Jak II Review
10 May 2004And there’s another problem, there.
Jak is a hero to the people, right? He’s a hero, one might be able to deduce, because the city needs a hero, because the instruction manual introductory text refers to the Baron of the city as an “evil” Baron. The entire city is under the rule of this fearsome Baron’s fearsome Crimson Guards, of whom you kill many in your quest to get revenge. The Crimson Guards of Haven City are a lot like Grand Theft Auto’s police officers, in that they all look the same and will attack you if you shoot them. However, there is a bewildering piece of… bewilderment at work here. Which is to say: The Guards, in the storyline, exist to kill random civilians and spread terror, yet if you should run into a civilian on your jet-board, they will shoot you as a criminal. Not only this: you, Jak, exist as a hero to the people, yet your main method of transportation in the city involves throwing them out of their cars and onto the pavement many dangerous meters beneath.
Why can you steal cars at all, you wonder? Well, because that’s what you can do in Grand Theft Auto. That’s how you get around the city — by stealing cars. Now, I have said, of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, that I feel no pride for my cars when I steal them. I don’t mind when they blow up, or get shot up. I don’t mind taking them off bridges. This is okay, however, as all of Grand Theft Auto takes place in that gritty city world where you drive around in stolen cars listening to eighties music on the radio. The story is non-existent (no, don’t try to tell me Vice City’s popsicle-sticks-glued-with-yogurt statue of a Scorcese picture is a “story,” because I will shotgun your kneecaps) and the characters aren’t people we should care about so much as blank slates for us to doodle on with motorcycles.
I said, in my review of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and it was a glowing one, that I long for one of these go-anywhere, do-anything games in a modern setting that endows me with pride for my automobile. I want a game where I am a normal guy, and I can’t steal cars; however, I can own one, maybe even own one bought after saving up a lot of money through fighting RPG-style random battles? I want to do things like forget where I parked that car, and go all around the city looking for it, teeth clenched like an asshole, mashing buttons on my game controller because of my own damned fault. To me, that’s the future of freedom in videogames. Shame on Jak II on two levels, then, for giving me a wondrous Jet Board, which can be used at any time (even during the final boss fight!) with a click of the R2 button, and not letting me use it as my main method of transportation in the over-world. I get bumped off that Jet Board whenever I run into a Crimson Guard on the streets. I don’t get bumped off it when I run into an enemy in the Strip Mine level. Why is this, really?
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It reminds me not of Goldeneye for Nintendo 64, nor of Mission: Impossible for that same system; rather, it reminds me of the difference between the two games, and how those “videogame journalists” who take their positions as “social institutions” too seriously jumped the gun and called the latter game a “killer” of the former one because you could navigate through a net of lasers while hanging from dental floss in the latter, even though the latter game was full of challenges you’d swear to never play again, and then never play again, and the former was full of things you played immediately again upon completing them. Zu geil…