The Game That KILLED Jak & Daxter (The Lost Frontier Analysis)
When discussing Jak and Daxter, people fondly remember the series that Naughty Dog did on PS2, but of course, those weren’t the only Jak games. First was Daxter, which we discussed last week, and now we are here to discuss the final game in the Jak series. Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier which released all the way back in 2009 on the Playstation Portable and Playstation 2. A game that, you may be surprised to hear, was originally being developed by Naughty Dog. The story goes that, after working on Jak X, it was time for the team to
fully get in gear for their new franchise on PS3, a full action adventure title starring a real life human, which ended up being Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. But it turns out that Naughty Dog was also looking to develop for the Playstation Portable, I mean, it’s a new Sony device, we are a Sony Team, we haven’t tackled handheld games yet, might as well give it a shot. And so, they began developing the next Jak game for the PSP. But problems arose with this approach because the PS3 was an infamously tough system to develop for, in addition to
the natural challenges that arose at the start of the 7th gen with games going full HD. Well…HD at the time, 720p is nothing to write home about now,
Not to get too in depth on Uncharted’s history, something I have touched briefly on in the last couple videos, as this isn’t the Uncharted video, it’s concerning what became of Jak PSP. This is where the studio, High Impact Games comes in. This is a team that was formed in the 2000s by people who had once worked at Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog in the PS2 days. Their first release was on the PSP in 2007, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. Something the team was naturally cut out for, given their history at Insomniac. Size Matters proved to
be a massive success on PSP, and one year later, they released another Ratchet PSP spin off, Secret Agent Clank. To this day, Ratchet fans still remember these games fondly. I covered them last summer after I did the PS2 games if you were curious. But to put it lightly, I think both games are absolutely abysmal when going back to them. The former being a game that could have been good with some simple changes to how it was balanced, but the game we got quickly becomes a frustrating affair with weak weapons and overpowered enemies. The latter game
is…just one of the worst I have ever played. A game that just…boggles the mind with it’s weak writing, frustrating and boring levels, an onslaught of mini games and just…everything I don’t like in a game. But, the positive reception they got on their Ratchet PSP titles would make them prime candidates to take over from where Naughty Dog left off on Jak PSP. And hey, ND starting development might mean good things, right? Well…not really. Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier is a game fans were dissatisfied with from day 1. For many reasons that we will get into
before the next half hour or so is up. Yeah, no hot take this week, The Lost Frontier is not a good game, and is easily the worst Jak and Daxter game. One I was pretty excited for when it was released, I mean…it’s another Jak game, but a proper platforming sequel, we hadn’t had one in five years at this point. It was one of my three most anticipated games of the year…but of course, one of them was a children’s tie in game, one was a lame as all get out Jak game, and the other was Batman:
Arkham Asylum…that one is an all time classic, but that is of course, a story for another day. Back on target, I want to say, I am not trying to make a hit job on the people who make these games. I am just stating my opinion, since I like talking about every game in my favorite franchises. So when I revisit these PSP spin offs that I played a lot as a kid, some part of me hopes that this playthrough might change things and I can see it in a new light. But, in the case of these
three games, it actually ends up coming out worse than it did before. So, what’s not to like about Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier? Well, the game begins with Jak, Daxter and someone who, sources say is Keira, traveling to the edge of the world because the world is running out of eco and so they are seeking out more of it to save the world. Without it, the planet is seeing eco storms raging almost constantly. They get ambushed by Sky Pirates and the skuffle causes them to crash land at the Brink, the edge of the world
because apparently, The Precursors never finished making this planet and so it just has this cut off point. While none of what I just said made any sense, you get back in the air and aid the Aeropan people in their battle against the Sky Pirates, making a truce with them for the time being, getting us into The Lost Frontier. As I said, before the first cutscene is over, I have several questions, but I will just stick to the gameplay for now. The early game had me doubting my memories of this game because when looking at the
game’s structure and pacing, I should be singing it’s praises. I mean, you get a platforming tutorial level, an intro to how sky combat works, a shooting tutorial with more platforming, another plane mission and then a big level with platforming, new powers, combat…the works. I thought Jak 3’s opening act was really poorly paced since it bombarded players with mini game after mini game after mini game, not giving you a proper platforming mission until an hour into the game. The Lost Frontier is actually much more consistent at first, dog fighting mission, followed by a massive platforming stage.
