Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier

Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier is a 2009 platform game developed by High Impact Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game went through a troubling development cycle. Originally developed by Naughty Dog alongside Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and planned to be exclusive to the PSP; due to experiencing problems with the PS3's infamously hard-to-develop architecture and several experienced staff leaving t he studio, Naughty Dog had no choice but to leave The Lost Frontier's development to High Impact Games as they were unable to develop both games at the same time. Naughty Dog has since regretted this.
 * 2) About half of the game is you flying in a ship, in a platform game. If they were going to have this much of the game revolve around flying ships, why didn't they just turn the game into a flying spinoff game just like Banjo Pilot? The constant flying from place to place also completely destroys the feeling of a big open-ended platformer world with seamless transition from place to place.
 * 3) The flying segments of the game are tedious and as explained above take most of the game.
 * 4) For some strange reason, Keira looks nothing like her appearance in other games.
 * 5) Both Jak and Keira are completely out-of-character.
 * 6) A predictable storyline that is still riddled with plot holes, the most significant of which concerns the use of the main game mechanics.
 * 7) * Why were none of the events of the previous Jak games mentioned, despite taking place after Jak 3 due to the fact that Daxter has his denim pants he obtained at the end of that game?
 * 8) * What happened to Samos, Tess, Ashelin, Torn, & Sig? You would think with an energy crisis affecting the entire world and likely in places such as Haven City, Spargus, and Kras City, surely it would've been a good idea to have a cutscene (especially at the start of the game) showing Jak and Keira discussing this with their friends and Samos and them depicting their journey to the Brink.
 * 9) * Why would Keira suddenly want to become an eco sage? Considering the fact Naughty Dog dropped the idea after The Precursor Legacy with Jak II and now with the group living three-hundred-years in the future where no one is interested in eco sages, why would the writers want to bring up this practically forgotten plot point in this game all of a sudden?
 * 10) * Why does Dark Daxter exist? Matter of fact why can he turn back into regular Daxter after being transformed into Dark Daxter by Dark Eco?  Dark Eco turned Daxter into an ottsel in the first place.  Dark Daxter's design is also very ugly and looks nothing like regular Daxter, unlike Dark Jak who does resemble regular Jak; not to mention, he rips off Dark Sonic from the anime Sonic X, since both Jak and Sonic have their dark versions of themselves.
 * 11) * The most severe plot hole comes from when Keira said that the Eco was too unstable and can't be used in a cutscene when Jak tried to change to Dark Jak and suffered pain doing so. Jak then proceeds to use Eco-related powers during the rest of the game without consequences, pain, or death. Daxter can successfully transform into Dark Daxter and Skyheed into Dark Skyheed without dying, yet Jak can't turn into Dark Jak (and presumably Light Jak) and experiences pain when he attempts to do so. Eco is supposed to be unstable according to her statement. Why can Daxter change into Dark Daxter and Skyheed into Dark Skyheed but Jak can't change to Dark or Light Jak forms? This directly conflicts with the above statement. Daxter and Skyheed shouldn't be able to change to Dark Daxter and Dark Skyheed if Jak can't use his Dark Jak form due to the Eco being unstable. Better yet why can Jak even safely use Eco powers at all? This shows that the writers didn't think through the implications fully when making the plot and dialog.
 * 12) * Why does Keira's hand glow when you upgrade your attacks?
 * 13) At best, the majority of the voice acting feels phoned in. It doesn't help that Mike Erwin, Jak's voice actor since the second installment, was seemingly unable to reprise his role and was replaced by Josh Keaton, who gives an adequate but lackluster effort as Jak. This is strange given that two leak cutscenes from a year before the release of The Lost Frontier clearly sho w him voicing Jak. Given that the production team of PlayStation Move Heroes, a critically panned crossover game between Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, and Ratchet & Clank published two years later, was able to get Mike Erwin back to voice Jak, there was no reason for High Impact Games not to go the extra mile in getting back Mike Erwin to reprise his hole, considering this was the last Jak game to ever be released after 2009.
 * 14) Dark Daxter's gameplay is tedious and repetitive, and it feels completely irrelevant to the plot.
 * 15) Terrible camera.
 * 16) Unlike previous Jak and Daxter games, falling into the water actually kills you. No explanation or reason is given on why Jak suddenly cannot swim.
 * 17) The game's cutscenes clearly emphasized that the game was still in beta testing before shipped out for release. It obviously does not look finished, and the lip-syncing is off.
 * 18) Clunky controls that feel off-brand for a Jak and Daxter game, both on foot and in the plane stages.
 * 19) Frequent glitches. For example, the game will commonly crash in the Eco Skills menu where you purchase skills and upgrades using Dark Eco.
 * 20) Most regular Jak mechanics feel watered-down.
 * 21) Lackluster graphics (especially on the PS2 version). Although the PSP is slightly more powerful, the PlayStation 2 can still do better than that in graphical quality. In fact, the first Jak and Daxter game which came out eight years before this game looks much better which is on the same platform that the first four Jak games were released on. The environment colors are also washed out and dull compared to other games in the series, where brighter and more vibrant colors are found (more noticeable in forest areas).
 * 22) Dark Skyheed is just a clone of the Hulk.
 * 23) No Dark or Light Jak, and despite the lack of Light Jak, you get Light Jak's powers but without transforming into him, for some reason.
 * 24) You have to wait around 25 seconds in the elevator loading sequences to get on the plane, every time you get on the plane, which is very long, especially for a Jak and Daxter game as the other games don't take more than 10 seconds to load.
 * 25) Final boss takes a long time to beat.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Some nice puzzles here and there.
 * 2) The ability to use Daxter to hack planes and steal scraps from them is a cool feature.
 * 3) More bosses than other games in the series (though they're nowhere near as good as the other games).
 * 4) Decent soundtrack, with a few good songs like the Behemoth battle.
 * 5) Daxter's voice acting is good.
 * 6) Josh Keaton does a decent job as Jak (albeit it's still not as good as Mike Erwin's performance).

Reception
While the game received positive reviews from critics, it was heavily panned and criticized by many fans with some thinking it killed the franchise, as it is the last game to ever be released.

A few years after this game's release, Naughty Dog has stated in an interview that while they own the Jak and Daxter franchise, they express very little to no interest in making another Jak game (despite acknowledging that they were not happy with The Lost Frontier 's end result).

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