By collecting these skull gems which are dropped by most Metal Head creatures when defeated, Jak can gain additional abilities for his dark form and play minigames at kiosks throughout Haven City. Jak 2 also introduces a 'currency' known as Metal Head skull gems. In his Dark form, Jak becomes much more agile and his melee attacks become more powerful but he loses the ability to use the Morph Gun. Dark Eco drops from slain enemies and can occasionally be found in red crates scattered throughout the world.

The form is only accessible after Jak has absorbed enough Dark Eco to charge his ability.

Jak can traverse the large city using hover vehicles and a jet-board which allows him to hover across water and grind on rails.ĭue to experiments conducted on him for two years, Jak has also gained the ability to manipulate Dark Eco to transform into a darker version of himself known as Dark Jak. The Orbs are non-essential to completion of the game but allow the player to unlock cheats and other 'secret' content. Throughout the game, the player can collect Precursor Orbs which are sparsely dispersed throughout the various worlds. These missions serve as a replacement for the previous game's Power Cell collection driven gameplay in the first installment of the series. Here, Jak can access new missions by visiting various allied characters. Haven City functions as the game hub world, with various other environments accessible from it.

The player can unlock four different gun mods for the gun as they play through the game the shotgun-esque Scatter Gun for close range fighting, the semi-automatic Blaster, for long-range fighting, the Vulcan Fury, a high rate-of-fire weapon in the fashion of a minigun, the bullets of which deal less damage per round compared to the Blaster but are able to pierce enemies and breakables so it can hit multiple targets with a single round, and the Peace Maker, which fires charged blasts of energy, and is extremely powerful, chaining an instant kill energy between enemies that are in close proximity to each other. The Eco timed power-up gameplay from the previous game has been removed, and introduction of weapons such as the Morph Gun, a multipurpose firearm, adds a greater emphasis on enemy combat. However, it is significantly different in some areas. The core gameplay of Jak II remains somewhat similar to that of the previous game, with a recurring reliance on platforming challenges and vehicle usage.

Jak and daxter 2 characters