Naughty Dog Wishes It Was Working on New Jak & Daxter Game

So do we! Absolutely love the series! At first it was kind of off-putting the turn the series took but it grew on me and I fell back in love with it. Make it happen ND!

Unfortunately, games like Jak & Daxter are not very popular any more. Sure, there are some loud fans, but they are not enough.

I played but never really connected with Jak & Daxter. I’d like a new duo platformer IP to be made focused around coach co-op if possible, but I don’t think the genre is massively popular any more. R&C is much more of a shooter.

No Push Square no, NO!!! DON'T GIVE ME HOPE!!!!

I don't have nostalgia for Jak and Daxter nor Ratchet and Clank but the PS4 version of R&C is great and I would love to see J&D get the same treatment. Too bad they're focused on TLOU

Naughty Dog have the fame and probably resources to do a new Uncharted, Jak and Daxter AND a new IP. GIVE ME JAK AND DAXTER PLEASE

I’d rather see a remake of Jak and Daxter than TLOU personally.

I’m probably in the minority though 😅

Would absolutely love a new Jak and Daxter. It's been a video game pipe dream for some time now.

What's stopping Sony, with Naughty Dog's permission and goodwill of course, to pass this particular franchise to another one of their studios?

If the demand is there then I don't see why not.

No we just want new IP s

@naruball If They Gave Jak And Daxter The Crash Insane Trilogy Treatment That Would Change.

Don't think it will sell well enough for Sony but it would on the Nintendo Switch.

If Naughty Dog did make a new Jak and Daxter, Neil Druckmann would probably force to add himself in a cutscene abusing Keira's shoulders or something of that nature.

@B-I-G-DEVIL Actually you're in the majority, almost no one wants a tlou remake.. probably even the people working at ND. We want a new IP but the next best thing would be a Jak and Daxter remake.

Well, a remake of Jak and Daxter would certainly make a hell of a lot more sense than a remake of TLoU. Still though, once again, I want a new IP from Naughty Dog more than anything else.

Also, damn, it's somewhat insane to me that Evan Wells is still at ND. I think he's literally the only one left who's been there since the Crash series.

I always kinda preferred Jak & Daxter to R&C I don't know. That said ND could still invent some new duo, they don't have to necessarily continue with J&D.

@Areus Perhaps. But other than the remasters, have any new games with mascots sold well lately?

@naruball If a game like Ratchet and Clank can sell well enough to be "Insomniac's most successful game" at the time of it's release, I think there's at least a decent sized audience.

Then it's just a case of scaling your budget to match your audience, rather than trying to grow your audience to make your mascot platformer in to a mega blockbuster.

Jak and Daxter is a remnant of the Sony I used to look up to. Hopefully Naughty Dog can take a game off the grimdark bandwagon, awards and accolades be damned.

Factions and new IP. It would be fascinating to see them make a new platforms with the fidelity they're pushing, but honestly I didn't love Jak II or 3.

Only way we would get new entries into both Jak and Sly franchises is if they're outsourced.

I really feel people are trying to imply problems where none exist here, because they are butt-hurt about irrelevant stuff.

I mean, sure, they’d like to work on another J&D, that doesn’t mean they don’t like working on what they are, or even that they’d like to work on a J&D more, necessarily, which is what if think the author wants us to infer from the headline and article.

I could be wrong, if so I apologise, but it does seem to me that a few people at Pushsquare are getting in a bit of a tizzy recently and lashing out over nothing...

@Spanky
That's Game Awards nomination material for at least two categories, right there, if the 2019 edition is of any indication.

@get2sammyb
If I manage to buy a PSVita before Augustmageddon, I'm planning to snatch the Ratchet trilogy. I got mildly burned by the outsourced PSP spinoff Size Matters back in the day though. Do you have any suggestions for a late newcomer?

@get2sammyb With me I think I just preferred the natural look of J&D, y'know green grass etc compared to R&C's sci-fi. When it comes to cartoony games I feel like natural looks fit them more - Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Genshin Impact etc.

