Jak and Daxter Collection

Jak and Daxter Collection is a 2012 compilation prepared for PlayStation 3 in HD resolution by Mass Media Inc. It contains the first three entries in Naughty Dog's platformer series – Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, and Jak 3 – originally released on PlayStation 2 between 2001 and 2004, before the studio became famous for the Uncharted series and later The Last of Us.

The collection preserves the gameplay and content of the originals, that is, the gradual transformation of the series from the fairy-tale platforming adventure of the first entry, set in a colorful world with no loading screens between areas, to the noticeably darker and more action-oriented style with more open environments, vehicles, weapons, and an urban dystopia in the second and third entries. The graphics were reworked to a higher resolution, textures were smoothed out, and the games run more smoothly on modern hardware, but the level design, story, and controls themselves were not changed and remain faithful to the original PlayStation 2-era form, including the occasional technical quirks that the remastered versions never fully resolved.

For Naughty Dog fans, this is a chance to experience the studio's development before its later successes, and to observe how its storytelling and level design style gradually took shape, which the studio later fully developed in its later series. At the same time, it's a convenient way to play the entire trilogy without an old console and the original discs, albeit without any major technical improvements beyond resolution and frame rate.

Why play: For a convenient return to the classic Jak and Daxter trilogy in a cleaner HD version.