Publisher: SCEA
Developer: Mass Media/Naughty Dog
Medium: Digital/Vita Card
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: T
To hear some people talk, youโd think that the Jak & Daxter Collection was the most hideous thing ever. That it was some Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault or Silent Hill HD Collection-level abomination that was cheaply ported over to the Vita, with only minimal improvements (or, more accurately, total downgrades) made in terms of how it looks.
As far as Iโm concerned, though, some people are wrong. While the Jak & Daxter Collection certainly isnโt the prettiest game on the Vita, to my (admittedly far less discerning) eye, it looks just fine. Better than the originals did on the PS2, not quite as good as the collection looks on the PS3 โ in other words, in terms of graphics it occupies pretty much the exact spot youโd expect it to.
Which isnโt to say the Collection was ported over perfectly. For one thing itโs slightly buggy โ I had the game crash on me a couple of times during the course of my time with it, which is a couple of times more than Iโve ever had any other Vita games crash. That said, the bugginess is possibly something that could just be chalked up to random flukes, so I donโt want to condemn the game on that basis.
Itโs a little more difficult, however, to dismiss problems with the gameโs controls. To be blunt: the controls for all three games here are kind of atrocious. Moving the camera around is a massive chore, and my point of view would routinely get stuck in the most awkward position possible โ sometimes giving me extreme close-ups of Jak and/or Daxter, sometimes getting stuck behind a wall or a tree, sometimes zooming so far out I could barely tell what I was supposed to be doing. Compounding that was the fact that Jak II or Jak III make use of the rear touchpad to switch to a first person viewpoint. While this is certainly a neat way of updating the game to make use of the Vitaโs unique controls, unfortunately a) thereโs nothing in the game telling you this feature exists, b) itโs awfully prone to switching over at random (and inopportune) times, and c) thereโs no way to turn the feature off. Needless to say, combining wonky camera movement with poorly implemented touchpad features makes for an experience that can, at times, be awfully frustrating.
Which is a shame, because otherwise, the game is a lot of fun. When youโre moving around in wide open areas, the game looks and controls pretty well. Youโre given three huge worlds to explore, and โ again, when youโre not actively fighting to make the camera go where you want it to โ itโs easy to see why the games garnered such huge fanbases. Itโs far from being a definitive Vita experience, to be sure, but if youโre looking for some mostly enjoyable platforming on the go (or if youโve just got a nostalgic itch to be scratched), the Jak & Daxter Collection is certainly worth picking up.