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xyzzysqrlJust scattered notes I took. Spoilers.
I'm not really sure who this game is meant for. I've been describing it like "The series grew up with its audience, but there's only been a two-year gap between games, so neither the audience nor the game did a lot of growing."
There's a lot of "GRR RAR DARK ANGRY" from Jak now, which is fair because he got jerked through time and then was experimented on for two years in an attempt to make a Darkness-powered Super Solider. So he wants bloody revenge, as is appropriate. People die. But it's still very cartoony. Except where it isn't. So hrm. It's kind of teenager appropriate, for those who want to BELIEVE they are being edgy. Except then you get Daxter on the screen and things get wacky. He spends half the cutscenes making goony-ass faces at the grim dark serious people. S'great stuff.
On the other hand, the difficulty curve of this thing has nails and glass sunk in it. You give this to an average gaming teenager and leave the room, you'll come back in six hours to find the controller spiked halfway through the smoking remains of the console. They could not be shamed for this, it is the reaction of all sane beings.
(I personally have the patience of some of your better sand-raking monks and by the time the percent meter hit 75% I was letting out strings of profanity and made-up compound words that would have Tarantino going "Yo, you got a pencil? Can you repeat that for me?"
I may have called one enemy a 'frizzled chalupa'. I'm not even entirely sure what that is now that I think about it.)
Spoilers below this point.
--
There's a part of Jak II where you leave the extremely blue, dark, depressing slums of The City and get to go up in the mountains, to a lost shrine full of Precursour relics, green grass, and shiny bronze jumping puzzles.
It's very much a throwback to the last game. And the music's like this. http://youtu.be/PHU8sNTB118
And the whole thing's so nostalgic and peaceful. Like, weren't things better when you didn't have to run around shooting things with a shotgun and stealing hovercars and working for ambiguous crime bosses in "The Resistance" against a corrupt ruler? Wasn't it just nice to go... jump on things and collect shiny things, with green grass and blue skies and sunlight?
Weren't things better then?
Well, back to the city. Time for a driving mission.
Addendum: Later you return to this area to chase mecha-wyverns on a hoverboard through a forest full of butterflies. (Grim dark srsbsns 100% all the time. No fun allowed. Except when it is.)
--
The moment I unlocked Big Head Mode I played through the rest of the game with Jak's noggin swollen to enormous sizes. It often extended off the top of the screen, so dramatic zooms on his facial expression would just be his nose and chin viciously emoting at people, with Daxter perched on his shoulder making the aforementioned goony-ass faces.
I'm neither sad nor sorry. I made :D faces the whole rest of the game. My sole regret is that I did not unlock "Tiny Head Mode". Maybe later.
--
The Baron's 'Krimzon Guard' are presented oddly. On one hand they're presented as a police force made of conscripts from the generally frightened and helpless population. (One of the random intercom announcements from the Baron is "ENLIST IN THE KRIMSON GUARD AND YOUR FAMILY WILL BE SPARED" for example.) On the other hand, they're presented as a group of heavily armed, cartoonishly evil bastards who see nothing wrong with declaring a "purge" of an entire "sector" or gunning down random citizens in the street while pursuing Jak.
I would have felt this was much more morally ambiguous back before real life showed that the actual police force really IS made of cartoonishly evil motherfuckers who see nothing wrong with casually shooting civilians to "protect" them. Now I just find it incredibly cathartic to blaze through a couple platoons of these jackasses with a blaster-minigun. Fuck the police.
I'd like to give shouts to my new followers from the NSA. Comment and subscribe.
--
The "Evil Race" of Lurkers in the previous game were sort of a mis-mash of various monsters, but one of the subraces was of cute fuzzy gremlin-like creatures. One of them shows up here and he's sorta adorable, if thickly-accented. Turns out they aren't actually evil, they were just misled. They're pretty cool guys. It's nice to see that happen now and again.
