Doing it Tough in Jak II
The chagrin of checkpoints.
Growing up sucks. I mean taxes, am I right?
Of course, there are some benefits to being an adult. Drinking and forming deeper relationships with loved ones and also drinking. But fundamentally, why would anyone ever want to move beyond a state of being in which responsibilities were fewer, possibilities felt endless, and the term “LinkedIn networking” held no meaning? We all need to grow up eventually. Even if you continue to exist in semi-denial by dedicating a handful of hours each week to writing articles about one of your most cherished childhood hobbies… but enough about that.
Jak II is a 2003 3D platformer by Naughty Dog that acted as the direct sequel to the critically acclaimed Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. While that first game was a light-hearted, cartoony adventure in a similar style to Crash Bandicoot, Jak II took things in a much darker, much edgier direction. The age of Banjo-Kazooie was over. The age of Grand Theft Auto had begun.
As such, Naughty Dog went for a mid-series soft reboot in order to keep their franchise about a Yu-Gi-Oh-looking mute and his orange rat relevant for a maturing demographic of gamers. This tonal shift resulted in the writing becoming more complex and character-focused, the setting switching to a gloomy dystopian city, guns being added to combat, Daxter using words like “damn” and “pissed”, and, perhaps most shockingly, Jak growing a goatee.
Also the game is as hard as a blast of Dark Eco.
Like, seriously, this is a tough old game. The second half of Jak II is especially infamous for its oft-maddening difficulty spike. Jak and Daxter’s quest to take down Baron Praxis and save Haven City trips treading a tremendously tiring trail of tricky trying trials—a sentence that is far easier to say ten times fast with your mouth full of hot sauce than the majority of late-game missions in Jak II. Whilst balancing on a fiery basketball. And juggling stonefish.
One of the main complaints I see levelled towards Jak II’s difficulty is that the lack of checkpoints artificially boosts the challenge gamers have to overcome. Sure, there are other contributing factors behind the game’s rigorous reputation. Jak’s life bar never increases across the entire adventure, health drops are infrequent and underwhelming, and the general design around levels and enemies does lean towards the cut-throat, leaving players with very little room for error. But if you do make a mistake in Jak II—and you will make several mistakes in Jak II—the least you could expect from the developers is for them to not send you back to the very beginning of a mission.
Checkpoints in the second half of Jak II are few and far between. If you’re lucky, there might be a single checkpoint placed halfway through a mission. At the very best, there’ll be two. The most likely scenario is that Naughty Dog will save your progress at the start of what will be a long and arduous level, and you’ll be forced to complete it all in one go. If you game over for any reason, too bad. That five or ten or fifteen minutes of precise, nail-biting gameplay you just performed will be lost to time and you’ll just have to do it all over again.
This is understandably frustrating for many people. After all, as gamers, we all have different levels of tolerance for what we deem to be worthy punishments for our failures. Challenging jumps and powerful enemies are common elements of 3D platformers, and Jak II certainly has both of them in spades. But to lose so much progress because of one mistimed jump or one stray shot from an offscreen Krimzon Guard can—and does—feel like a cheap way for the developers to extend the game’s playtime and magnify its difficulty.
Here’s the thing, though. Are Jak II’s sporadic checkpoints also a way for the developers to convey the game’s message around the challenges of growing up? Stick with me. Jak goes through a lot in the two years between The Precursor Legacy and Jak II. He is displaced from his idyllic home in Sandover Village, separated from all of his friends, captured by Baron Praxis, and subjected to years of torture that permanently alters his biology through dangerous exposure to Dark Eco. For a young man entering adulthood, this is hardly the fairytale coming-of-age arc.
Even after Jak escapes his imprisonment and begins fighting back, things are no longer the way they used to be. They never can be. He’s full of rage at his mistreatment and desperately wants Haven City’s powerful to pay the price, but this isn’t a world that rewards heroes. This city is hostile, corrupt, and only champions those who are willing to walk the line. If Jak is going to get his revenge, he’s going to have to work for it. And it’s not going to be easy.
In a strange way, I believe the sparse checkpoints in Jak II actually reinforce Jak’s struggles with growing up the way he has. No one is going to hold his hand and guide him through this world. And as the player, no one is going to hold ours either. Sometimes that means having to redo an entire mission because we tripped over just at the finish line. But at least we get to try again. And again and again until our perseverance is rewarded and we help Jak take back a little bit of the life that was stolen from him.
Growing up sucks. Especially if you were moulded into a Dark Eco warrior against your will. With that said, I don’t think Jak ever had to worry about managing LinkedIn spam messages. So who’s really had it tougher?
Do you have any memories about Jak II? What are your thoughts on developers using fewer checkpoints to increase the difficulty of their games? Let me know in the comments!
Stuff from the Stack
December is here and that means the festive season is nearly upon us. To help celebrate the year that was in our little category-less corner of Substack, Retro-spect has come up with the excellent idea of the 12 Plays of Game-mas. This is a way for different video game writers to shout out the works that have stood out to them across 2025, so I thought I would shout out the article that kicked it all off!
The Video Game Storyteller is a Substack written and formatted by Harry Fritsch on the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people, the Traditional Custodians of Meanjin (Brisbane).
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So close to getting those two dollars
I like the analogy to growing up and facing adulthood. Does adulthood provide an "easy" mode? Because I think we're all on the wrong difficulty setting