Structure that could totally work. But I obviously don’t think it works, and that’s because Jak’s movement is very stiff. Jak felt great to control in the PS2 trilogy because of how seamlessly you could go from his standard running, to rolling and jumping out of a roll, his uppercut and dive being extensions of your movement as well. That synergy between Jak’s actions is just not in The Lost Frontier, so now movement just feels slow. The game just doesn’t have the physics of previous games, making the platforming far more by the books as you jump from one
to the next. His attacks can’t be seamlessly integrated into your movement, so instead you wait several seconds to rebound from the ground pound, for example. It looks and technically plays like Jak, it just doesn’t feel like Jak, making all the regular gameplay a chore. No greater example than combat. This also feels pretty limp as your basic punches and spins technically do damage, but the enemies barely react to it. And since you are pretty committed to almost every attack you do, enemies ganging up on you is pretty common. Even the uppercut, which should allow you to
get some room from enemies, doesn’t do nearly as good a job as it did in previous games, because again, the enemies don’t really react to it. With guns, it’s the same problem. The scatter gun does not put distance between you and your enemies like it was supposed to in Jak II and Jak 3 and The Vulcan Fury does not stun enemies, making it still quite easy to be torn to shreds when enemies get too close. The most effective weapon is the Blaster, as the spin kick combo is more useful than ever as you can get
enemies locked in a loop with it until they die. The peacemaker isn’t in this game, instead you get a basic grenade launcher called the Lober, which isn’t as cool to be sure, but I think it’s effective for what it is. Now, in terms of combat, I really don’t know why it was as limp feeling as it was in this game. Similar to the Ratchet and Clank games that were made by High Impact Games, making weapons do good damage, making your attacks pack a punch and having proper balance isn’t really a hardware issue, it’s a design
problem. Now, TLF doesn’t have the damage issues those Ratchet games did. But…why does the Scatter Gun…not put distance between you and the enemies, why does the uppercut not launch enemies into the air? Especially the small ones. These are tinier things that really add up. Now, in regards to how Jak plays, that much I can give some leniency on. Quite frankly, I don’t think the PSP was capable of doing Jak’s gameplay a lot of justice. Now, I am sure if ND developed it, based on the code from the PS2 games, it would have felt a little
better in combat, but I am referring to the controls. If you play a lot of PSP games based on PS2 franchises, you will quickly see how held back the games were by the PSP not having a second analog stick. In a 3D action game, you have to be able to control the camera. So PSP games all had to come up with their ideas as to how they wanted to go about it. Some games, like Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, used the D Pad as a camera, other games used L and R to turn the camera
left and right. The Lost Frontier being one of those games. But in Jak II, shooting was on R1, with the camera naturally being on the second stick. The PSP didn’t have L2 or R2, nor a second stick, so yeah, this game has the camera on the shoulder buttons, but that meant shooting had to be on Triangle, the only button left on the controller to use. It just feels even more awkward to play as a result of that. The Ratchet games barely got away with the limited control scheme, since you already used Circle to shoot in
Ratchets 1 and 2 on PS2. And with the strafing mechanic being automatic, circling enemies is no problem. Hitting L and R at once in Size Matters also allowed you to long jump, which was cumbersome, but doable. Here, rolling just wouldn’t work with the camera and the button layout, so it was axed. After finishing that sentence I gotta say, it feels very weird to use Ratchet and Clank Size Matters and Secret Agent Fucking Clank as a positive example, but here we are. In this game, without those mechanics, the gameplay just feels clunky and lame and there
wasn’t much they could’ve done about it while trying to be faithful to the mechanics of Jak while also dealing with this console. Although, I am going to mention the most bizarre bug I have seen in a game in a hot minute. Sometimes, when turning the camera, the entire game speed would slow down to like…50 or 60% speed. I am not joking, just watch. This would happen frequently, and the only way to stop it was by dying. Has anyone ever seen that before? I never have. Although, this was actually my first time playing The Lost Frontier
on PSP…well…the PSP version on the Vita TV, but still. I mentioned before that this game got a PS2 port, developed in house at High Impact, like the Size Matters port. I wasn’t sure what the Jak fan consensus was on which version of the two was better. Ratchet fans are very confident in the PS2 version having butchered this classic game. But, my comments showed that some Jak fans still do believe that the PSP version of The Lost Frontier is superior as a game. Now that I have played all three of these games on PS2 and PSP,
