On a technical level, Jak 3 is impressive. The animation is fluid and detailed - you can clearly see Daxter fly into Jak's hand during a spin attack and scramble back up his arm afterwards. Apart from the initial boot-up, there aren't any load times to speak of. The game juggles varying gameplay scenarios, cutscenes and a roaming landscape with nary a hiccup, somehow managing a relatively consistent framerate in the process. It's one of those things you take for granted, that you overlook until you play a game with load times and realize how much you didn't miss them.

For all it's technical wizardry, a game is only as good as its gameplay, and that portion of Jak 3 just doesn't measure up. Within the first hour, you'll find yourself platforming, competing in three races (two competitive, one checkpoint), hunting down Metal Heads in a fashion eerily similar to Twisted Metal, rodent hunting and even participating in a rhythm-esque mini-game. As you can see, there's a lot of variation, and that's where the problem emerges. Jak 3 suffers from an identity crisis in that it can't decide what it wants to be. A platformer? Another Grand Theft Auto clone? Twisted Metal 7? While variation is nice, there's something wrong when you're playing through another mediocre mini-game just to get to the good stuff.

That good stuff, by the way, would be the platforming segments. Even then, the focus on gunplay and the lack of strafing and aiming controls is frustrating, especially when compared to the Ratchet & Clank series. Apart from that, it's your standard platformer. Sure, Jak has Dark and Light powers, but they're required so sparingly that their existence fades into the back of your mind. Should you become lost or unaware of what to do next, the map indicates exactly where you need to be.

Jak himself is quite the angry character. It's understandable, what with all he's been through, but his "Holier Than Thou" attitude can be aggravating. Yes, it's nitpicking, but I shouldn't have an issue almost every time the main character opens his mouth.

Simply put, Jak 3 makes me sleepy. I'm not joking either, there were times when I had to take a break from the game as I was falling asleep in front of my television, and these were days when I was well-rested. That's not to say it's a bad game, but there's a definite "oh yea, I've done this before and it was better then" vibe that permeates the title. It feels as if they mixed Grand Theft Auto and Ratchet & Clank, amputated everything that made those games memorable, infused the main character with generic angst and pushed it out the door. Fans of the series will want to play through and see how this conclusion unfolds, but that's about it.