If anyone knows me, they should've knew my boys, the demolition duo themselves, Jak & Daxter were going to show up in this challenge at some point or another. What people might be shocked (and perhaps horrified) to see is that it wasn't any of the original trilogy, nor Jak X, or even the excellent spinoff title Daxter that was the first outing, but it is instead the most controversial entry of the entire series - Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier, as created by High Impact Games. But with the game being added to the PlayStation 5 classics range, complete with a platinum trophy, and I having not fully finished the game since it's initial release, I felt it was worth playing through it again to see how I felt so many years later, and hey - I have the platinum trophy in every other game in the series, so this one couldn't be a exception.

For a start, we actually have some interesting developmental history to go with this game, as it was actually never intended to always simply be developed by High Impact. In fact, the roots of Lost Frontier stretch as far back as 2006, where Naughty Dog, always eager to start work on any new piece of Sony hardware decided to try their hands with a official Jak title that would follow on from the trilogy. However, with their PS3 project - Uncharted - hitting roadblocks due to the complicated nature of the PS3's Cell Technology, this forced Naughty Dog to effectively put the game on ice, moving all of the team to Uncharted, meaning it wouldn't be picked up against until High Impact eventually took the reigns following their efforts on the Ratchet series.

What is especially interesting however is we actually do still have a brief glimpse at what the game was supposed to be prior to High Impact's involvement, and while it's immensely small tidbits, it's immensely telling just how different it was meant to be, with Jak's original voice actor having done work for the game, the writing being much closer to that of the original trilogy in terms of humour, and the general camera work being closer to the original trilogy's cinematics as well. In short, it's a brief glimpse at what the game could've been if it had the same team as the original series on it, and even more interestedly, it leaked prior to the game's release:

Which I think brings us swiftly onto the first talking point, and likely the most controversial. The story of the game. It's most widely disliked attribute by far. The last time we had seen Jak and crew, they had saved the planet from the Dark Makers, and discovered the truth behind the Precursors, as well as becoming combat racing champions.

Most plot points behind the series were wrapped up, and yet here comes this game that brought back only Jak, who had been recast, and redesigned (albeit not too different from how the other games usually redesigned him), Keira, who barely looked like herself, and Daxter, as they journey to the Brink - a part of the world that the precursors just...forgot to create, apparently, all because Eco is in a all time shortage, causing the world to become unstable and forcing the trio to seek out a new source of eco, encountering Sky Pirates, old crazed inventors, rich aristocrats holding dark secrets, and more. Although what most people remember the game for is the fact most characters is flanderised, out of character, written badly, and the story is littered with contradictions and plot holes up the wazoo. 

Now, for what it's worth, I am going to defend the game on some aspects here. For a start - the story is actually a base from Naughty Dog, which you can see from the above cutscenes that happened during the Naughty Dog era of development, and contains aspects still in the final game, from the islands, to Tym (the old inventor), to even the idea of the Brink in of itself. A lot of the concepts present are things from Naughty Dog, and therefore, if it does contradict with the established lore, that's more on them than anything else.

Furthermore, I do think some of the extent that people call the game out on in terms of story is a bit silly, like the existence of the Brink. A lot tends to like claiming that it doesn't make sense that the Precursors would simply...leave apart of the world unfinished, but based off the information gathered in Jak 3, it honestly does kind of jive. We see the precursors simply chilling in a underground cave, doing much of nothing while the Dark Makers, corrupted precursors in of themselves are planning to destroy the planet. I can honestly totally buy that those dudes for one reason or another, be it laziness, incompetence, or something else would leave the Brink unfinished. It's not nearly the weirdest thing we've seen in the series. 

I also do think for what it's worth, Jak & Daxter, when interacting off each other are fine at points. The writing as a whole definitely isn't stellar, not at all by any means, but there is some few moments of fun in here, and as a diehard fan, I always love seeing the two bounce off each other. Moments like Jak sending Daxter for help by acting like he's Lassie, or their banter in the bar brawls does remind me of the original trilogy quite a bit. 

I also think that the story does at least have a incredibly cool premise with the later twist that the aristocrats that you were dealing with earlier in the story in actuality were running Dark Eco experiments on themselves, corrupting and creating their very own Dark Warrior project that acted as a really neat way to tie the plot back to the experiments that Jak underwent in the second game, and it was a good way to give Jak a very deep connection to the story, and at least in concept - give him and a reason for Phoenix, the head of the Sky Pirates, and former member of the Aristocrats who was horrified by their experiments. 

