Jak and Daxter lttp. PS5 is worse than the PS2

[Legend]

Pi generously gifted me a copy of one of his favorite games, Jak and Daxter the Precursor Legacy.

It's pretty great! After some acclimation to the dated controls I had an awesome time. Had no clue how good the animations were. I expected something like Spyro or text boxes, but instead it blows most modern platformers away with fully voiced and fully animated characters. The leap from it to Uncharted 1 seems pretty reasonable.

I was also really impressed with the fully seamless world. There are zero loading screens unless you fast travel, and zones can be pretty large. Backtracking through areas was kinda fun.

The final boss fight however was a mess on PS5. It felt like maybe 15 fps with sluggish controls and choppy visuals. Made the fight a lot harder. I also had some frame drops in a few areas, but this was the only time it was really frustrating. What the heck did they do when porting/emulating to cause these issues? I was also able to hit invisible walls while zones loaded so I doubt PS5's SSD was being utilized either.

Also either my controller is borked or the game is borked. Double jumps failed to register a lot of times. Near the very end when I had to jump up a bunch of platforms in sequence, I died like 10 times.

I beat the game with 89 power orbs and then went back to get all 101 without a guide. Was pretty fun but a few were frustrating. I didn't even discover rolling until I went back to the spider cave for a missing orb. That sure made some jumps easier haha. The true ending with 101 was a hilarious copout. I can only imagine what it felt like to players at the time.

All in all I'd say it skyrocketed to one of my favorite PS2 games. A remake/sequel with modern controls could go head to head against today's best 3D platformers.

[the-pi-guy]

Glad you liked it!  

One of the weird things about the controls is the inverted camera. The game has a secret option to change it. Which is super weird.

I know the emulator introduced a few issues, I think with the framerate, and there are some visual issues aside. I don't feel like I noticed much the last time I played, but quite a few people have complained about it.

I assume you got eaten by a shark or two.

I'm a bit surprised you found invisible walls.

I think it's pretty incredible for a PS2 game, especially an early PS2 game.  

>spider cave for a missing orb

I have to imagine I know exactly which one this was. I think there are 2 or 3 power cells that are notably harder / trickier to get than any of the others.

I can't say much about the true ending.

[kitler53]

just the original or 1, 2, and 3?

I got through 1.5 of them.   I liked 1 but didn't really like what they did with 2.  also between the controls and difficulty it was a bit of a slog.   

[Legend]

Glad you liked it!  

One of the weird things about the controls is the inverted camera. The game has a secret option to change it. Which is super weird.

I know the emulator introduced a few issues, I think with the framerate, and there are some visual issues aside. I don't feel like I noticed much the last time I played, but quite a few people have complained about it.

I assume you got eaten by a shark or two.

I'm a bit surprised you found invisible walls.

I think it's pretty incredible for a PS2 game, especially an early PS2 game.  

>spider cave for a missing orb

I have to imagine I know exactly which one this was. I think there are 2 or 3 power cells that are notably harder / trickier to get than any of the others.

I can't say much about the true ending.

Yup first thing I did was fix the inverted camera.

Only eaten by one shark in the first area. Since then I avoided most water.

Invisible walls were just temporary to give a zone enough time to load.

It was the dark crystal one. I didn't know about rolling or roll jumping so I couldn't make the jump. Also had to take the fire from the spider area to the lava area which was a pain. Most of my missing orbs were in the open driving section.

just the original or 1, 2, and 3?

I got through 1.5 of them.   I liked 1 but didn't really like what they did with 2.  also between the controls and difficulty it was a bit of a slog.  

Just 1. I'll be slowly making my way through 2 and 3.

[the-pi-guy]

The second one goes on a very different direction. It also has some design issues. A lot of people hate it.

The third one kind of brings it back a bit.

[the-pi-guy]

A lot of the cutscenes, maybe most/all of them are in real time in the series. Hard to know for sure.

You can have something in the background and see the effect continuing while the cutscene is going.


Really awesome though to get to share this game with others.

[the-pi-guy]

They put this out a week ago.

Talked about a lot of the same things that you mentioned.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Did you jump on the head of the plant enemy? <br><br>

[Legend]

They put this out a week ago.

Talked about a lot of the same things that you mentioned.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Did you jump on the head of the plant enemy?

Haven't watched the video yet but I did do that. Why?

[the-pi-guy]

Haven't watched the video yet but I did do that. Why?

There's a few orbs that are hidden that way.

I don't know if I'd recommend watching the video, but it's fun for me to have playing in the background.

[Legend]

There's a few orbs that are hidden that way.

I don't know if I'd recommend watching the video, but it's fun for me to have playing in the background.

Yup I found those orbs! I 100% most levels.

[the-pi-guy]

The video is kind of fun.

It's cool for me to hear about some of these things as a person who has probably played through this game 10+, maybe even as many as 20 times.  

There are a lot of things that I take for granted because it was one of the earliest games I played.  And things that I take for granted since I've played it so many times.  

Like I never thought about how hard it must be to have this large world on the PS2, and then you have these lasers shooting all over one of them, and kind of into another level.