How Long Would It Take You To Beat Every Jak and Daxter Game?

Summary

• The Jak and Daxter series evolved from lighthearted platforming to a more battle-focused experience in later games.
• The second one is the (unnecessary) longest game with 25 hours, but the rest has an average of just ten.
• Completing all five Jak and Daxter games would take around 70 hours, excluding the less appealing Daxter spinoff. If you want to struggle with that one, add six more hours.

Having just finished introducing the world to the crate-bashing marsupial, Crash Bandicoot, legendary studio Naughty Dog needed a fresh idea to catapult them firmly into the PS2 era. Their coup de grâce was Jak and Daxter, a series of action-platformers notable for becoming steadily, gratuitously edgier as they progress. Irreverent humour and gun-toting mayhem made this duo a staple of the sixth-gen.

Every Jak And Daxter Game, Ranked

Jak and Daxter brought us an entire series - but which of these games is still playable, and which never was?

The gruff adventurer and his smack-talking Ottsel have been on a decent number of adventures; six of them, to be precise. Sure, their actual quality varies – but if you wanted to experience them all, how long would it take you? Pound some Red Eco for energy, and let's dive in.

A quick heads-up: we'll be mentioning some brief spoilers for each of the games in the franchise, as they start to lean more and more heavily into lore as they go on. Time travel shenanigans abound, so take heed, newcomers!

Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Ten Hours

Jak and Daxter's debut title absolutely plays it the safest of the saga. There's nary a cuss word nor a plasma rifle to be found here; instead, you've got a pretty garden variety collectathon platformer that sticks strictly to the formula etched into concrete by such heavy hitters as Banjo-Kazooie.

The dastardly Gol and Maia are aiming to unlock the secrets of the Precursors, a generic ancient race we learn nothing about (and won't until three games in, so sorry to those who bail out early!). In their efforts to stop them, Jak and his buddy Daxter wind up corrupted by Dark Eco, with Daxter getting the rawer end of the deal – he's stuck as a diminutive, fluffy corporate mascot.

Precursor Legacy is business as usual for the genre, and you can almost see the constituent parts of different IPs it's stitching together. Jak's spin attack is suspiciously bandicoot-esque, for instance. You'll wander non-linear maps, hoovering up reams and reams of collectible orbs which are necessary to remove gated doors; and there's also the mandatory McGuffins, the power cells, which will be your Jiggies for the evening.

Jak 1 isn't pushing any boundaries, but it's fun enough (barring an obscene difficulty spike in the temple areas) and doesn't outstay its welcome. Ten hours will be more than enough to see it through, with not much more needed to 100 percent it.

Jak II

25 Hours

It would be really tough to name a gaming franchise that takes a harder screeching left turn in its sequel than Jak and Daxter. Doubtless noticing the encroaching trend of violent mainstays like Grand Theft Auto and Call Of Duty, Naughty Dog opted to take the formerly cuddly, mute platforming hero and shove him through the wringer. The wringer of grit and ambivalence.

You get about 30 seconds with the OG Jak and Daxter in the game's opening, before they're sucked through a portal, deposited in Futuristic Urban City Hellscape #45821, and Jak's hauled off at gunpoint to be pumped full of dangerous Eco. By the time Daxter rescues him, he's got himself a macho goatee, as well as access to the entire curse word library. Well, the PG-13 curse word library, anyway.

10 Best Jak And Daxter Characters

From Ottsels to oracles, these are the best characters in the Jak and Daxter series.

There's an inherent comedy to this jarring tonal change, as you watch Jak mow down cyborgs with an assortment of weaponry, and Daxter macking on a busty barmaid. The gameplay, too, is altered: your basic moveset is the same, but you'll now have to traverse a lifeless open world between missions, which can drag as the game has a nasty habit of setting your objectives at the polar opposite end of the map.

Hijacking hovercars and dodging the local fuzz remains thrilling, however – but Jak II more than doubles its predecessor's runtime due to its ridiculous difficulty. You'll game over ad nauseam on your way to a 20-25 hour finish.

Seriously, make no mistake: this thing is hard as a bed of nails. Health upgrades are tough to come by, enemies can overwhelm you in seconds flat, and dying near the end of a mission means redoing the entire thing from square one. That drill platform assignment lives in infamy.

Some gamers may like the challenge, but those with blood pressure issues need not apply.

Jak 3

15 Hours

If one were to sum up Jak 3 in a sentence, it would be: "Jak II, except if developed by someone with any empathetic regard whatsoever." Whereas that sequel was unrelenting in its cruelty, and bloated beyond belief, this third entry dials back the difficulty in favour of varied stage design and narrative focus – and is arguably the better product for it.

Jak II ended on a number of Vader-tier reveals: Haven City was actually the future, the mythical child was actually Jak's younger self, and so on. Jak 3, at least in its first half, goes for a simpler setup. Corrupt politician Count Veger successfully lobbies for our heroes to be exiled into the desert, where they join a crew of 'wastelanders'. Jak must train to become one of them, while occasionally sneaking back into the city to unravel Veger's plot.

Literally nothing has changed in the gameplay department. It's the exact same engine as Jak II, complete with all its wonky jumping physics and awkward camera. What makes the difference this time around is that the levels play to Jak's strengths; rather than spamming tanky enemies at you, there are puzzles to solve, hoverboarding sections, and platforming that has generous margins of error. And when the combat does rock up, you're given proper time and space to pick foes off with your guns.

There are still controller-busting moments, for sure, and there's a disproportionate focus on vehicles (good luck getting anywhere in the desert without your jumping dune buggy, which is impossible to steer). But these aren't enough to offset the superior pacing and satisfying conclusion, which you should easily reach in about 15 hours.

