As an opening to my game design-related blog, I’ve been struggling for a few days, debating on which game I should play for 10 minutes and write about. I wanted a game that I will not have a biased opinion about already, which means no sequels to a game I have played, and no games I have already seen others play enough for me to have formed an opinion on them without playing myself. In the end, I decided to borrow a game from a friend that I have heard of before, but never even seen gameplay of before today – Jak 3 for the Playstation 2.
My experience starts with an immediate cut-scene. My first thought is, this is a cartoony style I’m not used to, but it’s nice to see something different once in a while. I am also relieved to learn that I can pause the game during a cut-scene using the start button – which means that this will make my job a lot easier. I watch as main character Jak is banished to a wasteland, and some kooky talking animals try to stick up for him, but quickly change their minds with a bit of humour. I keep wondering whether one of the animals is a bird, or a monkey, or both.
The scene switches to a flashback, I’m assuming from a previous game, which starts to confuse me. I wonder if this is one of those game sequels that requires you to play the previous game in order to understand it. It seems that Jak did something to save his city (and I don’t know what exactly), which somehow ended up getting him banished from this city. It seems there was a mistake, and he is getting blamed for something he didn’t do. Usually I like cut-scenes, but right now I’m aching for some gameplay. Another flashback. There’s a war going on in the city. And the flashback is over, as some creepy looking men come and find Jak and his animal friends collapsed in the desert-like wasteland. Just like that, the cut-scene is over, and now the actual game playing begins.
I eagerly press start to begin the game – and another cut-scene begins. I hope that it will be quick, because the minutes are wasting away and I feel like I’ve been watching a cheesy cartoon instead of playing a video game. Alright, now one of the men who found Jak in the desert is telling him of a city called Spargus, which Jak is welcome to join, but has never heard of before. Scratch that, he isn’t welcome to join this city – he’s being threatened into joining, or else he’ll die in the desert. In order to join, it turns out, Jak and his animal pal Daxter must take part in some sort of game where they are told they will likely be killed. And finally, I am given control of Jak to start playing the game.
This death game appears to essentially be my tutorial to learn the controls of the game. I learn how to jump, double jump, high jump, jump and smash things below... so much jumping. I don’t think I’ll remember all of this in 10 minutes. So far, the controls aren’t so bad, though I was frustrated at one point when an instruction appeared on the screen, and as I fell off a platform, the instruction disappeared, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back. However, I soon realized that I just had to go back to the spot where I was a moment ago for the instruction to reappear. Now I feel like I’m being needlessly critical of the game for my own mistakes. I’ll watch out for that next time.
Soon enough, after climbing and jumping from platform to platform, I’m done with the jumping tutorial. I’m glad, because I find jumping everywhere to be relatively boring when it’s all you’re doing. Cue the next cut-scene (but this one is short, which is a relief), which introduces the beginning of a fighting match, and now it seems that the fighting tutorial begins. Now I begin to wonder if I’ll get much further from the tutorial within my 10 minutes of playing this game.
As I’m learning how to shoot Jak’s gun, I’m getting distinctly confused and frustrated. There doesn’t seem to be any way of aiming Jak’s gun other than moving Jak himself, and I’m finding it hard to tell when the gun is aimed towards an enemy. I’ll turn towards the enemy and shoot a few times, and the enemy won’t seem to take any damage. Instead, I keep getting clobbered by enemy swords. I’m starting to get frustrated with the number of times I’m dying in this game, but at least relieved that I start off close to where I was before I died.
Okay, now I’m getting the hang of this gun. Aim isn’t quite as big of an issue as I thought so far, since the gun seems to emit a wave of force that should hit enemies anywhere in front of Jak within a certain distance. Now all I’m concerned with is that fact that Jak feels a little slow to manoeuvre, and the camera will not spin the way I tell it to a lot of the time now that it’s so important that I keep an eye out for all these enemies. I’m also not a big fan on how shooting the gun does not seem to be immediate and requires a frustratingly long pause between shots. This means that Jak (as slow as he is) is screwed when he gets close to an enemy and misses his first shot. Sometimes I’m not sure whether his gun isn’t shooting because of the delay between shots, or if I’m actually out of ammo. I feel like those are problems that I would learn to solve by playing this game more – however, the camera is really starting to bug me, because it’s constantly getting stuck. Right now, I am fighting off so many sword-wielding enemies while avoiding rising and falling lava. This means, sadly, I am constantly dying due to the camera getting stuck on objects while enemies sneak up behind me, my gun that just won’t shoot sometimes, and the health system that is keeping my completely boggled (is there a health bar? How many hits does it take before I die? How many times will I have to play through this part of the tutorial before I actually beat it?). Finally, I get past all those jerks by realizing I can do a spin attack when my ammo runs out, and also discovering the spots on the ground that are untouched by lava. Damn, if only I knew that several tries ago.
After beating the remaining enemies down with my spin-attack (which looked interesting, since Jak seemed to emanate some sort of purple electricity from him), I was finally through with the death-ridden tutorial ordeal. Another quick cut-scene was shown, as the man who’d invited me to take part in this death game congratulated me for coming out alive, gave me a free pass into the city, and told me that I must win 2 more challenges in order to become an honorary citizen of the city. As I leave (or maybe I should say, Jak leaves) the area, a big intimidating guy stops me. He offers Jak and Daxter some protection, and use of one of his racing vehicles, if we do a little job for him. Soon enough, I’m riding a lizard (much to Daxter’s dismay as he adds in some usual comic relief, stating that riding animals makes him chafe), and trying to gather 6 pests that have been raiding this guy’s store rooms. I’m happy to finally be able to move around quickly, even if it is on a lizard, but I’m very confused as to how I’m supposed to catch the pests. It took me a bit of time and random button mashing before I realized that I’m supposed to leap attack the poor critters. However, before I have time to really get into this mini game, I realize my 10 minutes is up, so I put down the controller and return to my laptop.
So one question remains: how did I feel about my overall experience within 10 minutes? Well, I realized after-the-fact that maybe this wasn’t the greatest game to get the hang of within 10 minutes. I felt like I was crashing and thumping through the tutorials like a blind elephant, but I feel that the game could be far more enjoyable if I’d had more time to give to it. However, it’s up to the game developers to make the game intriguing within the first 10 minutes.. so was it? Truthfully, I’m not terribly sad to be putting the controller down right now. I feel like I need a break from the frustration of that tutorial. However, despite this, I feel that the game has potential to be fun if I kept on playing. So will I? Maybe once I’m done some other games I’m already hooked on. For now, I’ll put Jak 3 aside, but keep it in mind for the future, when I’m more willing to keep trying at it.
Image Sources:
"Game Preview for Jak 3." Gamezone. 30 Sept. 2004. Web. 16 Jan. 2011. http://ps2.gamezone.com/previews/item/jak_3_ps2_preview_2/.
"Jak 3." Blog. Gamer--freakz. Blogger. Blogger, 2008. Web. 16 Jan. 2011. http://gamer--freakz.blogspot.com/2010/06/jak-3.html.
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