I am going to say that I am sick of this absolute hoax. On PS2, The Lost Frontier has better controls because the second analog stick is used for the camera…which in some segments is extended to be full 360 degrees, shooting is on R1, the eco powers are all D pad combos, the resolution is doubled to 480p and that’s that. The PSP version has better lighting, more colorful environments and more stable performance because my god, TLF on PS2 runs like ass with frequent slow down and ghosting effects, but the better controls is the deciding factor in
my opinion. Better overall performance does make sense if that is someone’s reason for preferring the game on PSP, but I have never seen someone bring it up. Nor have I ever seen this camera rotation slowdown issue that was exclusive to the PSP version get brought up either. To this day, 14 years after Size Matters hit the PS2, and 13 years after Agent Clank and TLF did…I have no idea where the High Impact Hoax, as I am going to call it, came from. Best I can tell, the games all reviewed worse on PS2, but that’s because
if you play them as PSP games, it’s more impressive, right? But…I am not even looking at them from that lens. The PSP was a powerful system in it’s day, and had many technologically impressive games released on it. But it’s still possible for the game to be good, the thing I am judging them by. Sure, Daxter or MGS Portable Ops wouldn’t be as fun on a console compared to the actual console games, but if a game is fun, then it’s fun. These three are just…not that. Even with the enhancements brought to them on PS2. So to
quote Baron Praxis…Pay no attention to this foolish Hoax! THE GAMES ARE JUST AS GOOD ON PS2 AS THEY WERE ON PSP! MAYBE EVEN BETTER. Maybe that wasn’t an exact quote…but anyway! Because I think the combat and platforming is fundamentally not fun, it makes it so that new additions that are nice, go in one ear and out the other. Such as getting eco power ups again! Red Eco allows you to create explosions, Yellow Eco gives you the ability to propel yourself in the air, you can activate a shield and create crystals with Green Eco…don’t know why
the life energy eco would do that but still, and with blue eco you can teleport and slow down time. Some segments even use these powers in tandem, like teleporting across a pool of Dark Eco, while also needing the shield raised. Things like that are a good way of scaling difficulty and using all your abilities. I also like being able to use Dark Eco as currency to get upgrades to colored eco abilities, like energy attacks in the yellow category, or health upgrades in the green. But like I said, I fundamentally think this game isn’t good, so
rare moments of design I think are satisfying don’t really leave an impact in the grand scheme of things. Although, I should take this moment to issue a correction from the Jak II video. In it, I stated that Jak lost all his eco powers in the experiment, but that’s not true, that’s the reason he even survives the Dark Warrior program to begin with. The Dark Eco just causes him to lose Precursor Interactivity, that’s all…I just had a misread of this line here from Metal Kor at the end of Jak II. For years, that misread caused me
to think this game was breaking canon by giving Jak eco powers again, but I was wrong. So, you get off the hook on that one game. But still… The game is, overall, more frustrating than anything else. Like when an enemy that is clearly on radar, didn’t spawn in so I had to stand around waiting for the timer to run out so I could do the segment again. Or the numerous camera angles that don’t give me a good view, causing my demise. Or when I can barely put any distance between me and this mutant mini boss,
giving it the ability to kill in .275 seconds. How about this part where you control Daxter in a shield, but he’s flailing all over the place and I can barely steer him…once more, leading to my doom several times over. But when The Lost Frontier isn’t annoying me, it’s just incredibly boring. The two major game elements are the platforming, and the dogfighting combat. I think having aerial battles was a good idea for a Jak game. The series had explored almost every other way of competing with vehicles, so this was a natural next step. I think the
planes you unlock all have good handling, like you pull down on the stick to pull up and vice versa, as the plane takes a second to actually do it, which doesn’t sound good, but it feels like you are controlling a heavy plane which I like. Even on PSP, the controls work well. The D-Pad doing evasive maneuvers like turning around and the barrel roll…”UH ACTUALLY IT’S CALLED THE AILERON ROLL!” Shut up commenters, nobody cares. Like the cars in Jak X, the planes in TLF have a decent bit of customization. Not in terms of appearance, but destroyed
planes drop scrap metal that you can use to buy new weapons and upgrade the ones you have, mixing and matching to make each plane to your liking. However, here is where the problems begin. A little gimmick mode like this can be just fine as a way to break up the regular gameplay, but similar to the PSP Ratchet games, they make it overstay it’s welcome by quite a large chunk of time. I am mainly thinking about this phase towards the end of the game where you have to defend the Sky Pirate base from these turret towers,
and this goes on, for no lie, 20 minutes. Because you have to destroy all 3 towers, and then control a missile into the core of one of them, die and you have to do it all again. But then, you have to destroy the turrets on the other two again and control another missile. And then a third time and a third missile for the last tower. There are checkpoints here, but why does it have to go on for so long? The mechanics of these plans aren’t so great that it warrants playing for a half hour. But
