Daxter

Okay, we’re just going to lay it out for you: Daxter is an awesome game. And the thing that makes Daxter so awesome, the thing that sets it apart from other, similar PSP games, is that it succeeds in capturing much of what made the Jak games so great while simultaneously being perfectly tailored for the PSP.

The Jak games have always had great characters coupled with tried-and-true platform-hopping gameplay (and a few weapons thrown in for good measure). Daxter has all of these things, but - appropriately - on a smaller scale. Starting out right after Jak and Daxter, as the heroes travel to the future and crash land in Haven City, we discover how Daxter got away. Then the plot jumps ahead almost two years, and we find out that the little orange otter-weasel was doing pretty much what he always does: telling tall tales. This leads to a gig as an exterminator, thus setting up the premise that’s meant to hold the game together.

While traveling freely around Haven City, players take up different exterminating jobs, using Daxter’s gadgets to wipe out vicious Metal Head bugs and working toward the ultimate goal of meeting up with Jak again. This is a lot of fun, and jumping around through these missions is even more so.

Of course, it’s not without its faults. First, the story bits aren’t all that compelling, though it does pick up toward the end, when it begins to tie into Jak II’s storyline. And second, Daxter’s dream sequences, which parody movies like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings, are only somewhat entertaining, date the game and feel out of place in this fantastic world that’s already been established.