--
It's funny how the darker nature of this game makes Daxter less like the irritating snarky useless load in a game full of snarky people, and more like the one beacon of comedy and happiness in an oppressive world. He even makes Jak smile a few times, and one of the most touching moments in the game comes when Jak storms off to be a angstmuffin, Daxter takes his place in a race and wins, and Jak returns to tell Daxter he's genuinely proud of him.
Hell, Daxter even gets his own subtle-but-there romantic arc with Tess, a human/elf/whatever-these-people-are bartender and Resistance member. She's the only one who seems to enjoy his long rambling stories. She's the only one who seems genuinely happy to see him when he walks into the bar. She's occasionally seen stroking his back and smiling at him when he's talking about other things, and he seems to enjoy the company. And after she and several other Resistees are captured and Jak breaks them out, she's seen in the background giving Daxter a face-first All Access Tour of the Cleavage Dimension.
This is exactly the kind of thing that gets shouted at as "pandering to the fucking furry fandom" nowadays on your choice of Internet message board. As a proud member of the fucking furry fandom, I am delighted by this pandering and hope it continues in the sequel.
--
There's a bit where Erol, an enemy racer (When did this become a racing game? The next two games are increasingly about car combat. How did this happen?) gets all hopped up on anger, testosterone, and lust for Jak's mechanic/inventor friend Keira and challenges him to a street race through rings to "Settle it". This is a goddamn nightmare of a race for a number of reasons, but let me highlight one.
Imagine you're running a race. If you ever deviate from the track in a significant fashion, you lose. Now imagine the track has randomly moving, VERY ROUND land mines all over it. These are the Fat People. For some reason all other pedestrians will just let you clip through them unhindered. Fat People hurl your speederbike thing violently off-course, causing you to miss a ring, which causes Erol to pass you, which causes you to swear violently and restart the course.
I took to vindictively snarling "FAT PEOPLE!" at the screen as I restarted for the 99th time. I could be driving like I was glued to the track, Erol a mile behind, and suddenly a tubby person would WHUMP off my front bumper and I'm spinning off into someone's fruit cart.
MISSION FAILED. RETRY? Over and over and over again.
It's not until I finally, finally win that damn race that I realize "Wait a second. I'M a fat people." Suddenly traffic safety has taken on all new importance to me.
Winning the race changes nothing. Erol snarls and postures, then drives off. Eventually he loses the championship to Jak and tries to kill him in an erection-induced rage. Jak dives out of the way and Erol crashes into barrels of toxic Dark Eco, which explode of course. Don't be an asshole and drive, kids. It always ends poorly. At least, it should.
Also they take down the posters of Erol all over the Arena and put up posters of Jak and Daxter instead. It's a little thing, but it makes me happy. Big time, baby.
--
The reveal of the Secret Big Bad Behind The Big Bad leaves me kind of cold. The cutscene is all "I HAVE BETRAYED YOU!" and the characters react like "GASP WE TRUSTED YOU" and I react like "...uh who is that again?" Eventually I need to go to the wiki. Turns out it was a side character I had mistaken for a different side character, and it was heavily foreshadowed and such.
Oops. Well, at least that other dude is still cool. And the game did finally deal out a twist I didn't see coming. We called all the others. Let's hear it for surprising through obscurity?
--
"The metal heads are overrunning the city. The Baron is dead. You can still return to your own time, Jak. Leave this horrible, horrible place long behind."
"NO! This place is worth fighting for, and I won't leave anyone behind!"
A Dark Hero is still a hero.
So it all ends with fireworks and I proceed on to Jak III.
Although I did pick up a copy of Final Fantasy Theatrhythm: Curtain Call to tinker with. The game asked me to pick characters for my first party (which it used to unlock music).
I picked Y'shtola (FFXIV), Shantotto (FFXI), Terra (FFVI) and Yuna (FFX-2). TEAM AWESOME MAGICAL LADIES, DEPLOY!
The first character I unlocked -after- Team Magical Lady was, naturally, Zidane. Bet he broke his damn hip sprinting to get there first.
I'm not really sure who this game is meant for. I've been describing it like "The series grew up with its audience, but there's only been a two-year gap between games, so neither the audience nor the game did a lot of growing."
