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VIDEO GAMES, SELECTED AT RANDOM Jak II (PS2 - 2003) Sometimes, video game critics get too wrapped up in what a game is supposed to be and forget exactly what it is. You know the games, the ones that are endorsed by a seemingly endless line of critics - the games that you pick and play a couple of times and wonder "am I playing the same games as these guys?" Black & White is my personal favorite of this type of game; critics just couldn't shut up about it, despite the fact that there were plenty of people who couldn't even get past the interface of moving around in the game. What was the point? Why? To a certain extent, Jak II falls under this category. On the surface, it seems like the series takes a substantial leap, taking the plotline into a darker direction, and incorporating all sorts of new gameplay elements, including guns, vehicles, and a gigantic cityscape with citizens and police officers that adapt to your every move. With such ambition on display here, perhaps a lot of critics are willing to excuse substandard execution, but I'm not so forgiving. The game design here is a ten car pileup on the interstate, a handful of muddled ideas that manage to screw up each other. The wonderful platform gameplay of the first game is virtually muted, as the level design tries and miserably fails to accommodate all of these new tricks and treats under one circus tent. And the tricks themselves are lacking too; the gunplay would be considered a joke at best, especially if you played the game that challenged Naughty Dog to up the gameplay ante (Ratchet & Clank). The vehicle control for the hovercars - hovercars that are virtually the only way to navigate around the spacious Haven City, I might add - is embarrassingly bad, ricocheting you between buildings and other hovercars as though you were strapped to an Acme rocket by a rubber band. The Crimzon Guard, which plays the role of the police in Haven City, patrols the streets looking for Jak with MGS-style vision cones that you can see on your radar, but they're apparently just for show, as I steered our faithful hero in front of more than one Crimzon Guardsman. The inclusion of the police is, in itself, quite puzzling; can you ever imagine Rockstar attempting to place 3D platformer elements into Grand Theft Auto? Some may applaud the darker direction that the storyline has taken, but the contrast between the whimsical comedy of the first game is just too much to swallow. Part of that may be due to the ineptitude of the writers, who warp Jak & Daxter from high-fiving and break dancing heroes into battle-hardened warriors that toss out flaccid one-liners like "Kill Metal Heads? Get Toys? Sounds good to me" without much of a build-up. Sure, the original game isn't exactly Hamlet and there are some traces of the previous game's humor sprinkled throughout, but the plotline induces groans at every turn and reaches far too desperately in its attempt to paint an epic revolution against tyranny. There are a few positives - the graphics throughout the game are still impressive, even if the darker tone puts a damper on a lot of the aesthetic surroundings. The environments have flourishes of personality in them, with walls that crumble as Jak nears them and videoscreen advertisements that wouldn't seem out of place in Blade Runner. Character design is a plus, as Jak gets updated with a cool goatee and turns into a visually impressive "alter-ego" during the use of Dark Eco powers. Overall, it just seems like Naughty Dog lost their way with this one. The transplant of Jak and Daxter's cartoony platform action just doesn't mix well with the darker direction the series has taken, and the entire game suffers for it. Other reviewers may disagree, but it is my opinion that Jak II is an unbelievable disappointment; it's not without redeeming elements, but it's certainly a title that demands a rental, especially if you're not real keen on integrating action gameplay into your platformer. **1/2

VIDEO GAMES, SELECTED AT RANDOM Bump 'n Jump (NES - 1988) Once the late 80's hit and coin-op developers started to realize that the Nintendo Entertainment System had finally re-established the video game console as a viable force in the home electronics market, dozens of arcade ports started to roll into the Nintendo catalogue. 1988 was a particularly fruitful year for console ports on the NES: Contra, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, Bionic Commando, Legendary Wings, Salamander (released in America as Life Force), Gunsmoke, Paperboy, Jackal, and Bump 'n Jump. Poor, poor Bump 'n Jump. Some thugs have snatched your girlfriend and you have a jumping car. Er, jeep. Off we go into stage after stage of race car derring-do, bumping other cars off of the road and jumping over huge, inexplicable rivers and bridges. I would suspect that the inclusion of multiple streams and rivers was, perhaps, an allusion to the future dangers of global warming but, then again, they have bushes planted in the middle of the road that detonate your car upon impact. Arcade games make my head hurt sometimes. That's not to say that Bump 'n Jump isn't fun. You certainly don't see many "racing platformers" out there in the annals of gaming history. But it just doesn't go anywhere or really grow as the game goes on - bump some cars around, jump when the big exclamation point comes up at the top of the screen, maybe pick up some gas cans, and then move on to the next stage. It's a quarter muncher in the very sense of the word and, on the NES, that doesn't amount for much value at all. One side point, as it relates to the original arcade release in 1982. Bump 'n Jump was originally developed by Data East, but it was licensed for distribution to Bally/Midway, the historic Chicago-based coin-op manufacturer. Shortly thereafter, Midway would answer with their own variation of the theme one year later, trading out the cartoony art and "Jumpin' John" for a steering wheel control, guns, and the Peter Gunn theme in Spy Hunter, one of the most absurdly successful arcade games of all time. Anyway, Bump 'n Jump - it's worth a novelty play but, ultimately, it pales in comparison to the other titles on the NES at the time. **1/2

