#50 - Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier

It’s been a while since I did a rage review on a game, mostly because of the time investment. Before I’ve gotten around it by watching the plot on the laptop and doing the rest from memory but I assure you I have played this game recently. The sacrifices I make for you…

So, the big 3 star-duos of the Playstation 2 era are Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter and Sly and Bentley, but the only one of the 3 to find much success in the post-PS2 era was Ratchet and Clank. Sly and Bentley did have a PS3 release in Thieves in time but that’s outside of HD remasters, it’s the only PS3 title with just them, with Jak and Daxter, their only PS3 release they star in outside of HD remasters is

  

Oh, my first nemesis. It sucked. Also, they were in that brawl game Battle Royale, doesn’t really count though.

But there was always the PSP, Sony’s handheld console, Jak and Daxter found success with the Daxter title, which is a solid game but then we have the dark sheep of the Jak and Daxter series. This is Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier

Released to surprising critical acclaim, this was the product of High Impact Games, the guys who made Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, so good hands! This was their last big-name title before they fell and were relegated to only making garbage and mobile games.

Yeah, sure that one was a hit…

Naughty Dog, the original Jak and Daxter team had a few plot ideas from drafts they were doing for Jak IV, but with the PS3 on the horizon and a team working on Uncharted it was decided to ditch it and work on a racing game instead, Jak X: Combat Racing, a surprisingly solid racing game that’s getting a PS4 remaster. So, let’s see how High Impact destroyed it as we take a look.

X-men Month - Mini Review: X-men: The Last Stand

And so we have come to the third entry to the Franchise and possibly one of the more infamous ones. X-men: The Last Stand was released in 2006 and it had a hell of a production history. Bryan Singer, who had directed the first two movies left to direct Superman returns instead… You’d think that’d be the obvious way to go but Superman returns received a mixed reception and made less money than this movie.

Beyond that, the main actors were only contracted for 2 films, so their contracts had to be renewed, for Hugh Jackman that meant getting director approval. Matthew Vaughn was assigned to direct when they entered pre-production but family issues meant he departed before filming started. In the end they hired Brett Ratner, who really didn’t know a lot about the X-men.

In the writing department we have Simon Kinberg, who at that point had written Fantastic 4 and Elektra… Be afraid…

And of course we have studio interference as well, with a lot of the original elements for Jean Grey’s role ordered to be cut down because it was considered too dark for a summer blockbuster. They also killed for major character deaths and I’ll get to that in the story section.

Which is right now, so take a look at X-men 3