I do agree with @get2sammyb in that outside of the first game I didn't get the fuss over these characters and it's probably too close to Ratchet in gameplay style to really coexist. I'm very excited for the new R&C game and wouldn't mind seeing a new Sly Cooper too, that still has a lot of potential for me

As for the genre not being popular these days, well Mario definitely suggests otherwise (then again he's always been far more successful then the competition) but there's also a lot of buzz around Ratchet and Clank

@TheArt I get what you mean but wasn't it only the first that looked like that? The others seemed to veer into more Ratchet territory and even less colourful from what I remember

Currently replaying the trilogy on ps3. Really enjoy the characters, but sadly when it first released and even now the games just don't click with me as well as Ratchet and Clank and the Sly gang did.
Perhaps it's due to sudden shift in tone and difficulty.
Midway through Jak 2 atm and the constant back and forth of missions in the maze of haven city isn't fun.

I recently played through the Jak Collection on PS3 and only really found the first game enjoyable. Jak II and 3 were a complete shift in genre and tone and I didn't enjoy them at all. They became poor GTA clones and all the platforming and tropical charm of the first game was replaced with shooting and driving in dull apocalyptic environments.

If they do revisit this series I hope it's like the first game and not the sequels.

I played the first game and enjoyed it on ps2. However I don't think they will go back to the series, not at the moment anyway as we have ratchet and clank, sackboy and astrobot for exclusive platform games.

Bluepoint games to do a trilogy remaster

I need a new game in this series, probably won’t happen anytime soon unless it’s some mobile spin-off.

I rather see ND make new light hearted jax & daxter series rather than another super bleak games like tlou 2.

Im more a sly cooper and ratchet and clank.but jak and dexter is cool.word up son

I would rather have that than a remake of TLOU

@carlos82 Really... I think I played just one and if it was heading towards that direction - good thing they stopped. And then a star was born - Uncharted. Drake's Fortune was just a perfect blend of natural, a little bit of cartoony and realism. No wonder ND forgot J&D and haven't looked back since.

I've finally just completed J&D : Precursor Legacy on PS2 ...... i get there eventually.

I think bringing back the series would do great. There’s been a big resurgence in cartoon-adventure titles with hits like Odyssey, Crash, and a few successful indie titles like A Hat in Time. If Sony is willing to put a ton of money into Ratchet and Sackboy, I think Jak and Daxter should get another shot too.

@JJ2 Speak for yourself. There's a bunch of older Sony IPs in the vault that deserve a revival

Given i'm not a the last of us fan, yes, i would like to see what they would do with a modern jack & daxter.

I'll take the last of us remake with Abby as the lead over jak and daxter any day. Ratchet won that battle of the pointy lugholes. There's only room for one... (two lugholes).

A new Jak and Daxter? Sigh me the hell up!! And while they're at that (in my dream), we could use some Sly Cooper too.

First one was fun the second was a nightmare to control i dropped it im looking for the 3rd one on Ebay. I hope it controls a lot better.

@Loftimus Why Abby for me if they change then they can keep their game.

@TheFrenchiestFry Legend of Dragoon and Dark Cloud please.

@Flaming_Kaiser i can see it being remade in the vein of tlou2 with Abby getting her slice of the game. Otherwise why remake? Just remaster with new models.

@naruball When they come they definitely do sell well in the case of stuff like Crash N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited, the Mario 3D All Stars collection and smaller stuff like Ori & Cuphead, but it's just that there aren't a lot of them these days compared to the 90's and 2000's

Ratchet & Clank is probably going to do well when it comes out though, especially given the reception to the PS4 game

@naruball "Unfortunately, games like Jak & Daxter are not very popular any more. Sure, there are some loud fans, but they are not enough."

You mean third person narrative driven action adventure shooter platformers are not popular anymore? Has anyone told Mr. Drake? Or Insomniac? Or anyone at Sony that's been essentially copying the Jak 2 formula for 18 years?

@get2sammyb That's an unpopular gaming opinion I agree with. Of the Jak games, I've always thought the first one was ND's best game. They managed to do a better Rare than Rare. But the rest were mediocre and 2 was overrated due to presentation and "edginess" over content. Though that formula is also the formula they've built their empire on since. I'm not really a fan of ND overall, and it all started with that darned Jak 2 getting overrated for its presentation. Unfortunately Jak 1 was the best of the Jak games but also translates to the modern era the worst.

I'd love to see it come back, but I'd almost rather see it made by someone else. ND would try to make it too cinematic again rather than focusing on letting the gameplay be the center. Ratchet gets the balance right (so far.)

@RichNJ "Then it's just a case of scaling your budget to match your audience, rather than trying to grow your audience to make your mascot platformer in to a mega blockbuster."