VIDEO GAMES, SELECTED AT RANDOM Bionic Commando (NES - 1988) Sometimes, the art in a game's design can be found in its limitations. If there was a "golden age" of video games, it probably resided in the late 80's, when the wildly successful arcade industry intersected with the Nintendo Entertainment System and its resurrection of console gaming. At the crossroads was Super Mario Bros, providing a synergy of action and platforming elements that introduced a whole new generation to gaming and gave rise to a whole new wave of action/platformers across consoles and arcades alike. So imagine the collective surprise of arcade patrons when they stepped up to the Bionic Commando cabinet in 1987 and found an action game with platforming elements that wouldn't allow you to jump. Mario could jump. That dude in Rolling Thunder could jump. Even the incredibly obese Karnov could jump. But the Bionic Commando's feet were planted to the ground; he was saddled with a bionic arm that worked like a grappling hook, pulling him up to higher ledges and swinging him across pits like Pitfall Harry. (Of course, Harry, like virtually everybody else in the universe of gaming protagonists at the time, could jump too.) Despite this novel concept, the Bionic Commando arcade game was a modest success, at best, which made it somewhat of a surprise when Capcom decided to not only port over the game to the NES, but to give it a complete makeover. For one, the storyline of the game underwent a huge change. The somewhat scruffy-looking protagonist from the first game and fiery-haired Radd Spencer was installed as the hero. His mission: to rescue Super Joe (the protagonist from the original Commando game) from the Nazis and to destroy their secret Albatross project. Of course, even though the Nazis are the villains of choice for countless FPS games today, Nintendo of America felt that their inclusion within the NES version of Bionic Commando was far too controversial for their family-oriented policy of publishing, so Capcom changed the Nazis to the BADDs and renamed Hitler as "Commander Killt" for the North America release in 1988. (As we'll see later, though, Nintendo of America didn't catch quite everything that the game had to offer.) Beyond the storyline, the rest of the game received a remarkable facelift. The background music was re-imagined into some of the most striking pieces that you'll find on the NES at the time. Communication rooms were added to many of the stages, giving players the chance (if they equipped the right radio) to contact HQ to gain more information about the mission, as well the ability to wiretap into enemy communications. A world map was added to allow the player to proceed through stages in a non-linear fashion, and "neutral zone" stages were added to allow the player to gain information from NPCs and find different weapons/radios for use in the different stages throughout the game. The development team even added a mini-game (represented by trucks on the world map) where the player would be thrown into an overhead action/shoot'em up (in yet another nod to Commando). Finally (and perhaps most importantly), the stage design was tightened up exponentially, revealing the real genius behind the game: the limited mobility forced the player to be a little more creative as they navigated through each area. The stages scrolled vertically, as well as horizontally, and the bionic arm trickery required to get through each stage became progressively more difficult as you go along, building perfectly to an epic showdown with the huge Albatross airship, "Master-D" himself and a frantic Metroid-esque escape from the final stage. With all of these changes in place, the NES release was a much more robust gaming experience and, as a result, it became one of the greatest action games on the platform, essentially reducing its arcade predecessor to a mere curiosity. Bionic Commando is an absolute blast to play to this very day and, with one notable exception (the inability to change weapons/radios in-stage), the game design that drives it still seems fun and fresh. It will be interesting to see how the ESRB rules on a release of Bionic Commando on the Wii Virtual Console, if one happens to come down the pike; astonishingly, the original NES game has profanity and a rather grisly depiction of Hitler's death at the end of the game: Though you would never guess from its humble arcade origins, the NES release of Bionic Commando might be one of the most underappreciated games of all time, and it's certainly one of the best action titles that you can find out there, even compared with the games of today. If you can snag a ROM, I would highly recommend that you check it out. ****1/2