There's a lot of "GRR RAR DARK ANGRY" from Jak now, which is fair because he got jerked through time and then was experimented on for two years in an attempt to make a Darkness-powered Super Solider. So he wants bloody revenge, as is appropriate. People die. But it's still very cartoony. Except where it isn't. So hrm. It's kind of teenager appropriate, for those who want to BELIEVE they are being edgy. Except then you get Daxter on the screen and things get wacky. He spends half the cutscenes making goony-ass faces at the grim dark serious people. S'great stuff.
On the other hand, the difficulty curve of this thing has nails and glass sunk in it. You give this to an average gaming teenager and leave the room, you'll come back in six hours to find the controller spiked halfway through the smoking remains of the console. They could not be shamed for this, it is the reaction of all sane beings.
(I personally have the patience of some of your better sand-raking monks and by the time the percent meter hit 75% I was letting out strings of profanity and made-up compound words that would have Tarantino going "Yo, you got a pencil? Can you repeat that for me?"
I may have called one enemy a 'frizzled chalupa'. I'm not even entirely sure what that is now that I think about it.)
Spoilers below this point.
--
There's a part of Jak II where you leave the extremely blue, dark, depressing slums of The City and get to go up in the mountains, to a lost shrine full of Precursour relics, green grass, and shiny bronze jumping puzzles.
It's very much a throwback to the last game. And the music's like this. http://youtu.be/PHU8sNTB118
And the whole thing's so nostalgic and peaceful. Like, weren't things better when you didn't have to run around shooting things with a shotgun and stealing hovercars and working for ambiguous crime bosses in "The Resistance" against a corrupt ruler? Wasn't it just nice to go... jump on things and collect shiny things, with green grass and blue skies and sunlight?
Weren't things better then?
Well, back to the city. Time for a driving mission.
Addendum: Later you return to this area to chase mecha-wyverns on a hoverboard through a forest full of butterflies. (Grim dark srsbsns 100% all the time. No fun allowed. Except when it is.)
--
The moment I unlocked Big Head Mode I played through the rest of the game with Jak's noggin swollen to enormous sizes. It often extended off the top of the screen, so dramatic zooms on his facial expression would just be his nose and chin viciously emoting at people, with Daxter perched on his shoulder making the aforementioned goony-ass faces.
I'm neither sad nor sorry. I made :D faces the whole rest of the game. My sole regret is that I did not unlock "Tiny Head Mode". Maybe later.
--
The Baron's 'Krimzon Guard' are presented oddly. On one hand they're presented as a police force made of conscripts from the generally frightened and helpless population. (One of the random intercom announcements from the Baron is "ENLIST IN THE KRIMSON GUARD AND YOUR FAMILY WILL BE SPARED" for example.) On the other hand, they're presented as a group of heavily armed, cartoonishly evil bastards who see nothing wrong with declaring a "purge" of an entire "sector" or gunning down random citizens in the street while pursuing Jak.
I would have felt this was much more morally ambiguous back before real life showed that the actual police force really IS made of cartoonishly evil motherfuckers who see nothing wrong with casually shooting civilians to "protect" them. Now I just find it incredibly cathartic to blaze through a couple platoons of these jackasses with a blaster-minigun. Fuck the police.
I'd like to give shouts to my new followers from the NSA. Comment and subscribe.
--
The "Evil Race" of Lurkers in the previous game were sort of a mis-mash of various monsters, but one of the subraces was of cute fuzzy gremlin-like creatures. One of them shows up here and he's sorta adorable, if thickly-accented. Turns out they aren't actually evil, they were just misled. They're pretty cool guys. It's nice to see that happen now and again.
--
It's funny how the darker nature of this game makes Daxter less like the irritating snarky useless load in a game full of snarky people, and more like the one beacon of comedy and happiness in an oppressive world. He even makes Jak smile a few times, and one of the most touching moments in the game comes when Jak storms off to be a angstmuffin, Daxter takes his place in a race and wins, and Jak returns to tell Daxter he's genuinely proud of him.
