Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier Hands-On

Developer High Impact Games has made a name for itself by successfully bringing the Ratchet and Clank series to the PSP. Now the company has turned its attention to another classic PlayStation 2 duo. We had a chance to get our hands on a few levels in Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier, the latest portable adventure for these venerable stars.

Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier plays a lot more like the original game in the franchise, The Precursory Legacy, than its sprawling sequels. The emphasis is on solving jumping problems rather than fighting enemies, although there are still baddies populating the world. The first level that we played took place underground, where steaming lava pits made for a rather unpleasant atmosphere.

Jak has a couple of eco-fueled moves that let him perform superhuman feats. When standing on a gas vent, he can use his rocket jump to reach higher platforms. There are also rock piles in strategically placed sections. When standing on top of them, you can use your eco-construct move, which causes platforms to rise out of the ocean, creating a safe passage for Jak. You select these different powers by cycling through them with the D pad, which can be clunky during action sequences, but works well enough when enemies aren't swarming.

The combat is very limited in the lava level, but there are a few times in which you'll have to get your hands dirty. You can fire at foes with your gun, which is easy enough to do but lacks impact. It takes an awful of ammo to make a lava beast die. You can also pull off a dash charge or spinning roundhouse, which can take out more than one enemy at once. Combat is clearly not the emphasis of The Lost Frontier, given that most of the lava level had us climbing up tall platforms and swinging on rails.

The other level that we checked out had you flying around in a fancy aircraft. It wasn't as fancy as the gargantuan one that we had to take down, though. Here, we had machine guns and powerful missile launchers, and it was easy enough to target the weak points and blow it up. By tapping the D pad, we could pull off a fancy loop-the-loop, which made it fun to evade flying enemies.

The Lost Frontier is scheduled to come out later this year for both the PSP and PS2.