These games didn’t kill your family, please stop crying about them
As they do every month, Sony announced the games coming to Playstation Plus in each of the services three tiers. Only the premium tier interests me as that’s the rereleases of all the old stuff. Consider my surprise when I saw Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier in the offerings for March. So far the offerings have either been first party or more obscure third party titles of the era. While Sony do own Jak and Daxter, the Lost Frontier was handled by High Moon Studios. The announcement got me excited – I know the community thinks the game is the worst of the series but it’s one of the two titles I hadn’t yet played – the other being Daxter. The Jak and Daxter fandom have been begging for acknowledgement from Sony, and while this wasn’t a new game, it was something right?
Going off of the subreddit, you’d think Sony had taken Jak out back and shot him. The reaction to this announcement has been overwhelmingly negative (though there was some hopefuls in there) saying that people wanted Daxter instead, this game is trash etc. I was intending to play it anyways, and now I had been given an easy access to it.
I played it, and you know what? I actually quite liked it. Catch the full review up tomorrow!
But even if I didn’t , the extreme reactions from the fanbase is ridiculous. These games were first enjoyed by people when they were children, and they’ve grown up holding onto these childish views. Nothing boils my piss more than seeing “We don’t talk about that game” “Oh that Game isn’t canon” (A separate problem for another day) or “Man that game is AWFUL”, especially when the game in question is merely just not as good as those came before it. I shouldn’t get so wound up about hyperbole, but I do. The issue isn’t exclusive to just the Jak and Daxter fandom, it spreads to more platforming series and even beyond.
The next one that comes to mind is 20NN’s Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time by Sanzaru Games, who took over the series from Sucker Punch who was working on Infamous. I’ve already used the “Taken out back” expression, but the Sly fandom’s view of Thieves in Time eclipses even that. The Jak community thinks TLF is just a bit crap, Thieves in Time broke the discs of the original trilogy and deleted the memories of the fans – or so they would have you believe.
The game isn’t perfect by any means but the biggest point of contention – Penelope’s switching sides – is so overblown by the community its unreal. I can only imagine it’s because some of the older fans had years to let their imaginations run wild between Sly 3 and 4 but face it – Penelope was a side character and this was the most interesting thing they could have done with her.
My personal experience with this kind of community backlash comes from both Spyro and Crash. Following on from their mediocre 4th game and different 5th game (Enter the Dragonfly/Wrath of Cortex and A Heroes Tail/Twinsanity) both series went from strict platformers to more brawling like action platformers with combat, the Spyro games also being a reboot with more mature tone. As a kid, I didn’t mind at all – as an adult, I still don’t mind at all. Community reaction less so.
Don’t even get me started on Rayman with the introduction of the Rabbids…
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This article was started in March, but I didn’t get around to playing TLF until now in July. I did consider scrapping it because the very next month saw the release of Daxter. Yet history repeats and the announcement of Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters was met with similar (though I dare say not quite as intense) vitriol. I checked out of that pretty quickly.
I’m not sure what causes such a fuss when it comes to these games. I suppose not many franchises get to be as long running as some of the ones I’ve mentioned. Many kids grew up with these series and developed, for lack of better phrase, parasocial relationships with them. Any change is an affront to a series they love and by extension themselves. Some of these fans may also have just not matured since those early days, not seeing the forest for the trees. This is still the same franchise you love, still waters grow stagnant.
Perhaps more succinctly, These games didn’t kill your family, please stop crying about them.