Buuuut that's about all I got for positives for this story. Yeah, I can't really lie - even trying to take a optimistic eye to it, it's not very good at all. The story jumps around to random places and events happen that don't make much sense, like Jak knowing Phoenix's name whilst chasing him, yet when he boards the ship, he's surprised that Keira knows him and is offended by it. Jak's anger with the Dark Eco experiments is not very well handled, there's no mention of the previous games or other characters, even the likes of Samos, who by all means should be mentioned here.

That's also not mentioning the random backstabbing betrayal of the first mate pirate that randomly turns on you out of nowhere, or the fact that Dark Daxter, a fully High Impact original concept is completely contradictory to the franchise's lore, given that Jak 3 established Dark Makers are precursors that have been corrupted and twisted by Dark Eco. Not to mention that after Jak just randomly ignoring how Daxter keeps disappearing at random points, he witnesses Daxter turn full Dark mode, and can only crack a joke or two about it, rather than being surprised or treating it as a serious situation.

The whole story is really a mess. A mess with a decent concept in there, or a fun locale here, but it's just riddled with bad characterisation and plot holes, and contradictions. The love triangle between Jak, Keira and Phoenix feels really tiresome when Jak X already concluded that storyline with the two finally kissing. Keira is only a plot device, here for Jak and Phoenix to fight over, or simply act as a means for upgrades or tech talk, which is a shame since this is the first game she's present for the entire adventure and is supposed to be getting a spotlight. Jak rarely feels in character with the other games, although Josh Keaton taking over means delivery plays a role in that. Daxter is really the only one who still feels fairly in character, and even then, his jokes can get pretty irritating. 

Speaking of, Josh Keaton is a fantastic voice actor. One of my all time favourite Spider-Men, and I usually love seeing him in any project, and for what it's worth, he's doing the best he can with whatever the story writers gave him, but he just doesn't hold a candle to Mike Erwin, and it's so easily seen in the cutscenes above compared to Keaton in the main game, which again is just bad luck, as Erwin's tone, especially when it comes to Jak when angry could've helped sell the darker aspects of the story with the call-backs to Jak 2, but again, it just ultimately results in nothing. 

This brings us swiftly onwards to the gameplay aspect of the game, which is honestly a really mixed bag. I think if you can disassociate the game with the previous Jak games, there's something enjoyable here for a PSP game. The issue is when you have the other games as the comparison point, all of the problems really begin to show their head. While the game mostly plays like the previous games, the physics of the game could not replicate the physics and engine of the original trilogy by Naughty Dog, meaning that while it plays closely to what came before, there's just something that feels off about how it plays. It's a bit like a game like Sonic 06 where there's bizarre delays added to the moveset of the character for no reason, and that's the case here. Where in previous games, Jak could seamless use attacks together, there's delays between them here that makes it feel overall clunky.

What doesn't help matter is that a major problem from High Impact's Ratchet titles carried over into Lost Frontier, where enemies have a absurd amount of armour and aren't effected at all by attacks, meaning what were useful tools in previous games are not as useful here. Most weapons here have been reduced to more or less the same because the pushback effects just don't work on the enemies, meaning a lot of the time, they can push through and still damage Jak. It's very inconsistent as well, with some attacks sometimes being able to stun and push enemies, and others just...not for some reason. 

Now it's not all bad. I do think there's some solid ideas in here that comes from taking the eco powers that had been removed from the series since Jak 1, and reusing them here in brand new ways. From the rocket jump that uses yellow eco, to the green eco shield, to the blue eco time slow ability, I do think it's very cool how it takes all four eco types from the original game, and gives them sets of powers that makes sense for them. From Green Eco's protective abilities to blue eco's speed based abilities. 

Furthermore, I also think the upgrade system the game has with Jak's abilities by collecting dark eco has some great utility, offering a wide variety of different abilities that makes it feel like Jak is constantly progressing as you get more and more eco, and it feels like a pretty good rewarding system all around. It's about the most solidly implemented new mechanic in my opinion.

I also think there is some pretty neat locales in the game as well. From the pirate hideout of Far Drop, to the Dark Eco experimentation prison that has multiple callbacks to Jak 2, and has some neat atmosphere and puzzle solving. I do think the game does a good job of the idea of implementing pirates into the Jak universe and coming up with decent locales based off of that. How much of that was High Impact, and how much of it was Naughty Dog however is hard to tell.

Of course, we can't talk about the gameplay without talking about the other major aspect of the game, and that's the aerial dogfighting aspect of the game that's essentially the game's gimmick, and it's...fine. It's fine. It's not great, and some of the encounters, especially later on drag out FAR too long, but I do think it plays decently enough, and there's a good amount of customization and variety in the ships that does at least make them fairly interesting to try out and experiment with, even if it does begin to wear out it's welcome.

