Jak II Has a Flow Problem
Each game in the Jak and Daxter series was a technical and artistic triumph for video games as a medium, while also achieving critical and commercial successes. Jak 2 changed the course and tone of the Jak series in a drastic new direction. Taking the series from a colorful adventure platformer to a much darker open world action game with driving, guns, and swear words. A direction that Jak 3 would ride off of to complete the trilogy and tale of Jak and Daxter. While I hold all these games near to my heart, after replaying them again this year I can say that Jak 2 has major flow problems.
Player flow is something that has become more important to consider as a player's options for entertainment and ease of access to them grows. If at any point the player loses immersion or stops having fun, in the back of their mind they know there are countless other means of entertainment available to them. This instant access means that a player's interest can be lost very quickly. This is why creating and keeping a good flow for the player is so important. Unfortunately, Jak 2 is a challenging game to get into a flow while playing. This problem comes from three main issues - the lack of focus on Jak's moveset, the general difficulty of the game, and, ironically, what makes it unique - the open world city.
A Lack of Focus
The first title in the series, Jak and Daxter, is a pretty standard collectathon by design. Levels are open and allow players to explore as they see fit. Players need to collect a certain amount of objects by exploring and completing tasks to progress to new areas, but that requirement is always lower than what is available in the currently accessible levels. This allows players to pick and choose what they want to do and where they want to go. Jak 2 abandoned all of that opting instead for linear missions with a greater emphasis on combat and tight platforming challenges; its levels reflect that. Levels are mostly comprised of a single critical path with very few branching paths. This allows the levels to be more focused on action sequences and story scenes which Jak 2 uses to its advantage to tell a more comprehensive story than its predecessor. Missions typically end with a cutscene and the player is left in the final room with set pieces left over from that scene and then must return to the City.
While much of the design of Jak and Daxter was overhauled for Jak 2, Jak does retains his moveset from the first game. Jak is fun to control and offers a variety of ways to maneuver as well as attack enemies. The guns introduced in Jak 2 serve as an extension of his original moveset, giving the player many movement and combat options. This is where the game shines - levels where the player is given control over Jak. However, too often the game diverts away from this core gameplay. Missions often require Jak to get into a turret or mech suit, take place in the city where the player must drive, or require the player to complete a minigame. All of these severely limit the player's moveset and options or outright remove them. The driving in Jak 2 is fine, but not overly complex. In turrets the player loses all ability to move and is only able to aim and shoot at enemies. The mech suit is slow and awkward to maneuver. Jak 1 successfully allows players to stay in flow by not taking the player out of the core gameplay and allowing them to explore at their own pace. Jak 2 on the other hand constantly takes control away from the player through cutscenes, long driving sections, or subversive gameplay sections.
Difficulty
While diversions away from the core gameplay are annoying, the problem is amplified by the difficulty of the game. No matter what type of mission the player is doing they can expect the difficulty to be high. The game is difficult from the start and stays difficult throughout almost every mission in the game. Health drops are few and far between, and checkpoints even further. When the player dies the punishment is severe as players are sent back far due to poor checkpoints. Some missions have no checkpoints at all and the player is required to complete the entirety without dying. Additionally, many missions and almost all driving missions put the player under the gun of a tight timer. There is a very thin margin of error during missions.
The combination of all this mean that the missions are stressful and the pressure can get high when the player is getting close to the end of a mission they have died on many times. It is frustrating to make a mistake and have to repeat large sections over again with no option to skip or go in a different direction. Progression in Jak 2 means failing a mission over and over until the player gets it right. This makes it hard to get into a flow state. The game is simply tuned too difficult, especially for a first time player. As an experienced player and knowing what some of the hardest missions were I was actually dreading them. I knew they were going to be difficult and I wasn't looking forward to them. Stress, frustration, and dread are usually not the feelings games want to elicit in players, especially in an action platformer. While these emotions do have their time and place, they accompany too much of the game experience in Jak 2.
It is not a crime for a game to be hard, Souls-style games have more than proven that. Pushing the player to achieve mastery in a game can be rewarding and effective. However, in Jak 2 there is a low reward for mastery. If the player doesn't fail, most missions will only end up taking 5-10 minutes before they are done and the player must return to the city. The player's prize for mastery is the next problem for getting into flow. The city.
The City
Every mission requires the player to talk to a contact in the city to start. The contacts are scattered across various sections of the city. So after every mission the player will need to drive to their next contact. Too often that contact is all the way across the city, meaning the player will be driving for a while to get there. The driving gameplay is more or less padding as it accounts for just as much game time as the missions. The gameplay here isn't very exciting or interesting, there isn't much that can go wrong and is a pretty simple point A to point B. On top of this, after speaking with the mission contact the player is often required to drive back across to city again to get to the mission site.