Heresey! That's Laden/Tretton/House/Hirai era thinking. This is Ryan's Playstation. If you're not first, you're last! If it's not the biggest, it's not big enough! Waterworld or bust!!!

No brainer would it be better. I completed them on ps2 and have the hd trilogy, will be playing through them again soon.

Youth these days have “Balan Wonderland” to look forward to in the PS action/platformer genre...it’s just a shame they’ll never get to experience a game like The Precursors Legacy which despite not having the best graphics blew my mind when I was younger with it’s seamless areas & unique characters & then blew my mind again when I saw how different (& awesome) Jak 2 & 3 subsequently were!

I love Naughty Dog, I love Jak & Daxter, I love Uncharted, and I love The Last of Us.

I'd like to see another game from them in any of those series, but I'm not interested in Factions, and I'm not interested in another remake of the original Last of Us.

Tbh I would love a new J&D on PS5... sly too...

I wish it was working on a new Jak game as well, the PS2 games were all class. Even if Naughty Dog didn't make one, I reckon Insomniac could do a great job. I would much prefer a sequel instead of a remake though.

then what's stopping them? i don't understand. does jim ryan have a gun pointed at their heads saying: "you must work on last of us 3, last of us 1 remake and last of us online"? i will be losing more and more respect for sony high level management if it continues to overstep its boundaries and place illogical demands on its 1st party studios like it did with bend studio. heck, i'm not even interested in day's gone, but if bend wanted to make a sequel and got shot down for baseless reasons, that is bogus to me. they were passionate about the project and that is not something you can easily fabricate with just any project. the game sold 6m+ copies. for a new IP that is pretty good! a sequel would have been even more profitable for jim ryan because that is just how it works with game development in having the foundation in place already. as playstation fans, are we destined to nothing but sequels (of ps4 era games) for the ps5 generation from our favourite developers? it sure seems that way at this point in time, doesn't it?

I'm glad they aren't wasting time with this. No matter how interesting the gameplay is, I just don't like cartoonish mascot games.

Frankly, I think Naughty Dog needs to try moving out of their comfort zone a bit. A new I.P. where they can work on developing some newer and maybe more complex gameplay.

I loved TLoU and TLoU2, but to have another game with that oversimplified inventory system and somewhat limited move set I'm afraid might start to feel a little stale.

I love what they do, and they are one of the only teams left that seem to release their games in a very playable state. I'd like to see them challenge themselves with a new direction, though, like a Sci-Fi game that maybe wasn't on rails quite as much as their other stuff.

@get2sammyb

Oh man, Sly Cooper. 🦝 What a phenomenal series, really wish we would get a new entry. 🥺

The last of us does not need a remake.
Jak does

@Chryssy75 they should just farm out a jak reboot to insomniac. i don't think there is a better studio to handle the project. naughty dog is too serious and edgy now — they have lost their sense of imagination and playfulness over the years which insomniac has in spades.

@NEStalgia R.I.P., reading comprehension

@TheFrenchiestFry "When they come they definitely do sell well in the case of stuff like Crash N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited, the Mario 3D All Stars collection and smaller stuff like Ori & Cuphead, but it's just that there aren't a lot of them these days compared to the 90's and 2000's

Ratchet & Clank is probably going to do well when it comes out though, especially given the reception to the PS4 game"

Mario sells well no matter what. Had it been a similar new game released on Ps consoles, I have no doubt it would have done far from great. Just like Tearaway failed, despite being excellent.

Crash and Spyro sold well purely because of nostalgia. Crash 4 clearly showed that gamers won't give a new game a chance.

It's how things work. Fighting games used to be all the rage back in the day. Now even Street Fighter and Tekken struggle to sell well.

@somnambulance Not really. Developers make games that gamers want to buy. You can't seriously use the success of Mario as in indication of interest in mascot games. It's not how doing even basic research works.

Hence why Sony should get Bluepoint to do a Jak & Daxter Trilogy Remake, and see how well it does critically and commercially, if it does well enough, then there's really no reason NOT to greenlight a new Jak & Daxter game from Naughty Dog.

@Loftimus Make a expansion and call it something different then.

