Jak and Daxter fans rejoice! The Jak and Daxter trilogy may have come to a close with last year’s Jak 3, but your beloved heroes will be making their return in October 2005. This time out Jak and Daxter find themselves forced to join a racing team on a deadly combat racing circuit and their lives are at stake if they fail to win the championship. Before you run for the hills in an attempt to get away from the latest kart racing game, let me assure you that this is not kart racing. After all, the game’s name is Jak X: Combat Racing … and it certainly delivers plenty of vehicular combat. I know because I’ve seen and played a pre-release version of the game.

Jak scores a kill.

Jak X features both full single player story and online multiplayer modes. The story mode is divided into four “racing cups” consisting of 20 events each that culminate in a Grand Prix race that you’ll need to win to advance to the next cup. As you race you’ll earn upgrades to your vehicle, both to boost its performance and customize its look. These upgrades will be made available to you in the online mode, so if you want to compete at the highest levels online you’ll need to complete all of the cups in single player.

The game provides a variety of racing modes so there’s a lot more here than your basic circuit race (although there are those too). For example, death races have you competing to kill as many drones as possible and in freeze rallies you try to hit as many icons as you can to freeze the clock as you race to reach the finish before the clock reaches zero. There are also matches that take place away from the tracks in large open arenas. These challenge you to score as the most kills on other players or to compete with them to kill the most giant robotic vehicles. In all there are eleven modes, and weapons, boosts, and power-ups ensure that they each provide plenty of explosive action. Look to take out your opponents with machine guns, missiles, grenades, mines, and more implements of destruction. Real-time damage effects will ensure that your opponents feel the effects of each of these weapons.

Jak X’s matches take place on a variety of tracks set in locations that will be familiar to veterans of the Jak & Daxter games such as Haven City. The tracks are each filled with their own set of hazards and they also provide shortcuts and branching paths, so there’s a good diversity of courses in the game. When you add other features such as mirrored versions of the tracks and the ability to cross over between them you get even more variety. Oh, and did I mention that the game will sport 31 tracks in all?

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