Naughty Dog knows a thing or two about platformers. They have become a legend in the latest years creating one of the best selling gaming series of all times, Crash Bandicoot. Mr. Bandicoot, the giant rat, has sold roughly 20 million copies worldwide, a success that can be explained also thanks to the fact that Naughty Dog has always reached the goal of offering the players a varied, balanced, in a word fun, experience.

Honestly, Jak & Daxter inherits a lot of elements from Mario 64 and past Naughty Dog games, to the point that some may question, with good reasons, the originality of the game. But it's a fact that Jak & Daxter manages to incorporate the good things present in Mario 64 over a unique game structure to create an experience that feels balanced and fresh like few others.

Like any classic platformer, Jak & Daxter is heavily based on collecting items. The thin storyline tries to give you some reason to collect them, but you'll soon forget these reasons - after a few minutes into the game you are sucked into a fetching quest in which retrieving Precursor Orbs and Power Cells means unlocking new areas. The controls are tuned up to grant a sensation of fluidity that's just enchanting, and they are so intuitive that in a couple of minutes even the less skilled player can start moving like a trained veteran of the genre. Jak has a repertory of classic platformer moves, which fans of Crash Bandicoot will love. Jak can perform Crash's infamous spin attack, the always cool double jump (press again jump while jumping to jump higher), high and long jumps, plus few extra moves that can be activated by special power-ups scattered throughout the game: Red Eco increases your power and attacks, Yellow Eco lets you shoot fireballs at enemies. Jak can also pilot a special flying vehicle (the "A-GraV Zoomer") in a few special driving levels, but this strange thing needs a bit of practice.

Anyhow, the big achievement that makes Jak & Daxter unique is the structure of the game world; instead of using the well-tested formula of Mario 64, which featured a central hub world with many gates that gave access to the various levels, Naughty Dog's game puts you in a continuous, huge game world. From the beginning to the end you play in a seamlessly connected world. Instead of levels, there are areas of the game where you must accomplish certain tasks. Unlike what happens in other Mario 64-clones, you don't necessarily have to complete a task to avoid loosing all your progresses: you can stop, leave the area, do something else in the game, and then come back later to complete that task.

This is perfectly supported by a miraculous graphics engine that completely eliminates loading times and shows on the screen even the farthest objects in the environment; if you travel from one area to the other, you could still see the area you've just left fully animated, and breathing with life. The sensation you get from Jak & Daxter is that you're playing in a world where everything is linked, and not in a discreet world divided in sub-levels. It's an increased amount of realism that paradoxically enhances the imaginative power of the game.

Jak & Daxter is an easy game, one of the most forgiving platformers I have ever played. This can be bad or good, according to your personal tastes, but it never arrives to point of making the game stupid or pointless. Jak can die easily - three hits kill him - but he has infinite lives. This doesn't prevent you from replaying the same section over and over, until you get it right, but makes the game definitely more relaxing than old style classic platformers.