@naruball I don't know where you got the impression Tekken 7 did badly at all. It broke 2 million copies within 2 months of its release

SFV deservedly got the flack it did for being super content barren and lacking in the single player department at release. It took multiple years and seasons of characters and updates for it to get to where it should've been at launch

@Flaming_Kaiser it's only conjecture at this point. I wouldn't mind personally, as i like Abby as a character and her revenge was deserved. I'll still be playing it either way.

@NEStalgia @get2sammyb Re: J&D

A sequel to the first game and we pretend the next 3 never happened. Start the game w/ Daxter waking up, looking at Jak, and saying "I had this crazy dream Jak, and you could talk!!" Then Jak just shrugs and the game begins.

Same island, but 10x bigger, and similar characters, w/ more varied side quests and missions and challenges.

I'm watching my son play the Immortals Fenyx Rising Chinese skinned DLC now, and the character and world move and look like the HD version of Precursor Legacy. Not exactly of course, but the speed dash, double jump, edge climbing and grabbing, It's easy to see. And of course the almost cell shaded color scheme.

All the comments on here poo-poohing the idea, but 3D platforming games are out there. Hat in Time, the garbage Yooka-Laylee, the even worse Balan. But a good open world platformer w/ the J&D charm and game play. Seems like a sure winner. Though it has to be AAA, not fan made budget. There's a market. I suppose maybe not big enough, but so much potential. Sad really.

@rjejr Every PS fan ever will throw flame at me for saying this, but ND was never a good game designer. Ever. Good at putting together a polished product, good at making movies. Never good at game design. Crash was garbage (seriously, who designs a platformer you run AT the camera?!). Jak was a disaster that didn't even know where it wanted to go. Uncharted is uninspired but fun in spite of itself because it's a fun new Indiana Jones type adventure. TLoU is a great zombie movie in search of a video game, TLoU2 is....a teen drama disguised as a great zombie movie without zombies in search of a video game.

People endlessly praise ND games but it's always for the same reasons. Polish and presentation. Never the game design.

But there's that one exception.

Jak1 truly was one of the best collectathon platformers this side of Mario 64. And they did it on the lowly PS1. The one, and only one time they had the game design chops to match their technical skill. The gameplay and control was better than Banjo, but Banjo had the better presentation (an irony for ND.)

And then....ND went full Naughty Dog. Jak2 became that weird dark, edgy game with weird hit detection, a dystopia that wanted to be a serious cinematic realistic story but couldn't be. It opened with torture (now that I think about it, ND has a serious torture obsession since forever...TLoU2, Jak 2.....Crash counts as a torture device, right?)

An open ended sandbox collectathon platformer probably doesn't have a place in an AAA platformer today. But that's the game that showed their best abilities, I think. After that Jak2 was their first flash of the modern ND of cinematics over gameplay. Jak3 didn't know what it wanted to be at all. Jak4 was a racing game, which would be like making God of War 3 an RTS.

Talking Dax is ok though. He's annoying in a 90's cartoon way but at least he doesn't talk like a constipated Adam Jensen like Jak.

The Chinese skinned Fenyx is surprisingly huge and good for a DLC. Might be one of the best DLCs I've ever paid for. Though it's funny how it kind of works sometimes and not other times. The second half loses the immersion when Gong Gong is literally just Aries wearing the same clothing in the same landscape, and I wouldn't be half surprised if it was the same voice actor who's neither Chinese nor Greek. But yeah the DLC fully embraces the platforming aspects of the game to great effect while the main game tried to be Fenyx of War: The Breath of the Golden Isle. I wonder how well Fenyx performed. Ubi said they were happy with it, but that could mean anything. I'm sure Sony was "happy" with Knack 2, as well.

@NEStalgia "it on the lowly PS1"

PS1? It was a full blown 3D platformer, no way no how was there ever anything like that on PS1. Ok maybe Ty the Tasmian Tiger. And that Geko game. But J&D:TPL is 1 of the big 3 platformers on PS2 w/ SLy and R&C. Which is 1 fo ht main reaosn why PS2 w/ always be my favorite console, adn J&D my favgorite game. My only plat.

My son isn't up to the 2nd half og the DLc yet, and we never played the full game, so it won't be redudant to us. Figured hsort game first, like an rignal IP, than the full blown seuqel base game.

@rjejr Whoops, meant PS2 but somehow had PS1 in my head. I even have the original two.....2 put me off enough I didn't buy 3 until the remasters.