Jak X: Combat Racing

Ten Hours

Well, it had to happen eventually. Any platforming franchise that lingers around the block long enough will, sooner or later, find itself press-ganged into a kart-racing spinoff. Mario, Sonic, Crash, Kirby, et al can attest to the inevitability of this – but luckily, Jak X is an enjoyable time.

X stands out from its karting cousins in that it actually attempts to continue the series' main narrative. The vengeful Errol is cold in the ground after Jak 3, and Haven City's on the up-and-up.

The tranquility comes crashing down, though, at a reading of Krew's will (Krew, of course, being the Jabba the Hutt-alike weapons dealer from Jak II) during which he posthumously poisons everyone via a tainted bottle of wine. The only way to secure an antidote is, somehow, by winning the Kras City Championship, so it's off to the races.

The 10 Best Kart Racing Games, Ranked By How Terrifying They’d Be To Participate In

Kart racing games seem fun when you're playing them, but they'd be downright terrifying to take part in for real.

The vehicles themselves are chunky buggers, and can be customized to within an inch of their life, so every player's bound to find a loadout that works for them. Screeching down the tracks with these bulky Mad Max machines is cool whichever way you slice it, as are the comically oversized rocket launchers you can bolt on. Red and Yellow Eco take the place of weapon pickups, and you can cause some serious carnage with a well-aimed blast.

Jak X does right by several secondary characters whose roles in Jak II and 3 were perfunctory at best. Poor, sweet Keira finally steps into the limelight here – and the credits will be rolling by the ten-hour mark, making this a digestible diversion from the platforming norm.

Daxter

Six Hours

We are fathoms deep in spinoff territory at this stage. A scarcely-remembered PSP title, Daxter followed the lead of Secret Agent Clank by giving the smaller half of the duo his own standalone adventure.

But while Clank is a lovable, cerebral, mild-mannered bucket of bolts, Daxter is a fast-talking loudmouth who can't seem to shut up. His schtick begins to grate very fast; but thankfully, there's not a great deal to say about this game.

Those who are aware of Daxter's existence likely owe it to the fact it was considered a good tech demo of the PSP's capabilities, and thus was bundled in with the system for a while in select markets. This accounts for its short length, but doesn't make it any more appealing of a prospect to play nowadays.

Daxter is set during a very specific window in the series' timeline: the period when Jak is being experimented on in Haven City, and the Ottsel is trying to track him down. Apparently, the reason it took him so long was because he got distracted with a spot of bug extermination, and hired by an old chap named Osmo to squash an infestation.

Armed with an electric stun rod, you'll thwack and fry insects of all shapes and sizes, and later you get your furry mitts on a flamethrower and jetpack. Scurrying down narrow tunnels and clambering on vines is perfectly functional, but it's been done before. Mindlessly stabbing buttons to eradicate beetles doesn't inspire much of the imagination, and your eyes will be thoroughly glazed by the time the curtain falls on your meager six-hour playthrough. Our advice? Skip it.

Jak And Daxter: The Lost Frontier

Ten Hours

Jak and Daxter has something in common with its PS2 bedfellow Sly Cooper, in that both franchises received a fourth mainline entry, developed by a different studio, several years after the original trilogy. Alas, while Sly 4: Thieves In Time is a largely solid follow-up that remains faithful to the tried-and-true Cooper format, The Lost Frontier is a middling, forgettable effort that most fans would struggle to acknowledge as canon.

The story picks up shortly after the conclusion of Jak X (and hey, Daxter's still got his pants, so there's some nice continuity.) Keira is looking to become a sage like her father, Samos, and resolve a global Eco shortage, but they run afoul of a band of Captain Phoenix's sky pirates. It's up to the gang to settle the conflict before things spiral out of control.

10 Games With The Longest Break Between Sequels

Some of these sequels may even be older than you!

Helmed by High Impact Games - who had previously cranked out the handheld Ratchet and Clank spinoffs - The Lost Frontier is like a facsimile of a Jak and Daxter game. All the pieces are there: jumping, shooting, the odd infuriating gimmicky segments in a vehicle. They just feel soulless and don't coalesce into a whole, and you expend more energy wrestling with the controls than the enemies.

The art style is also strange, with a creepily-elongated Keira in particular resembling her old model not one jot. There are occasional flashes of innovation, like the aerial dogfights against the pirates, but it isn't enough to recommend such a flat fourquel. Ten hours await should you take the plunge, but there are better ways to spend your time, frankly.

How Many Hours In Total Would It Take To Complete Every Jak And Daxter Game?

Jak and Daxter have been on quite the journey – from squeaky-clean cereal box mascots, to hardened edgelords, and onto a murkier group of outings in their later years. All the same, they're an absolute stalwart of PS2 nostalgia, so let's tot up the total number of hours you'll need to conquer Jak's dark side:

Game

Approximate Playtime In Hours

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

10 hours

Jak II

25 hours

Jak 3

15 hours

Jak X: Combat Racing

10 hours

Daxter

6 hours

Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier

10 hours

That comes to 76 hours, or just over three days of uninterrupted Metal Head blastin'. But let's be honest: neither you nor anyone on Earth would willingly subject themselves to Daxter, so you're likely looking at a nice round 70 hours. Compared to the steep time investment of some franchises, that's not insurmountable.

In summary, you could be done with Jak and company's adventures within a single week, if the mood struck you. Whether your controller makes it out the other end unscathed is another matter entirely; but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Best 3D Platformer Games For Beginners

There are a lot of great 3D platformers on the market, but these offer a perfect starting point for new players.