I love me some Jak and Daxter. The Naughty Dog series is one of my favorite platformers of all time. Since the original developer has seemingly moved on to bigger, better titles (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will blow your mind and your dick), the duo has changed hands a couple times. Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier was supposed to be the next game in the series, but after playing it I’m just hoping it gets retconned away.

I don’t have anything against High Impact Games, but why does Sony keep giving it popular franchises to fuck up? I could understand letting the team try Ratchet and Clank games since it’s made up of former Insomniac guys, but Jak and Daxter isn’t even their franchise.

The game is not terrible, let me say that much. In fact, for a while it feels a lot like the first game in the series The Precursor Legacy. It’s a lot of old school platforming, with less of a focus on the gunplay, though that’s in there too. The basic mechanics of the series are here: double jumbling, spin attacks, and levels full of floating platforms. Added into the mix are flying levels which are also pretty fun thanks to the ability to customize the plane’s weapons and stats. The gameplay get’s somewhat tedious since every mission seems to go on just long enough to stop being fun. And there are some serious camera issues that makes platforming harder than it needs to be.

For fans of the series the story is going to be where the game really fails. Naughty Dog does great cutscenes, and unfortunately High Impact can’t match it. The characters are stiff and one dimensional, unable to convey the seriousness of the plot with any emotional impact. Max Casella still shines as Daxter, though his lines are far less clever and snarky. And while The Lost Frontier is supposed to be the fourth game in the series, the writers don’t even bother to keep canon, choosing to ignore any and all significant events in Jak 2 or Jak 3. There are no returning characters, and all of the new characters are just terrible.

And of course, then there’s Dark Daxter. Thankfully High Impact changed the voice acting from the earlier demos it showed, so he comes off less retarded, and more Hulkish. For those of you wondering, his transformations are an instant purple flash, and there are very few instances of this. There is one moment where he outgrows and beats up some bad guys, but usually he’s just throwing energy balls at spiders, or completing very rudimentary puzzles. Not fun, and not hot.

Daxter proved that a Jak and Daxter PSP game by a different developer could work. The Lost Frontier is nowhere near as good. The world feels diluted with the bad characters, weak plot, and lackluster gameplay, despite the throwback to earlier games. Good thing it’s on the PSP and PS2, so only, like, six people will ever play it.