Ever play Daxter on PSP where Dax is an exterminator? Weird game but still way better than 3 and 4. Better than 2 IMO. Not made by ND. Only ND could turn an open world platformer into an on rails cinematic action adventure with shooting and torture.

I hadn't thought about Fenix borrowing from collect a thon patients what with the clear botw inspiration bit now that you mention it, yeah.

Haha, well, the Fenyx DLC is moreso meant as post game. Dlx1 is a literal epilogue with high challenge vaults. Dlc2 can easily be a mini stand alone game, but it's a little awkward because it starts you with nearly all the abilities at the start and the few vaults/heaven sections are a test of mastery of the controls. Combat ramps up to high difficulty much faster (though I'm playing the dlc on hard because the combat actually is good, but normal can be kind of mashy.). So going to the main game is going to feel a lot more regressive doing it second, though way bigger.

I'm playing on xsx, so there's usually less completionists there than ps, but there's only 6 heaven vaults or so, and 2 are mandatory...I got 2 Rare Achievements... One was completing the second half character story with like 2% getting the achievement, and one for doing all the heaven vaults with something like 0.83% of players completing it. Those vaults are incredibly difficult in terms of throwing all the controls for all the moves at you simultaneously while mid air, but it's not dark souls. I have no idea how so few got that.

@NEStalgia My son is playing the 2nd DLC - not the first, he's smart enough to not do "challenges" until after the main game - on "nightmare" mode, the 1 above hard b/c he's 16, and so far he's doing fairly well. A couple of deaths, mostly from fall damage. 😂 Took 2 attempts to beat the boss after you put the dragon pieces in the pond. And the heaven areas are a bit touch and go but he's usually fine.

I didn't mean to imply I:FR was a collectathon, just that the character kind of looked and platformed like Jak. Though w/ all the mushrooms, peaches, jade and agate in that DLC it might well as be. 🤷‍♂️

I do expect the base game will drag a bit BotW style, but the plan was to watch him play this, then maybe not watch him play the rest, he can do it on his own time, not family time. Unless he waits for his brother to get back from college in 4 weeks and he wants to watch, then it becomes family time again.

Yes, my family is like a sitcom, we do dinner together at 6:45 and family time from 8-10.

RE: J&D. So I had to go pick my son up at FIRST Robotics mid reply last night - when he texts we go - so that was only like half my thoughts on the matter. So anyway. My wife has always watched me game, and even she said, upon playing Jak 2 - this isn't Jak & Daxter, it's Grand Theft Auto. Probably that first mission when you have to blow up 5 enemy ships but it took 100 attempts to get past 3. Not to be confused w/ shoot 100 flying guys and it took 100 attempts to get past 97. 😝 (18 years ago, those 2 missions have scarred me for life) And Jak 3 we have always just called Jak 2 1/2 b/c it's basically just the 2nd half of Jak 2. Probably be DLC today. Nobody talks about Jak X in my house, it's verboten.

I don't think I ever played Daxter. I played Lost Frontier for an hour and decided that was enough of that. So you are right, it's a horrible series, only 1 good game, but that 1 good game is still my favorite game of all time, so I don't look at it like a series, I look at it like the Matrix. Or Rocky. Or Star Wars. There is only 1. And I'd really like a proper sequel to that 1 game.

I played Mario 64 after Jak 1. Mario 64 is garbage. All 64 games look like garbage. I don't understand the N64 or that Mario game. Had I played Mario 64 before several other 3D platformers maybe, but it was on the N64. Jak was on the PS2 but Spyro was on the PS1 and that original trilogy are still the best Spyro games. You are also correct about Crash. Why would anybody make a 2D platformer where you run into the screen? Well Crash is basically a 2D platformer pretending to be a 3D platformer, like Super Mario 3D World, so I don't care. SM3DW only worked as THE BEST multiplayer Mario game. Of that I have no doubt. And I haven't even played the "DX", b/c once was enough. Might be the last game my family of 4 played. (AC:aF doesn't count, you don't play it, you watch it play itself) I don't think we've had 4 controllers on any system since Wii U. 4 Joycon don't count, that's 4 halves. 😝

So that's my very limited and very specific thoughts on platforming games. The only other games I play are JRPG, and specially JRPG, not western JRPG, and not the JPRG that are too anime or too dark or have anything at all to do w/ kid sin high school. Basically just FF and DQ fantasy.

