Wow, Jak II had a Crazy Taxi! mission! Except because it's Jak II, instead of ferrying sassy urbanites from the popcorn store to the yacht club, you're transporting morally grey underground rebels to hidden underground revolution bases under interminable gunfire from totalitarian brain police. The parallel helped illuminate some of what makes Jak's driving so goddamn frustrating: both involve dodging heavy traffic, spontaneous guided navigation (i.e. following a GPS), and corridor-like streets lined with buildings.
In Crazy Taxi, colliding with another vehicle costs speed and briefly hinders steering, while narrowly dodging traffic boosts score. The dynamic punishment allows the player to be in continuous control and keeps the gameplay oriented around maximizing vehicle speed, and the risk/reward scoring pays off reflex and skill. In Jak II, each collision damages the player vehicle and sends it off course (relative to the severity/angle of the crash), or if the damage maximum is exceeded (generally after two or three hits, but sometimes on the first) destroys it and reverts control to land-Jak. All of the variation lies in degree of punishment. Lacking the reward element present in Crazy Taxi, the challenge is entirely one of minimizing risk, playing it safe, and driving like an old lady. Making a mistake results in a gameplay disruption - even resetting to a checkpoint isn't as troubling as being dropped to the street to find a new vehicle and re-orienting, a task that is obnoxious while free-roaming but uncontrollably difficult faced with the enemy barrages universal to missions. Failing one challenge heaps a new one on top before the player can return to the first.
Then there's navigation. It seems minor, but Crazy Taxi's floating arrow is so much more elegant than a minimap. They function identically, showing the next turn on the way to the destination, but it's useful to remember that the human eye has a focus area about the size of a thumbnail. Crazy Taxi co-locates the (large, brightly colored) guide arrow with the vehicle heading, hovering directly in view as the player focuses on immediate obstacles like traffic and turns. Jak II's minimap sits far in the periphery in a lower corner of the screen; a continuously rotating, detailed black-and-white drawing populated with red and gray dots and a sliding destination indicator, in its entirety not much bigger than Crazy Taxi's monotone arrow. Lots of useless information to decode, but easy enough to read if you're staring straight at it. That means shifting concentration from the road, so driving involves a constant flicking back and forth of the eyes that makes collision avoidance that much more difficult. This in turn exacerbates the frustration of the punishment mechanisms described above. This visual focus area problem exists in all driving games that rely on a minimap for navigation, though it's somewhat alleviated in scenarios with fixed destinations, clear NSEW orientation, and perpendicular roads, as those elements relieve the need to navigate on a per-turn basis and relax toward more periodic map checks.
The corridor walls are actually a similarity between the two games, something that stands out in contrast to the grass or dirt terrain used to buffer roadways in the majority of driving games. These walls put a hard barrier on steering, obfuscate visibility in a way that other barriers wouldn't, and in the case of Jak II enact all the same penalties as vehicular collision. They require the player to react to oncoming traffic as it becomes visible - after committing to a turn - thereby adding spontaneous reflex challenge around every corner. They preclude line of sight to a destination, reinforcing the nature of navigation as solely a question of what to do at the next intersection. In practice this focuses all the decisions on the short-term, making the games feel more action-packed at the cost of strategy. I'd imagine the restricted visibility also benefits draw distance and loading zones, so there's probably a technical tradeoff at play here that shouldn't be dismissed.
I don't think either of these are great driving games, but in a genre often perceived as mechanically uniform, it's valuable to note how a few minor divergences can add up to chaotic fun on one side and infinite frustration on the other. Jak II is a particular disappointment because the vehicular stages of Jak & Daxter are great, implementing open, platforming-style layouts, clear distinction between damaging hazards and boundary obstacles, and mentally mappable identifiably landmarked mazes.
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