The Joel MH: Jak 3

It hasn’t been long since my review of Jak 2 and well the game runs on the exact same engine as Jak 2 except the guards don’t chase after you anymore, but that said you piss off just about anyone and they shoot at you. The world of Jak 3 is made up of two area maps which link to levels, the wastelands which is a giant desert you travel around in, in a buggy...

and the war torn Haven City eventually and in this game, Haven City has gone to hell. The Stadium, the north garden, the bazaars, the palace, the fortress and the statue of mar are all virtually destroyed and the south garden has been converted into a giant metal head nest.

The port is the only safe haven in the city as everywhere else is overrun by krimzon guard robots and metal head monsters, and protecting the port and fighting these enemies all across the city are your allies, I’m guessing they’re called the cerulean guard, it’s never really explained but they look like the old krimzon guard soliders, just blue, but unless you shoot them, they help you fight the robots and metalheads.

In fact the only place better off is the water slums which are no longer slums, they’ve been converted to futuristic buildings with trees and bushes surrounding them.

But onto the wasteland, at it’s heart is the outlaw city, Spargus, home for all the outcasts of Haven City, everybody here is packing and people live by hunting treasures of the precursors which can sometimes emerge from the sands. Travelling across the sands is possible by eight types of buggy including:

The Tough Puppy. It’s the first Buggy you get and it’s defenses crappy, speed, also crappy and unarmed, but you have to use it for about 5 minutes so it’s all good.
The second which is the Sand Shark. It’s got great speed and defenses and fires Gatling guns.
Third is the Dune Hopper, it fires plasma bombs and can jump very high allowing you to leap across cliff edges as well as average speed and defenses.
The fourth is the Gila Stomper which has seeking Gatling guns and high defenses. On the downside, very short turbo boosts with a low speed and low maneuverability and at one point used for a on rails shooter section.
The fifth and final in the story is the Ram Rod or if you’re american, the slam dozer. It’s basically a better version of the Gila Stomper except for it’s Gatling gun which has less aiming capabilities.
The other 3 are secret. The Heatseeker, The Dust Demon and The Desert Screamer which are essentially upgraded versions of the sand shark. Of course there is another car in one level, which has no guns but can crush walls and it isn’t usable on the main map, as well as the golden cars from the precursor tunnels but they aren’t that great. Though get used to the cars, there is a lot of driving levels in this game especially at the start.

Another ‘Vehicle’ is the Leaper which is only usable in Spargus which is like a desert version of the Flut flut from the original… sod it, its’ basically a fricking Tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back.

The guns return including the Scatter Gun, the Blaster, the Vulcan Fury and the Peacemaker. But that’s not all, other guns feature using the same red, blue, yellow and dark ammos used by the old guns including the red ammo’s wave concussor which creates a shockwave depending on how long you hold the button and the Plasmite RPG, a grenade launcher. The yellow ammo is also used in the beam reflexor which is like the sci-fi handgun from timesplitters in other words bouncy shots and the Gyro buster which when fired shoots out a drone which takes out enemies for you. The blue ammo has the Arc Wielder which fires streams of electricity, it sort of reminds me of the ghost gun from the Ghostbusters movies and the Needle laser which is basically an enemy seeking minigun and lastly the dark ammo which has the Mass Inverter which paralyses enemies and leaves them floating for a short time and the super nova and the only way I can describe it is this, it fires a nuke, destroying everything in it’s path, it even creates a mushroom cloud, careful with that gun Jak, there aren’t any bomb proof fridges for you to hide in.

Dark Jak returns in this game starting with two of the unlockable powers from Jak 2, the dark bomb and dark blast, which is slightly annoying since you have to work your ass off to get them in 2 and are just given them in 3. Dark Jak has two other powers, invisibility which can weirdly be activated as regular Jak by touching purple gems on the wall to sneak past eyes, though Dark Jak can use it non stop if unlocked with a cheat, it uses dark energy but not Dark Jak, it’s kinda weird, oh and the Dark Jak Punch which is used to smash through weak walls, sort of reminds me of Linkara as I see Dark Jak use that move, makes me wanna shout, ‘I AM A MAN!’.

Of course we get the opposite of Dark Jak as well, Light Jak with his own set of four powers including regeneration, shield, flight and my favourite, Time Freeze, which slows everything down allowing you to make it across rooms that would be impossible to do before. While none of Light Jak’s powers are offensive, they are still pretty damn impressive.

Jak’s health bar has changed as well, while you start with eight units of health as before, through the story you come across pieces of the legendary Mar’s armour which increases your health by two units each piece bringing you to a total of 16 units at the end, if only we had that in Jak 2. Though some enemies near the end can do 4 units of damage so, you really do need the armour.

The secrets are back and this time there are 600 precursor orbs instead of 268. But these are actually used to buy secrets rather than just having them opens the secrets which means secrets are now at lower prices and you skip out the crappy ones like big head mode, seriously it was funny on Goldeneye but it ain’t funny now. These unlock level selects which are now only 5 orbs rather than 145, but are broken up into 3 groups, so to have all levels replayable it’s 15 orbs, so it’s still far cheaper as well as scene selects for 2 orbs each as well as commentary and scrap books for low low prices as well. In fact the most expensive thing is invincibility for 100 orbs. But the secrets also include ammo expansions and power ups for the guns like less ammo used per shot and power upgrades and the secret vehicles from earlier are bought here. Many of the enemies return from Jak 2 as well as many new ones such as the Dark Precursors who can can create energy shields to block your weapons as well as other dark enemies some of which spilt apart when hurt as well as dark versions of the bird enemies from earlier in the game. Some enemies do one unit of damage while most do 2 units but near the end some even do 4 units like I said earlier. The Titan Suit makes a return of sorts in one level in the form of the Dark Precursor robot which is used to take out the shields of the daystar.

But oh yes the story, Jak, Daxter and Pecker find themselves kicked out of Haven City and left to die in the desert by head of the council of Haven City, the dastardly Veger whose name will be mocked by Daxter several times during this game and they end up being rescued by Damas, king of Spargus and end up on a quest to stop the daystar, a vast dark precursor ship heading to destroy the world which is being beckoned by a now insane and cybernetic Errol and to quote star wars, he’s more machine now than man. You remember Errol, Baron Praxus’ little 2nd in command git who is though to have died when he crashed into vats of Eco, well he’s still alive and the game’s main villain while Veger plays second fiddle, well you don’t ever fight Veger himself though he does send a precursor robot after you, yep the thing from the end of the first game, but it’s much easier than before since this is around half way through the game and you fight Errol twice, once being the final boss which has two forms. The Errol final boss is much easier than Metal Kor from Jak 2, in fact I only died once in the entire fight compared to Metal Kor which was around fifty. Don’t worry though Veger doesn’t die, he does get his just desserts.

We also find out why Daxter has pants in later games, so if you have yet to play this game, find out for yourself. All round this game is my favourite of the series, the difficulty level feels not to easy like Jak and Daxter and not brutal either, I never had to rage quit with this game like I did with Jak 2 which is why this game takes less time to complete. I mean there’s only a few less missions then Jak 2, by about 3. And Hey Daxter has more sections in this game, in two levels you constantly rely on him to enter areas too small for Jak to enter and if you thought Daxter Whack a Mole was weird, try Daxter themed Pac-Man, gobble up those pills Dax!