@Loftimus Im a big fan of Ellie and lets be honest she had a hard life to i think in this there are no winners. And it shows that revenge does not always work.

@rjejr Heh, I tend to avoid Nightmare modes outside classic Doom/Quake. Usually those modes, instead of "more challenging" just become "more unfair" like a crazy mod that really breaks the balancing systems just because. 16 year olds must feel 1337.... The boss after the pond was kinda unfair even on hard. Used a lot of potions, it's a cyclops that doesn't play by the normal cyclops rules and you can get comboed to death pretty easily. That's one moment I don't see on nightmare.

It kind of is a collect-a-thon though. I just didn't think about it before. Jak 1 orbs, ambrosia, really the same thing. It's more a direct collect-a-thon than BotW. That's not a bad thing. The comedy/writing in the main game is far better than the DLC though. DLC's not bad, especially the second half, but there's no replacement for the dysfunctional inbred family comedy of the main game.

LOL, I hear you on the "100 tries to do x things" of that era. And yeah, it was so obviously a GTA "inspired" shift in the game. I guess the Sony obsession with GTA runs deeper than I thought. I still blame Jak 2 for ruining Playstation. TLoU sealed the deal, but Jak 2 started it. Either way, Naughty Dog ruined Playstation, it just took them a decade to finish the job.

Same for me with Matrix and Jak. Only the first one counts. SW....there's 2. 1 and 3. 2's the trailer for 3. (or is that 4 and 6? I can't do LucasMath. It's like Sakaguchi Math.)

Unfortunately nobody cares about Jak 1 and the fan obsession is with 2. People love the "naughty dog treatment" of games. I really really hate how the whole PS identity has become the ND identity. If there was one thing that would make me actively avoid a console it would be "it's for playing Naughty Dog games" or "it's owned by Google." Jak 1 and Uncharted 4 are the only times I can say "I don't always hate ND" Not a knock on their technical know-how. They're one of the best, on a technical level. But I just can't stand what they do with the actual games. Uncharted 3 was kinda fun too, I'll give them that one. Yet again, that's the one all the "fans" seem to like least...

Haha, I also agree on the N64. I played the demo stands and thought Mario 64 was amazing, but that was the only game I thought seemed amazing on it, and everything looked horrible, especially come from the sprite era. Ocarina and Banjo came out fantastic in hind-sight. The thrill of it was it was the first. At the time there was nothing remotely like it at all, even on PC. A fully realized 3D world seemed impossible, unimaginable, we'd never even dreamed about it, but there it was. Of course now it seems pretty lame. And I still think Jak 1 was better than Mario 64 and Banjo, but not as much charm as the latter.

There's only two kinds of JRPGs. Ones about kids in high school, and ones about kids in high school that don't know they're kids in high school because they have amnesia. There are no other genres. I play the WPRGs just as much, myself. I started there, I guess, WRPG game first, it all started with D&D pen and paper games. I play everything. Except naughty dog games. Except Jak 1.

@NEStalgia "Used a lot of potions, it's a cyclops that doesn't play by the normal cyclops rules and you can get comboed to death pretty easily. That's one moment I don't see on nightmare."

Well having never fought the Cyclops he had no pattern to be thrown off of. He had 12 health segments, ice circle was 4 sections, a hit was 8. So he basically kept using his 52 peaches. Used 2 "attack up" potions. Kind of defeats the purpose of playing "nightmare mode" if you ask me, but I'm not about to tell my own kid that. Died once, then he just kept running through his legs, hitting him from behind w/ the big axe down, did like 520 damage.

"SW....there's 2. 1 and 3. 2's the trailer for 3. (or is that 4 and 6? I can't do LucasMath. It's like Sakaguchi Math.)"

I'd say 4, which is still just "Star Wars" to me, no subtitle, and 3.9, Rogue One. Which I just call Rogue One. It's the equivalent of the FFXV movie before playing the game. I don't even mind the rest, 7 is just 4 remastered, but there's only 1 STAR WARS.

Uncharted games: Uncharted 2 (the first and still best interactive movie, it's barely a game, and it's one of my all time favorites) then U4, Lost Legacy, U3 and then if we must the first. Never played the handheld. Uncharted 1 is the Mario64 of the PS3 generation. Looked great, but a bullet sponge meandering game. Really, it's so bad I'm surprised it even got a sequel.

