So far, our quest to save the land from the evil sages Gol and Maia has been slightly irritating at best difficulty-wise. I think the developers took the hint and decided to bog out the last two-thirds of the game with levels that infallibly contort any sense of coherent navigation. To be fair, those levels started to rear their ugly heads as early as the first hub world with the befuddling Forbidden Jungle and the abstract Misty Isle, but if you thought those levels were prime offenders, you have yet to experience some of the levels in the late game.

Case in point, welcome to Boggy Swamp, or as I like to call it, 'The Mudhole Maze.'

If you like swamp levels, you don't exist. The only positive marsh scenario I've ever witnessed in a game was in Banjo-Kazooie with Bubblegloop Swamp, and even then it had its share of painful memories, but the Mudhole Maze is like the tough parts of Bubblegloop Swamp on speed. You can't set foot in the ankle-deep creek water without getting damaged, the place is swarming with rat hives and there's at least one ambush sequence crammed into a miniature area that would have otherwise served no purpose at all. As you can see in the picture above, there are yellow Eco clusters scattered throughout the level - in fact, this dump is actually the first area that they're introduced - but it only helps to mitigate the issue of the respawning rats just a little bit. And for added fun, let's just throw in several hundred explosive Dark Eco crates in the cramped tunnels for no other reason than to slow you down even more. It's truly the perfect recipe for disaster.

There is one, count it, ONE saving grace to this level: You finally get to ride in a vehicle that doesn't suck dongs for a change. Which one is it?

Fun fact, this avian fellow's actual scientific name is 'flut flut.' Hilarious. I'm guessing one flut wasn't enough?

While the flut flut does not make you immune to player damage, it grants you enhanced agility and a higher jump length so you can get up to ledges you previously couldn't. He has a barge attack on the ground, and if you jump in the air and press square, you'll do a powerful diving headbutt. This bird is so awesome that it pains me when I'm reminded that I can only control him in this small area of the swamp and not ride on it throughout the whole level like Yoshi in Super Mario World. Everything seems all fine and dandy...

...well, until you run into Billy Bob Cletus sittin' outside his shack. Then you'll start to hate everything all over again.

He's in a sore spot because his pet hiphog named Farley was chased away by some Lurker rats. He's been trying to set up some of his favorite snacks to lure him back, but the rats keep getting to them first. This is where you come in, and what better way to do so than participate in a rat shooting gallery? Ladies and gentlemen, once again, it's...

I bet you went throughout the entire level so far without realizing that you could aim your shots in first person mode with the scope, am I right? Well, that's exactly what this minigame has you do. You're given an infinite supply of yellow Eco to shoot, but the rats keep coming in large numbers and the snacks are spaced out just far enough that they escape the peripheral view of your scope, which means a rat could swoop down and eat one of the snacks and you wouldn't even know it unless you're paranoid and constantly check back and forth. To make matters worse, the yellow Eco projectiles are incredibly slow moving, which means you'll have to lead most of your targets since they weave left and right. Jak and Daxter is on an ugly streak so far with minigames; it remains to be seen if there are any more that will make up for it.

Aside from the fact that four of this level's power cells rest on the same damn objective, there isn't much else to discuss about Boggy Swamp. It's a rather tepid and somewhat bothersome romp at most, but hey, look at the bright side, it could have been the Precursor Basin.

Uuuugh, the Precursor Basin. It's bad enough that we have the transition Zoomer levels going from hub to hub, why on earth did we need a level dedicated to the goddamn thing?

To torture me is the answer, and boy oh boy, does the Precursor Basin deliver. Driving a land speeder with the handling of a hydroplaning Ferrari around an sacred, obstacle-laden field dotted with explosives while attempting to complete irritating chase objectives? Sounds like my kind of party! Oh, and no vehicle level is complete without a section where you go through rings, so let's put two of them in there just for good measure! Fortunately, this Zoomer level is unique in that it serves as an open-ended level instead of a timed trench run like the Fire Canyon, so you can at least attempt to salvage whatever you can from the Basin at your own pace and don't have to worry about slipping up and leaving a Precursor Orb behind anywhere.

To give you some insight as to how finicky it is to complete objectives in this level, I'll throw up some examples. Outside the level, an environmental researcher is worried about the safety of a group of Lightning Moles that have somehow ended up on the surface when the Lurkers moved in. Since they're blind, they can't see where the hole back underground is, and since this objective is scripted in a certain way, they can't just dig another fuckin' hole, so your job is to herd them back in by driving behind them and guiding them to the hole. It's way easier said than done, since they have a nasty habit of wandering off to the right of the Zoomer when you approach them, and as I said before, the turning isn't very tight.

Sadly, just because this level isn't a straight line doesn't mean that Naughty Dog didn't somehow find a way to shoe in another racing segment. One of the residents of Rock Village, pictured on the right, apparently bet his pants that the resident guardian of the village could defeat General Klaww in a one-on-one duel, and he lost (go figure, Klaww is like 2 fuckin' stories tall and the guard didn't have any weapons, what a retarded bet), so now he's wearing a goddamn barrel over his nether region. Apart from simply giving him Precursor Orbs in exchange for another power cell, he also apparently placed another bet (jeez this guy has issues, you'd think he would've learned by now) that someone can beat the record time at the course in the Precursor Basin, and slashing the record earns you another power cell. The course itself isn't too difficult, but you can't afford to run into anything or stall for too long. If your momentum dissipates for even half a second, you'll fluke the attempt and have to start all over.

If chasing flying lurkers around and herding small animals doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then at least you can always try the weed killer challenge. Yep, saving the world. By killing weeds. Ooh boy, doesn't get any more exciting than that. The funny thing is this challenge isn't easy either because the weeds keep respawning and the only way to get rid of them is to drive over them when your vehicle is charged with green Eco, which means you have to go back and forth for about six or seven minutes, refueling and driving over the same areas over and over again. I can't believe this game somehow managed to take a monotonous chore like weed killing and make it look so hard compared to real life.

There's nothing really else to say about the Precursor Basin, honestly. There's Lurkers you have to chase around and bump into, there's a power cell floating in midair in front of a cliff with no other catch to it than jumping to get it, and there are the ring challenges, which definitely overstay their welcome as they each last longer than 3-4 minutes. It may just be my bias towards not being a fan of vehicle levels, but I wasn't particularly enthralled by this stage as a kid and it still doesn't please me to have to replay it in the modern day.

I think I've had enough writing for one session. I know I promised I'd cover the rest of the second hub world, and I'll alter that promise right now so that we can get to the Lost Precursor City and the boss fight against General Klaww in the next edition. Thankfully, the Lost Precursor City is one of my favorite levels not just in this game, but of all time, so if the doom and gloom of this post brought you down I promise that the next one will be much more positive.

I'm MisterBananaFoam as always, and you guys have a great 2014. See you soon!