In many ways, the Jak and Daxter series serves as a chronicle of the declining platformer. Naughty Dog's PlayStation 2 trilogy starts off with an innocent collect-a-thon about a boy and his furry friend saving the world, but quickly shifts to a darker tone with an industrial setting, plenty of gunplay and an over-world that shows a much stronger likeness to Grand Theft Auto than the Precursor Legacy. The grim, later Jak games relegated most of their platforming to isolated tombs, ruins and ancient temples, signifying the genre becoming something of a relic.
As far as this HD upgrade for PS3 goes, it's a solid conversion with virtually no new content aside from trophies and 3D support. For the most part, developer Mass Media Inc's reverence for Naughty Dog's originals works, but it would have been nice for them to add an option for subtitles in the first Jak and Daxter, or implement separate controls for first- and third-person aiming, as what's inverted in one perspective won't be in another. Regardless of the lack of bells and whistles, remastering these games in 720p is still a significant visual upgrade of three of the most interesting platformers of the 21st century.
Of all the games in this collection, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy shows its age the most - not just in terms of visuals (though its blocky character models do that), but in its design. This humble origin story hails from the days when platforming protagonists were expected to collect doodads and little else. They certainly didn't talk, and Jak instead expresses himself through dance, as was customary for the time.
Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-16-the-jak-and-daxter-trilogy-review
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