All games on Sony consoles are ND games. I kind of see that as being a given. Like they're synonymous. Fortunately for me I like that type of game. I also don't play 1st person games so there's almost no reason for me to get an Xbox. And my PCs are never good enough, I'm into cheap last gen tech. Which has spared me Cyberpunk nonsense. The first person part, not the cheap PC part.

@Flaming_Kaiser i'm a fan of Ellie too! In the end Abby had more to lose than Ellie and she did lose it all. I was "happy" with the outcome and hope their paths cross again.

@rjejr Haha, well, I can bandage my pride a little now, attack up potions. Pfft, cheater. I can honestly say I have not used a single attack or defense up potion, only health/stamina, through either the base game or DLC once. Because I'm a 1337 gamer too k001 for them? No. Because I forget they exist at all times except when I'm at the potion table and see I don't need to craft more except when I increase my pouch size. That's one thing I'll say for the first DLC. There aren't too many battle arenas since it's all challenge vaults, but where there are: there are no potions. At all. You ace it through perfect dodges or you just stay there. I was clever near the end of one of them and flew past this central vault area where miniboss monsters were after you complete each "section." But you had to fight them all to move forward. And if you skipped them when passing between sections, apparently they spawn anyway and you have to fight them all at once. Oops.

SW: I stopped counting after 6. Or 3. (3x2)-3...whatever.

Uncharted 2, for some reason everyone loves that one and raved about how great it was. I never saw it. 1 was a cool concept at first, but quickly became repetitive, then didn't know where it was going, then became a zombie shooter like it was just a TLoU prototype demo. 2 gets praised forever.....like you said, it was barely a game. You'd walk around, do a few small climbing puzzles, then play an arena defense minigame where you stand in one spot and shoot repeating waves. It felt like one of those Mad Dog McCree arcade shooters or something. The locales were cool, the environments were fantastic, and Claudia Black would make E.T. on the 2600 awesome, but the game was horrid. Nobody likes 3. I thought it was the best of the first 3. The gameplay finally sucked less and the environments were still cool, plus it still had Claudia. 2 stopped being a bullet sponge but picked up becoming an endless horde mode.

I don't know when it happened that ND and Sony are synonymous. It didn't used to be, and it angers me daily. I liked PS1. I liked PS2. I even liked PS3. It wasn't all ND all the time yet at that point. But now it is. Other than "horror" as a general concept, if there's any one genre of games I would say I simply don't get interested or hyped for it would be "Naughty Dog type games" - which drives me crazy now that Sony=ND. Every time people talk about the amazing exclusives I look and think "But do they have any good games?" I don't hate them, but they get shoved on the backlog for "someday when I run out of games I really want to play." I sure as heck wouldn't buy a console to play them specifically. Ratchet, I would. HzD, I wouldn't buy a console for it, but it's somewhat interesting if I have it already. Persona I'll buy 3 consoles for it. Monyehatted FF16.....if I must. But it's weird to me. Being a PS fan wasn't about that kind of game before, it was about all kinds of experimental stuff that nobody else offered and thinks like Jak 1 that refined existing genres. At some point PS became about playing Jak2 forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, reskinned as different things, now with 100% more drama!

I keep hoping they'll branch out again someday. Their diversity was their biggest strength. Now it's a single-genre platform in a worse way than when Xbox was all just online shooters a decade ago.

@Loftimus Im at team Ellie so i hope she gets her but thats me. 🤪

I found the ending from part 1 great and im gonna sound weird but i would not have a problem if this was the ending of the game. She deserved her good ending with Joel please no spoilers i have not finished the game.

@Flaming_Kaiser i'm just saying there is room in my heart for both of them.

@NEStalgia "Monyehatted"

I googled that, still not sure what you meant. 🤷‍♂️
FFXVI - every time I see it I just think it's more FFXV DLC. Somebody at Squenix forgot that 1 of the "Fs" in FF stands for "fantasy". Ok, yeah, sure, goth boys in black are kind of fantasy, but what happened to color? Where's my Kimahri Ronso party member? Auron? Wakka? You know, people who aren't in a k-pop band. 😝 In fairness my wife just saw the trailer for the first time and she liked it. Still too dark for me.

Certainly will not be watching my kid play challenge mode. And if I ever decide to play the base game and not watch him play it, I won't be doing challenge mode either. Every day it's a challenge to remember what happened yesterday, that's enough for me.

