So now besides Borderlands, I'm also playing Jak II, on the Jak & Daxter HD collection, and Velocity Ultra. Jak II…well, I know that in that series, the second and third games aren't as well loved as the first. I can understand why. Starting with the second one, they definitely started trying to rip off Ratchet & Clank, and I'm not sure they did it very well. Also, the second one takes a significantly darker tone compared to the first. Now that part of it I like. While I enjoyed the first game, it felt like a tired collect-a-thon with a paper thin story and I never felt much of a reason to care about the characters, but I felt like the game kept trying to convince me I should. The original Spyro trilogy had a thicker, more fleshed out story than Jak & Daxter, and Ratchet & Clank most certainly did. Well, the second game definitely has fleshed out the story more and I actually have a reason to get invested in it, the characters, and the world. There's also a feeling of character progression; it's not much, but you can get weapon upgrades. It's better than nothing. The lack of character progression bothered me in the first, as it certainly wasn't a short game and not much changed about the gameplay from beginning to end. All that said, there's flaws, and the big one is that the game is pretty unforgiving. Naughty Dog clearly had something against checkpoints while developing this game, which alone makes it feel like an unforgiving grind sometimes. Vehicles are about as durable as a sculpture made of popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue, and basically handle the way a snowmobile would if someone smeared olive oil on the skids and drove across a perfectly smooth sheet of ice i.e., they don't handle at all. Oh, I'm sorry, you want to DRIVE? No, we'd rather you'd ping-pong around after so much as tapping another vehicle, as well as have the city guards pursue you like a pack of bloodhounds after you've stolen their evening steak.
As for Velocity Ultra…well, it's a PS Vita freebie I picked up. It's a vertical shoot-em-up. Not much to say there, though the game introduces an interesting teleport mechanic that allows them to make some pretty neat level designs. I think I might actually go for the platinum trophy on this game, which isn't something I do that frequently.