In fairness Haven City isn't inherently bad, in some ways it was a more modern adaptation of the hub world and it was exciting to explore at first. Getting access to new parts of the city is a fun reward for doing missions. However, there isn't a whole lot going on in the city, and new areas don't offer new gameplay. There are a handful of vehicles with different stats, NPC citizens, guards, and side missions for precursor orbs. The NPC do nothing, the player can attack and kill them but the guards do not care. The guards won't do anything until the player bumps them with a car or otherwise damage them. This causes the guards to chase and try to kill the player, then after a while they stop, assuming the player doesn't continue killing or hurting them. It is a binary system, they are simply on or off with no nuance.
The guards offer a minimal challenge while driving between destinations or contacts; the player will be trying to avoid hitting them if they aren't being chased or avoid being shot if they are. Mostly though they are a just a nuisance that only serves to slow the player down and annoy them while trying to get to the next objective. Player's only option is to run, fighting guards accomplishes nothing because they will not stop attacking and only give ammo when defeated.
Outside of the story missions, there are side missions scattered around Haven City. There are various challenges, such as finding a hidden orb, or flying through rings with a car. They are relatively simple and short challenges. However, these challenges come with very tight timers making them extremely difficult. On a ring challenge the player is given 7 seconds to get to the each ring, this requires they use the fastest and least durable car. Even in this car players are only given a second or two to spare between each ring. This means that any small mistake on any of the rings spells failure and starting over. With the heavy NPC car traffic that is randomly generated, there will be many times where an NPC car is in the player's path and through no fault of their own they cannot win. With the timer so tight they aren't able to swerve and recover in time, and a collision is almost certainly a loss. They will have to go at full speed and a single collision will cause their car to be destroyed or damaged to the point where it no longer can go fast enough to achieve victory. Other times the player will hit a guard and be harassed as they try to get through making this even more difficult. For all this effort and struggle the player's reward is a meager 3 orbs, and there are 286 total. It would take a very dedicated player to finish the game with 100% completion. A feat that I never had the patience for.
It is a shame that Jak 2 has these flow problems, the game is a technical and artistic achievement. Unfortunately the gameplay experience is one of frustration and failure making it hard to find a rhythm and flow as a player. I find it very easy to get into flow while playing Jak 1, due to minimal stoppage in gameplay and allowing the player freedom to use Jak's interesting and fun moveset. However, the game experience of Jak 2 is having the player's flow consistently interrupted. The gameplay constantly diverts away from Jak's main moveset, the difficulty of the game is too high throughout and the poor checkpoints lead to players having to player large sections of gameplay over again. Then even if the player does manage to get into a groove and complete a mission their reward is the gameplay grinding to a halt while they drive between contacts in the city. It is a challenging game to complete, and one where players will frequently be asking themselves, "Do I really want to keep playing?"
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Addendum
While I wrote this piece to highlight the changes between Jak and Daxter and Jak 2 and the effects on the game experience that it had, I did want to briefly mention how Jak 3 took the design of Jak 2 and improved upon it. Jak 3 is, in my opinion, a perfect video game sequel. It took all the existing systems and expanded them in fun and interesting ways while cutting out what was frustrating or didn't work in the previous entry. Additionally, Jak 3 expands on the story, lore, world, and finishes the story in a mostly neat fashion.
The game experience has been improved greatly by shorter and more streamlined travel to missions/contacts, and missions being generally easier (timers have been loosened up and checkpoints are much more plentiful making missions far less frustrating). There are now two distinct hub world cities, Haven City and Spargus, and while individually they may feel small in comparison to Jak 2's full Haven City, this time around the different areas do offer different gameplay. Spargus introduces desert driving that offers new driving mechanics and a host of new cars, while also providing a vastly different theme and visual. Jak now has access two new variants for each of the four original guns, light Jak powers in addition to Dark Jak, Max HP increases, and desert cars to unlock. Precursor orbs are more plentiful and more valuable as the secrets menu has been expanded greatly to allow players to purchase weapon and car upgrades. Jak 2's secret menu was fun but not very reward, it acted as more of cheat menu giving novel visual changes and concept art before giving outright game breaking cheats like unlimited ammo, dark Jak, and health.
Jak 2 is an impressive game and one that boldly took the Jak series in a new direction, but did not come without its growing pains. Jak 3 took what Jak 2 did and elevated it to perfection.