as if that wasn’t enough, the next thing you do is fly through a vortex and this goes on for five minutes. Only, I died at the end and had to do the whole thing again. Once that was done, I was in another dogfight against the Aeropans which took me…over 20 minutes yet again. An entire hour of this dogfighting, which should go without saying, is…quite overkill. But here’s the most sinister part. During the mission with the turrets, I was told by the game that if I wanted to change my weapons, I could hit restart and was
allowed that chance. I almost took the game up on that offer, but realized, no, I am sure that I’d have to go all the way back to the start with three towers standing. But, If I keep trying with my current loadout I will eventually win. But then this massive battle with the Aeropans, I was getting destroyed and needing a different weapon, so I did try it and what do you know? Checkpoints be damned, all progress must be restarted on this mission. That’s real nice. The whole game just feels really unfinished, and it seems that it
was. One of the designers at High Impact got interviewed by a Jak fan via email a few years back, and the interview is hosted on the Jak Wiki, he mentioned that the game had the shortest dev cycle of the three games they did for Jak and Ratchet. Which kind of surprised me, given the fact that it was released a year and a half after Secret Agent Clank, which came out one year after Size Matters. But maybe it was easier to do that game since the Ratchet gameplay was already programmed, and with Jak they had to
start from scratch. And also, maybe they didn’t get that full time to work on TLF. Who knows? Either way, it’s pretty clear to all parties involved that TLF just didn’t get the time in the oven needed to really do good on it’s ideas, which is why it just feels padded out and clunky more than anything else. By the end of TLF I am just left begging for the game to end. I don’t want to play these levels, and I dread the dogfighting that awaits me afterwards. Case and point…the last main levels of this game, where
I…get these terrible camera angles that make it difficult to tell where I am jumping, combat that is wonky and obnoxious against enemies and bosses, and then a massive dogfighting sequence to end the game where you first chase the main villain down for several minutes, only to then battle his ship…for several minutes, watching the same animation of the shield going down three times to begin and end each phase. It’s…it’s boring. I am just flying forward, blasting targets by mashing the shoot buttons. As I stated, you are just begging for the game to end. Of course, the
terrible story isn’t helping. It turns out that a lot of these conceptual ideas like Sky Pirates, The Eco Storms and the Brink were there when ND was developing this game, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think many of the concepts of this game don’t make sense. The precursors didn’t finish building the world? What does that mean? They literally hang out in the core of the planet, why not?? What were they doing down that, if not finishing the planet they made? I don’t know how you can run out of Eco in the first place,
when as established, Eco is literally what all life in the universe of Jak comes from. Maybe that could be explained via people using too many resources that drain the world’s eco, but with it just being stated that Eco is running out, it just makes me wonder how that is even possible. It’s good that the plot has a small number of characters in it, don’t want the bloated cast of cameos that Jak 3 had, but still…I think it would’ve been nice for it to be established in the backstory that this was a mission from Samos and
Torn or whoever, to make it feel like we are still in the Jak world. Because as it stands, it just doesn’t with this different setting, different characters and a completely different Jak. Jak is portrayed by Josh Keaton in this game, who is a great actor and does a good job with the material, but…man, Mike Erwin was Jak, and seeing him not in the game stings as a long time fan, especially since beta cutscenes from ND’s version of the game leaked on the internet before the game came out, and Mike Erwin…WAS in it to do the
lines they needed. And the cutscene direction is a lot more like the previous games, the characters look more on model and the lines are funnier. So, why Jak was recast remains a mystery to this day. Same for why Keira was recast in Jak 3, for that matter. Anyway, the story also introduces this random ass element where Daxter gets touched by Dark Eco and turns into a monster called Dark Daxter. I am sure you were wondering why this hadn’t been mentioned thus far, and it’s because I genuinely always forget this was in the game. Whenever I
get to the intro cutscene for this, I sigh as I remember you have to play boring mini games where you bash enemies and obstacles, solving switch puzzles in an overhead view for six minutes at a time. It’s pretty bad, there’s nothing going on here, it’s the same brain rot as the other game modes, but without the good stuff. But the thing, even while playing the game I forget this is in the game. No joke, when the cutscenes for the second and third Dark Dax levels started I was like…oh yeah, that’s something I have to do…great.
