Mediocre Platformer
Here's the thing about platformers: If you can't trust the jump, you don't have a game.
Jak & Daxter has terrible jumping for what is meant to be a top-tier 3D mascot platformer. The timing on the double jump is so incredibly specific and odd-feeling that even in the final hours the most basic of jumps were harrowing. Just about every jump in the game is placed to require a double jump, and the execution of this double jump feels arbitrary, leading to many, many deaths when the second jump simply does not happen. What's more, it's not a satisfying jump when it does play out correctly. There is very little forward momentum, resulting in a ton of effort expended to cover gaps that look and feel tiny. There is an inadequate level of hang-time in the jump, making it feel unwieldy. There is a rolling long jump that could have mitigated some of the issues, since it does have a decent level of momentum attached to it, but it also feels very rigid. Jumping out of a roll can also be tricky to time, especially near the edge of a platform since there's zero leniency once you've left solid footing and you're likely to roll to your death.
Another major factor in producing a 3D platformer is the camera. Unfortunately Jak drops the ball here, too. At the best of times, the camera is slow and sluggish and with no options to adjust the sensitivity. Adjusting the camera's vertical axis is useless, acting as a sliding scale between the game's default mid-level zoom and an extreme closeup of the top of Jak's head. The only way to scan the environment up and down is to go to first person mode, which itself is a hassle since it initially zooms into a first-person view of what the third person camera was looking at instead of what Jak is looking at, which is how every 3D platformer has done it since Super Mario 64 at least. This is a bit difficult to explain, but what it comes down to is: If you are backed into a corner or if you're in an area with a fixed camera position, such as a side-on view, and you want to scan the parts of the environment you're not currently seeing, you have to toggle first person mode to get a nice zoomed-in view of a wall and then slooooowly rotate your viewpoint 180 degrees.
Furthermore, the third person camera refuses to pass through any object, even in wide-open spaces. There were many instances where the camera simply would not rotate in the direction I wanted it to until I gave up and went the other direction, sloooowly turning the camera 350 degrees right in order to get a better view of an area 10 degrees to my left. Sometimes the camera just won't cooperate at all, and the many deaths I racked up due to mandatory blind jumps can attest to that fact. I also died plenty to jumps that failed to display their three-dimensional depth properly.
So the two major pillars of a 3D platformer are far less of what they need to be: controls (namely jumping) and camera. That's not to say I got zero enjoyment out of Jak & Daxter. The main task of Collecting The Things was, while not what I'd call fun even when it wasn't being brought down by the game's more fundamental issues, properly soothing. The tasks required to Collect The Things are uneven and under-tested, specifically the ones with time limits attached to them. The time limits on these challenges are almost uniformly unforgiving and if I didn't understand it as an oversight I'd be convinced that Naughty Dog's intentions were to make children cry.
In short, despite my overwhelming negativity, Jak & Poochy isn't the worst the mascot platformer has to offer. It's no Bubsy 3D, but it is incredibly mediocre even by the standards of the Nintendo 64. As a premiere game on a much more advanced system, Jak counts as a failure. Well, okay, the kind of failure that spawns two popular sequels and an HD revival.