Been awhile since I played U2 but I don't remember it like that. I remember playing 1 on "easy" and getting killed at every turn, then 2 on "normal" and it was fine. Maybe I just got better? I didn't like 3 as much b/c the first half of the game was back story back in time, and I hate that. 2nd half, once she picks you up at the airport, is good. I keep hoping they'll put out a "complete" chronological Uncharted game, like Godfather 1 & sliced into 1, b/c I think it would work better that way. Plus then he has a brother before game 4. And then I can get all of the young Nathan London stuff first game out of the way, so basically a bad first half, then play the good parts of 2, 3 4 and LL. Would be hard for them to do I'm sure, but I'd play it all the way through.

"Every time people talk about the amazing exclusives I look and think "But do they have any good games?""

That's how I feel about Nintendo now. They merged their handheld and home software developers. They merged their handheld and home consoles into Switch. Then Switch gets a bunch of Wii U and handheld ports (see Miitopia.) What are their devs doing? Splatoon 3 in 2022? Who asked for that? I know Switch gets a lot of games - I'm the only person on Earth not playing Monster Hunter Rise (made by Capcom) - and New! Pokemon Snap! (Bandai Namco) $60 on rails photo mode is coming - but I'm not excited. It's been 4 years since Super Mario Odyssey, 8 years since Mario Kart 8. Ports, ports, ports, where are the new NINTNEDO developed games?!?!? Mario Golf? whoppee? At this point I don't even care if they are all "BotW", just make some new games. And no, not Covid, screw that. Everybody else is still releasing games.

@rjejr

Moneyhatting. Holding ones hat out to beg for and receive money. Squeenix and Capcom seem to be recurring suspects, though we tend to refer to "moneyhatting" in reverse in gaming. Less the act of begging for money, and more the act of publishers like Sony requesting to shove money into a hat for exclusivity. See also: FFVIIR, FFXVI, SFV, Other games containing an upper case "V".

FFXV has lots of fantasy. Cindy, Aranea, Cor, Gladio, Iris, Ignis....tons of fantasy for everyone. O...wait...you didn't mean that kind of fantasy? Gotta be more specific. Squeenix misunderstood. I quadruple face-palmed the first time they showed the XV trailer with Cindy bending over the car....really?

Seriously, though, XV was a step up from XIII and Girl Cloud in a way. Where that was all tech and no fantasy, XV at least did the interesting thing of including a medieval society that advanced into the modern era, but still retained medieval aspects. Swords and knights, and you could kind of see as you went to the tombs what the world 1000 years before it must have been as a traditional FF environment. Kind of clever. But weirdly put together. I loved the light-heartedness through most of it, even if it' a classic FF tragedy by the end.

XVI worries me. At first it was cool being back to a pure medieval game. But the more I think of the trailer and hear about it, it's very very very Game of Thrones/Witcher dark-fantasy for Western audiences kind of junk. Because Westerners only love evil and blood. Add to that it's being directed by the DMC director....just....why? And how did he end up at Squeenix? FF with a DMC action-game battle system and a dark fantasy setting just feels weird. Maybe it'll be better in practice.

The challenge vaults are kind of cool. Most of it is challenge puzzles and moves up the "botw shrine" level simple puzzles to "proper zelda level" puzzles that are more multi-level. There's a few hard platform challenge areas and battle areas, but the meat and potatoes of it is bigger, badder puzzles than the main game. Also if you collect all the collectables there's a very cool bonus vault that's a collection of tributes to other games (both video and carnival.)

Maybe they can splice the Uncharteds together for you in the inevitable PS5 or PS6 or PS7 remakes?

Yeah, I'm kind of at a low point on both Sony and Nintendo right now. My assumption on Nitnendo is either A: They're waiting for Switch Pro to soft re-launch, or B: They're coasting the rest of Switch on 3rd party money and launching their own games to launch the next hardware after which they'll coast again for 5 years.

For me right now, Nintendo's not about Nintendo games because they don't make many. And Sony's not about Sony games because they no longer make many I like a lot. Ratchet I'm hyped for. But not so much the rest of the known upcoming 1st party games. The only other two that interest me are indies they're publishing, and I don't even normally like indie games. Everything else I just buy on XB because that's the only platform with a roadmap committed to not screwing me over for buying there.