It’s that forgettable. It doesn’t even make sense anyway, Daxter is an ottsel, a precursor. Precursors touched by Dark Eco are Dark Makers, as seen in Jak 3. This one was a High Impact Original. Besides all that, the story is just…so boring and lame in this. Keira gets captured by the sky pirate captain, Phoenix, but they are actually good and the Aeropans are really evil, experimenting on people with Dark Eco like Praxis did, and we get these story beats like a love triangle, a shocking betrayal of one of Phoenix’s pirates, a gradual truce and friendship with
Jak and Phoenix…it’s all just…so one note and predictable. In one ear and out the other. Although I noticed something. Phoenix never introduces himself in the opening cutscene, but when Keira is captured, Jak somehow knows his name when nobody told him it. But then when Keira knows his name, he’s shocked. Oops. As I was saying, it all comes together in this lengthy scene where Phoenix sacrifices himself for the greater good and…the day is saved and…more adventures are coming and…I don’t care, thank goodness the game is over, is all I am left thinking at this point. I
revisit games I used to complain about in a curious sense, maybe something will be different after all this time, but in the case of Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier…it’s everything you’ve heard at this point. It’s an easy E Tier from me. When it’s not frustrating, it’s boring. When it’s not boring, it’s just a stale imitation of the Jak trilogy. For PSP standards? It’s just…not that good, considering that other imitations of PS2 games fared a lot better than this. And honestly, I am not sure how this ranks in the High Impact Hierarchy. This is the
one people dislike the most of the three, and I must say, this game combined the frustration of Size Matters with the boredom of Agent Clank. Not to say Agent Clank wasn’t frustrating, but that it wasn’t the biggest takeaway with the game. That is grounds for me to say it is the worst of the three. Although, this game isn’t quite as soul devouring to play as Agent Clank was. So…there’s that. I do think I’d replay Size Matters before this though, but that’s not saying much because I wouldn’t replay that game either. I really don’t have much
to add on this one, it’s not good, and I don’t think I will ever play it again. Seeing as I never even thought about touching once between my original review from six and a half years ago to now. But it is a shame that the Jak series went out on this quite weak note. To this day, Jak has been seen in cameos in other games and crossovers, but this was indeed the last Jak and Daxter game. We live in a pop culture landscape heavily influenced by nostalgia. With PS2 era games turning 20 years old now,
I think it’s entirely possible, if not, full on likely, that Jak and Daxter will make a return at some point. Now, what I’d want them to do with it, is a completely different question. Jak is just such a unique mix of different mechanics, that I don’t know if it would translate as well to the modern day as Ratchet and Clank gameplay did. But maybe that’s a chance to do something much different with it. Honestly…I have no idea what they’d do with it, but I’d be curious to see it, either way. Personally, I am pretty happy
with the Jak series the way it is. By that I mean, every couple of years I will go back and play Jaks 1 – X and be happy with the experience as is. Remember the games for what they were and have a good time. Not being sad the series is gone, but glad it happened at all. To the point where, if it never came back, I’d be content with the games we got. A lot of people in the Playstation Platformer community, and I’m talking about people who are so deep in that the only franchises they
like are these five…they seem to have a serious resentment and hatred towards new games and the new franchises these PS2 platformer companies did after these franchises that sold a lot better. I don’t hate Uncharted, The Last of Us, Infamous or Ghosts of Tshushima, especially those newer Sucker Punch games because I have barely played the former and never played the latter. And having played the Naughty Dog games, I love Uncharted, and think The Last of Us is one of the best games of all time. But my point is, I have seen a lot of people resent
these franchises for taking away our precious Playstation Platformers, that really, were never that popular to begin with, especially Sly. I just enjoy those games for what they are, and am really happy to see the companies that made my childhood favorites continue to be successful to this day doing the games they want to do. Breaking boundaries in the industry they never could’ve dreamed of on PS2. So yeah, I don’t need Jak to come back. If it does happen, I’d be happy. Would love to see the demolition duo one last time. If it doesn’t, I’d be content.
Generally I think people immersed in online discourse need to consume nostalgia in a healthier manner, but that’s neither here nor there. I won’t soapbox about that today considering it could make a good video in the future. Having said all that, I am glad I got to go back one more time and give Jak and Daxter the definitive retrospective it deserved, as I think these are some of my best works, which is what I said about my Ratchet videos last summer, that I think are nowhere near as good as these Jak videos. So I’d say my
work is only improving more and more each year and is only going up from here. But that pretty much covers it for this video. So next up, we got some those…blue hedgehog games people seem to like talking about. So, in the meantime, I will say what I always do. Thank you all for watching and I will see you next time.
