Why The World Needs Jak and Daxter 4 (But Is Getting The Last of Us)
The reasons for no Jak 4 are arguably what’s wrong with modern gaming, modern films, and pretty much modern everything.
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Why does the world think we need to reboot everything but most of all, why do these reboots almost always go down the dark route? Next year we are getting a rebooted, darker Lara Croft, a rebooted, darker Devil May Cry and a rebooted, darker film version of Superman. I think there are two main reasons for this. Number one, people these days are scared of anything even resembling camp (which, lets face it, Jak and Daxter kind of was), but sometimes, cant camp be good? Im as big a fan of the Christopher Nolan Batman films as the next guy, but if Im being completely honest, I think I prefer Tim Burtons campy Batman Returns to any of Nolans Batman films (though I still like The Dark Knight VERY MUCH). Call me crazy but the reason Nolans films werent quite as amazing as they could have been was because he was slightly too afraid to embrace the camp side of Batman. Im not saying he should have gone all Schumacher (in fact I think Batman Forever and Batman and Robin should be wiped off the face of the earth)- but his Batman films were a little too humourless, and a little overdramatic for my taste (I still really like them though) and ultimately The Avengers- the more chilled out, more camp, more colourful and fun superhero film this year just beat out Nolans The Dark Knight Rises as the best film of the year (my opinion). The second reason people these days (I sound like an old man) like to create darker reboots is because people want to attract a more adult, cooler audience of people who mostly play FPS (and have lots and lots of money to buy games with). Maybe Naughty Dog thought the people who played Jak and Daxter ten years ago would be all grown up now, and wouldnt want to play a game targeted at a younger audience. WRONG!!! ... Well, I am grown up now (officially), but I still want to play that game, and so do the many thousands of adults who brought the Jak and Daxter Original Trilogy HD collection for the PS3 this year. In fact, arent we, the adults who were once children who loved the Jak and Daxter Trilogy, and the many platform games we played as children, exactly the audience who would love to see another campy, colourful, cartoony Jak game, if only to relive our childhood memories of playing that game for 6 hours straight with our eyes glued (burning away to a crisp) at the TV screens while we were supposed to be doing our homework??? Is it just me, or does it appear like all the platform games that used to overpopulate our consoles are rapidly disappearing? (Id also love to see another Crash Bandicoot by the way). It feels like all the games aimed at children (mostly Wii, Kinect and Move games) are basically aimed at preschool kids, with very few platform games targeted to all audiences- children, teens and adults alike. Just like the middle class seems to be slowly disappearing from todays world, so it seems is the middle class of platform games.
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I mean, how many of you think the Last of Us is the most exciting game release of next year??? I bet not that many- Watchdogs looks much more original for example. And how many of you out there would have been giddy at the idea of arguably the best platforming game series ever made coming back for one more trilogy. I bet A LOT. All I can say is I hope Naughty Dog seriously reconsiders creating a Jak 4, and that when they do it resembles the games we all fell in love with a decade ago, and not Emo Jak with a few scars on his face. Jak 2 and 3 were dark enough, thank you very much.