than my favorite planeswalker: Ajani Goldmane. He’s one of the most virtuous, valiant protectors in all of the multiverse, throwing himself into the fray to keep his friends and allies safe from villains like Phyrexia.
Wait… Ajani? What’s going on? What is that black stuff coming out of your wound? Why does your ultimate give out poison counters!?
And yet despite this, the deck doesn’t perform terribly. I don’t know if I would call it good, but since so many other decks in the format and looking to stall until they can build up to their 7-10 drop commander, it can snipe people down before they’ve had the chance to come online if we can a good opener.
Unfortunately, as you can see in the examples on display, it also folds almost immediately to anything looking to play at a similar pace. If they can get a few early blockers up, we’re in deep trouble. Hopefully, in the next episode, we’ll get some better luck.
Now that our little stint in the forest has been taken care of, perhaps we’ll learn a bit more about how to get to the Baron’s Palace if we visit our mechanic friend at the race track.
She looks familiar, but I can’t quite put my Keira on it.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Somehow, time had dulled the sense of dread I should have been feeling at starting one of these races. I had completely forgotten how unforgiving they are, especially since even one mistake can be fatal.
It’s almost strange to think that this is the same team that worked on Crash Team Racing, one of my favorite cart racers of all time. I don’t know why they made it so that your zoomer can take damage from bumping into walls, and perform worse as a result. It’s overly punishing when it doesn’t have to be.
Thankfully, Naughty Dog addresses many of the issues with these racing segments when we move into the next game. For now, we’ll just need to bear it.
We’re at the midpoint of this campaign, which means it’s time for the difficulty to start ramping up. Let’s just hope we’re equal to what lies before us.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Ignoring the absolute bullshit that went on with my attempt to use Dark Jak, once I actually figured out the tricks behind this mission in Haven Forest and stopped making so many mistakes, it actually wasn’t so long or difficult to complete it in one go. I only wish that I didn’t have to restart from the very beginning when I died in the middle of it. If I wasn’t playing on stream, having to kill all 30 a second time after dying to the very last enemy I had to kill would be profoundly demoralizing.
Thankfully, the added pressure of doing it for an audience gave me just the kick in the pants I needed to keep going.
At last, we have our Jetboard for the rest of the game. Time to start making use of it.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
It’s fun to contrast how fun the Jetboard is to pilot as compared to one of the vehicles all over the city. While it’s not fast as a car, you can actually move at a decent clip once the inertia starts to take over.
More importantly, though, the missions we go on using the Jetboard are generally just more novel and interesting than the “Drive to place and go thing” we’ve been doing a lot of this session. There are navigational challenges that require some skill in order to circumvent rather than just blindly hitting the gas pedal to go forward.
We sure showed Baron Praxis who’s boss. And it’s not him.
Hopefully, there won’t be any fallout from this.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Something we don’t give games from this era enough credit for is how they made use of their very limited resources in order to create the best games they could within reason. While Jak II certainly still holds up quite strongly in the visuals department due to its style, at the time it was quite impressive to get visuals this strong on the PlayStation 2.
While many might not remember these days because of the advent of SSDs on modern game consoles, and Blu-Ray discs capable of holding terabytes of data, back then designers were limited to what could be held on a DVD. Additionally, because we couldn’t download games directly onto HDDs or SSDs on the console, games were limited by the speed at which the disc reader was capable of loading assets into RAM.
As a result, game developers had to use a number of tricks and techniques, from hidden load screens up to and including managing where each individual asset was located on the disc itself, in order to make sure that games could load at reasonable speeds. Optimization was just as important as art and level design.
Something that games of today could stand to learn a lesson from.
We’ve finally secured a way into the Baron’s Palace. But before we take advantage of it, we have one more task to complete from our new acquaintance, the soothsayer Onin.
Another pain point that will likely grow worse over the course of the game is the checkpointing system or lack of one. Thankfully, missions don’t take very long to complete on average, so this hasn’t turned into a massive issue. However, it can be annoying and demoralizing when one gets close to the end of a mission, dies, and has to restart back at the very beginning of it. Even worse, they’ve lost the ammo from their first attempt, so they’re in a worse-off position than they were before they started.
It’s not a huge issue, but it is a bit of added pressure that only starts to gnaw at us more the further we get through the game.
We’ve got a lead on a way to infiltrate the Baron’s palace, but it’s not going to be easy. Hopefully, one of our friends has the solution we need.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
It wasn’t really until this particular recording block that I started to feel the monotony of the various open-world/vehicle missions inside the city. All of them are generally just minor collection missions that have the added pressure of guards swarming us to do minimal damage. Unless we’re mandated to use one of the Zoomer-type vehicles, almost any car in the game is durable enough that the damage guards do to it won’t add up fast enough to matter.
This game has a ton of strengths, but the vehicle missions lifted off GTA are not one of them.
Our list of contacts is growing by the minute. Looks like everyone in Haven City is going to know about us by the time we’re through.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
We’re only a few hours into the game, which should take about 16 hours if How Long to Beat is to be believed, but we’ve basically met almost every major character in the game, give or take a few that won’t make their presence known until later.
It seems like nothing much has happened yet, but in fairness, this first act is still basically setting up the cast and the initial layout/scope of Haven City. We need to learn what life is like here before we can start challenging that status quo, or upping the stakes as we will in later acts.
There’s care that went into the sequencing of this game, and I’d like to take a moment to appreciate it.
We’ve made contact with another of the seedier elements of society. Fortunately for us, he’s seen fit to give us a few gigs and a few guns.
Could be useful in this city.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
You had best get used to seeing that spin move with the Blaster Mod because it’s easily one of the most reliable ways to output damage in the entire game. There’s some degree of auto-aim on it, and it pumps out far more bullets than shooting the weapon normally world, meaning it can make short work of most small enemies.
Having said that, I honestly forgot how quickly they give you the jet board to experiment and play around with. We won’t get it for keeps until much later, but I assumed this little taste was closer to the mid-point than the early game.