Nothing beats a good in-medias res opening to get audiences hooked into the story. But now that we’ve been reeled in, it’s time to get into the real meat of the story.

Starting with the classic museum heist.

Congratulations to Uncharted 2 for “solving” the problem of every enemy being a racial minority by employing “evil Russian” technology. Now we get to kill white guys without anything that might make them at all relatable in the eyes of early-to-mid 2000s players of first-person shooters.

At least with everything going on in the world as of the time of writing, “evil Russians” managed to age surprisingly well.

Now that Haven City has been saved from the dual threats of Baron Praxis and the Metal Heads, we’re safe to return to Naughty Dog’s future, with the next game in the Uncharted series.

Many would say Uncharted 2 is the pinnacle of the franchise. Let’s find out what makes it so great.

You’ll notice this trend with Naughty Dog’s, and particularly Amy Hennig’s work, where the opening sequence strongly established everything we need to know about our central cast, setting, and conflict, using body language and word choice to convey significant amounts of plot-relevant information in a very tight timeframe.

The script is very economical in that sense, and that sense of brevity is something that many writers struggle with, especially in games. Oftentimes, what is left unspoken and unsaid can be just as impactful as spoken dialogue. Looking closely at these scenes, it’s clear that the team at Naughty Dog understood this well.

While we go and turn in the Metal Head Skull Gems for our 3rd Dark Power, we have a small discussion about Jak II, and how it’s a response to a couple of problems Naughty Dog encountered in the first game.

It’s worth getting this out of the system before we move on to Uncharted 2.

Here’s the video of the Dark Giant Rampage.

I don’t have much to add beyond the discussion points on the video, but I still think it was worth mentioning regardless.

It’s time. At long last, we’re ready to use the Precursor Stone to storm the metal head nest.

We’ve reached the end… of Jak II.

Honestly, the fact that the giant gun needed to break open the metal head nest is right there for anyone, even Baron Praxis, to use, makes him look really stupid for trying this convoluted method of detonating a magic nuke in the area.

As if to prove my point about the plot being fuzzy, time travel becomes a significant factor in the end-game reveals. Nothing makes the details more difficult to grasp than the introduction of time travel, especially when the rules of said time travel are never elaborated on in any significant detail.

Admittedly, none of this is actually a problem because story wasn’t important in the PS2-era. It was expected to be there, but for most games, it was little more than a justification for what we were doing in gameplay.

We have one more part of this series, and then we’ll move onto Uncharted 2, so look forward to that.

We ride the elevator to the top of the weapons depot, ready to confront Krew and put an end to the Baron’s plan to set off a nuke.

The end draws nigh in Jak II.

One of my biggest pet peeves with Jak 2 is how “loose” a lot of the story beats are. There’s nothing wrong with any individual plot point or character motivation, but if you apply even the slightest bit of scrutiny you realize that a lot of the meat and connective tissue is just missing. It’s emotional payoffs without a sufficient setup to make them feel meaningful.

For a perfect example, we know that Krew sells out the city by ordering Sig to open a gate that’ll make it easier for them to infiltrate. But we don’t know what compelled him to make that deal, or what he got out of it that made it worth the transaction. We just know that he is exactly the kind of person who would make that deal, so it works emotionally. The details we need to fully understand it just aren’t there.

The same is true for the Baron’s deal with the metal heads to give them eco in exchange for controlled attacks against the city. We know that “he needs this war to keep in power, otherwise the city would put the true ruler on the throne”, but we don’t know who makes that decision and what compels them to make it. As far as we can tell, Praxis just controls the city without any form of power to keep him in check.

It’s not that the story is riddled with plot holes. There’s absolutely a way that someone could thread the needle to explain everything in sufficient detail, but it’s not my job to thread that needle. It’s the job of the story to fill in those details to a great enough degree that the emotional payoffs of its plot point feel earned.

I just wish there was more connective tissue here.

Looks like the Baron plans to detonate a fantasy nuke, that will accidentally kill everything else including all the citizens of Haven City.

We should probably stop that, but first, it’s time for a race!

Chalk that race up to another mission I remember being extremely difficult, causing me untold grief as a child, only for my adult self to have next to no problem whatsoever dealing with it.

In fact, that’s much the case in general for most of the finale of the game. Segments that frustrated me as a child just aren’t an issue anymore. Guess I just improved since those early days.

When we last left off, we had just reclaimed the life seed for our old friend, Samos. And with it, we’ll give Samos the sagely powers of Samos

Confused yet? Don’t worry about it. It’s just Jak II.

This next batch of episodes is going to be the last. We’re rapidly approaching the finale, which is why we’re running escort and tower defense missions inside and around the city.

You’ll notice that the checkpoints have grown more forgiving this late in the game, but they still aren’t totally forgiving. We’ll see a few moments later of abject cruelty from how far back certain deaths take us.

Nothing we can’t handle, but annoying nonetheless.

Now that we’ve gotten through the next stage in one of the worst subplots in the game, let’s do something more interesting.

Something with mechs and jetboards! That’s what I’m talking about!

Looks like we should be on our way to the final next week. Hopefully, we don’t run into any complications, even if it takes us a bit longer than usual.

See ya then, folks!

We’ve managed to rescue our friends, both new and (very) old, from the Baron’s prison. And now that the team is back together, we should start gearing up to continue our resistance.

We won’t. Not yet. But we should.

I’ve played and replayed Jak 2 so many times over the years, and only now do I truly take the time to scrutinize and question this entire section of the game, complete with one of the most awkward lust-triangles I have ever seen in a video game.

Even single interaction between Jak, Keira, and Errol feels ruthlessly forced and shoe-horned in to jam some strange romance subplot that goes nowhere and hurts the character and thematic writing that the game has been building up over these last two acts.

It’s easy to see Keira fawning over the clearly psychotic, murderous second-in-command of the Krimizon Guards, but don’t forget that she’s not making a choice. She is a fictional character. They don’t make choices, but writers do. Even if they had to sign off on a racing subplot, it feels like there had to have been a better way to tie it back to the main plot.

It’s just a mess, pure and simple.

Okay, so our favorite planeswalker *may* have turned evil, and we *may* have lost as many matches as Ajani has lost marbles, but the night is still young.

We still have a chance to pull out some victories. Maybe we’ll have some better matchups.

Decklist built by me.

Something you’ve no doubt noticed with this deck is that if we can get to 6 or more poison counters through regular gameplay, it’s quite likely that we can close the game out if we draw into enough cards and lands to play our big finishers.

Like a more traditional Infect deck, once our opponent starts to wall up, we need to rely on cards Tyrranax Rex, which can swing in for a surprise Toxic 4, or Planewide Celebration, which can proliferate four times to inflict the remaining counters, to close our match out before they can overtake us. Our other proliferate cards, if we draw enough of them, can also close the gap similarly.

No deck is perfect, and I may lose a lot with it, but it’s a deck I do enjoy piloting in Historic Brawl when the opportunity presents itself. A singleton, non-rotating format is also much more pleasant on my wild cards and wallet, allowing me to remain largely free-to-play.

And because of that, it also allows to stick with Arena long-term.