Hell, Daxter even gets his own subtle-but-there romantic arc with Tess, a human/elf/whatever-these-people-are bartender and Resistance member. She's the only one who seems to enjoy his long rambling stories. She's the only one who seems genuinely happy to see him when he walks into the bar. She's occasionally seen stroking his back and smiling at him when he's talking about other things, and he seems to enjoy the company. And after she and several other Resistees are captured and Jak breaks them out, she's seen in the background giving Daxter a face-first All Access Tour of the Cleavage Dimension.
This is exactly the kind of thing that gets shouted at as "pandering to the fucking furry fandom" nowadays on your choice of Internet message board. As a proud member of the fucking furry fandom, I am delighted by this pandering and hope it continues in the sequel.
--
There's a bit where Erol, an enemy racer (When did this become a racing game? The next two games are increasingly about car combat. How did this happen?) gets all hopped up on anger, testosterone, and lust for Jak's mechanic/inventor friend Keira and challenges him to a street race through rings to "Settle it". This is a goddamn nightmare of a race for a number of reasons, but let me highlight one.
Imagine you're running a race. If you ever deviate from the track in a significant fashion, you lose. Now imagine the track has randomly moving, VERY ROUND land mines all over it. These are the Fat People. For some reason all other pedestrians will just let you clip through them unhindered. Fat People hurl your speederbike thing violently off-course, causing you to miss a ring, which causes Erol to pass you, which causes you to swear violently and restart the course.
I took to vindictively snarling "FAT PEOPLE!" at the screen as I restarted for the 99th time. I could be driving like I was glued to the track, Erol a mile behind, and suddenly a tubby person would WHUMP off my front bumper and I'm spinning off into someone's fruit cart.
MISSION FAILED. RETRY? Over and over and over again.
It's not until I finally, finally win that damn race that I realize "Wait a second. I'M a fat people." Suddenly traffic safety has taken on all new importance to me.
Winning the race changes nothing. Erol snarls and postures, then drives off. Eventually he loses the championship to Jak and tries to kill him in an erection-induced rage. Jak dives out of the way and Erol crashes into barrels of toxic Dark Eco, which explode of course. Don't be an asshole and drive, kids. It always ends poorly. At least, it should.
Also they take down the posters of Erol all over the Arena and put up posters of Jak and Daxter instead. It's a little thing, but it makes me happy. Big time, baby.
--
The reveal of the Secret Big Bad Behind The Big Bad leaves me kind of cold. The cutscene is all "I HAVE BETRAYED YOU!" and the characters react like "GASP WE TRUSTED YOU" and I react like "...uh who is that again?" Eventually I need to go to the wiki. Turns out it was a side character I had mistaken for a different side character, and it was heavily foreshadowed and such.
Oops. Well, at least that other dude is still cool. And the game did finally deal out a twist I didn't see coming. We called all the others. Let's hear it for surprising through obscurity?
--
"The metal heads are overrunning the city. The Baron is dead. You can still return to your own time, Jak. Leave this horrible, horrible place long behind."
"NO! This place is worth fighting for, and I won't leave anyone behind!"
A Dark Hero is still a hero.
So it all ends with fireworks and I proceed on to Jak III.
Although I did pick up a copy of Final Fantasy Theatrhythm: Curtain Call to tinker with. The game asked me to pick characters for my first party (which it used to unlock music).
I picked Y'shtola (FFXIV), Shantotto (FFXI), Terra (FFVI) and Yuna (FFX-2). TEAM AWESOME MAGICAL LADIES, DEPLOY!
The first character I unlocked -after- Team Magical Lady was, naturally, Zidane. Bet he broke his damn hip sprinting to get there first.
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 11:17 pm (UTC)Well, since you used it as profanity, I am now imagining that it's when the chalupa got left out on the counter for a month and grew mold... And the mold got long enough to start curling up in random directions like frizzy hair.
(They are a kind of Mexican food, by the way. I had to look it up.)
I would have felt this was much more morally ambiguous back before real life showed...
LOL. YA, RLY.
Actually, I am quite amused at all of this post.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-18 11:27 pm (UTC)