One mechanic I do think was a neat idea that is unique to the series is where Jak can launch Daxter at enemy ships, where Daxter will proceed to infiltrate and crawl around the ship, using tools to remove vital components, and steal them for Jak to use, something that feels right at home with past games where Daxter had to do things such as ride missiles and so on. But really, that's about it. There's not much to say. It's serviceable airship combat, that's a bit too present in the game for my liking, but it's inoffensive if you upgrade the vehicles and ensure it's got decent firepower in it. 

The open world stuff in the ships on the other hand range from fairly boring target races that are extremely easy to finish and are too plentiful, to easy combat missions that repeat, and the Precursor Statue missions which are absolutely irritating for where it hides some of the eco crystals, and how some of the races to return the eco crystal's energy back to the statue is outright impossible for certain ships. 

That brings us to the last gameplay front, and easily the most pointless and least fun - Dark Daxter. The series is no stranger to playable Daxter segments, with both Jak 2 and Jak 3 having segments where you played as the Ottsel to help Jak out. Except here, rather than playing a game similar to the regular playstyle of the series, instead Dark Daxter is a boring top-down dungeon scroller where you trudge through underground segments that never connect to the story at large and simply serve as a easy way to eat up some extra game time, where you just throw eco balls at enemies, and do a dark eco spin and that's about it.

Daxter is transformed with very little fanfare, never tells Jak through severely contrived means in order to justify why they don't focus on the fact Daxter is mutated, and when the truth does come out, Jak and Keira's reactions are so understated that you'd think they just found out Daxter just got a new haircut or something. It's a complete slog, and it drags the game to a halt, despite there being a grand total of only three Dark Daxter segments, one per act.

For what it's worth though, I do think the game has a few decent music tracks:

I still wouldn't say it holds much of a candle to the original games, but I do think for what it is, there's a few decent enough tracks in there that's worth highlighting. Although I suppose while we're on the game's presentation, both visual and audio...

I suppose the next thing to discuss is the game's graphics, and this is another aspect that feels so off. In-game? The graphics are actually fairly impressive for a PSP title. Not amazing by any means, and doesn't hold a candle to the original series, or even Daxter, but there's a lot of unique locales and the game looks decently close enough to the other titles to pass. I do like certain details as well such as Daxter still having the design he gained by the end of Jak 3, or the toggleable extra options to reenable Jak's goatee from past games as well. That's another plus, there's a fair amount of extras unlocked by finding precursor orbs throughout the game, and it's very easy to get orbs in this game.

But the cutscenes feel so off. It's the only game in the series to use pre-rendered CG cutscenes rather than in-engine cutscenes, and not only does the CG look uncanny and not great, but it as a result contributes to how off the game really feels for another game in this series, especially considering Daxter, and even the pre-production scenes above show in-engine cutscenes were possible and even planned. 

Really, that's what a lot of what the Lost Frontier ultimately feels like. It feels like someone's strange approximation of what they think Jak and Daxter should be like, play like, sound like, etc. A lot of the aspects is close, but it ultimately feels so off to a discomforting degree that all of the game's flaws really start to become spotlighted, and ultimately, as the final game in the Jak series, and especially compared to the much superior spinoff - Daxter, it just ultimately feels unremarkable, especially now when it's uncuffed from the PSP and therefore doesn't even have the 'impressive for a portable console' factor.

But with that said, I'd still be lying if I said I didn't have a decent enough time with the game overall. While I can't say I loved it, or even liked it very much, I don't think it's the absolute cataclysmic trainwreck that other fans of the franchise sees it have. I just see it as a pretty average title overall that is harmed by being the last title of one of the best platforming series of all time, and being a last limp fart that ultimately killed the series on a bad story beat, and interfered with the original trilogy's ending. Heck, I'm already considering getting the platinum on PS4 once a patch comes to fix some of the issues with the PS4/PS5 emulation of the game, so I definitely had a fine enough time with the game in that regard.

For what it's worth, I do think as a cheap little experiment and curiosity you can now easily get on the PS4/PS5, it's worth at least a try, especially if you're a fan of the Jak series, but yeah. I ultimately am pretty sad that one of my all-time favourite series ended on such a blah game, and still hasn't seen a new entry since outside of crossover titles. 

Hopefully someday that remaster of Precursor Legacy will come. Someday. Still pretty weird I ended up doing this as the first entry for Jak in this challenge.

...Don't look at me like that. I'll get to Precursor Legacy and the other games at some point during this list.