Jak 3 Review

This is the entry that listened. Checkpoints are frequent, missions are shorter, the eight guns each have three upgrade modes, and light eco powers give you a defensive option the second game never offered, so the moment to moment play is the best in the series by a clear margin. The problem is shape. Exiling Jak to a desert wasteland gives the game a striking new setting and a fleet of drivable dune buggies, then it keeps sending you back to Haven City for a war it has already told you about, and the two halves never merge into one place the way the first game's world did.

The vehicle combat is fine rather than good, and the desert traversal eats a lot of clock. Story wise it resolves the trilogy competently and with less bite than the middle chapter, trading the anger for spectacle. Taken as the end of a run it is satisfying and slightly diffuse, a game that solved its predecessor's problems and misplaced some of its focus doing it.