The little Osttel hits it big on Sony's portable platform

When I heard Daxter made it into the PSP greatest hits library I decided that it might be worth the 20 bucks, after all I hear it is one of the best games for the PSP. I went home played it and beat it so what do I think of it, read on.

Story.
Daxter takes place between Jak and Daxter for the PS2 and Jak 2 for the PS2, I haven’t played Jak 2 yet and there are a few story elements that look like they have been skipped over because they have either A expected you to have played Jak 2, or B they don’t want to ruin Jak 2. This kind of does make a few of the story elements confusing to people who haven’t played Jak 2 and leaves the ending just a tad bit disappointing and short, but 90% of the story is a stand alone story and pretty entertaining.

Things haven’t gone well for Daxter lately, falling into a pool of Dark Eco and turning into an Osttel isn’t bad enough, getting sucked into the far future and having your best friend captured defiantly stinks. And the past 2 years Daxter has been spending the time on thinking of how he’s going to rescue Jak in bars. One day he is offered a job by the local exterminating company and accepts. It seems like Haven City has been getting a lot of mean little metal bug and it’s up to Daxter to exterminate him

Despite having his best friend capture and being in a completely different world Daxter is still the wise cracking smart aleck that we came to know and love in Jak and Daxter. To put it simply a lot of Daxter scenes are funny and there are plenty of times I was laughing at loud. Unfortunately the rest of the cast and crew aren’t very well known for or developed, for instance there is a strange woman drops in every few stages with a new power up and she is never given a back story or a reason to really be helping Daxter. Still it’s a funny cute story that does a good job of keeping the plot moving.

Graphics.
Graphically the game matches up to the same level has Jak and Daxter and in some places even improves upon it. For example during cut scenes were the camera gets close to Daxter the artists animated hair on the little fuzz ball. While the game does do a good job of getting the look of it’s PS2 predecessor this is still the PSP were talking about and some slow downs do happen from time to time. Also the camera can often get into the worst possible place you want it to be.

Sound.
We get a sound track that suits the game and a few memorable tunes. Has for the VA Max Kassella returns to voice Daxter, also the same VA for Samos who narrates the opening is the same. The rest of the VA’s do a pretty good job of voicing there charecters rather nicely.

Gameplay.
The gameplay is just a bit different this time around, supposabley Jak 2 and 3 are more mission then platform oriented. Basically you will be told to go to a place around town and will use a scooter to go there, enter that place and see what’s the problem and then try to accomplish the mission. The mission may be collect enough of the gold pieces the bugs drop in order to continue, destroy certain bugs, or make it to the end and complete some mini game to continue.

After you complete a stage your welcome to return to the area anytime just by using your scooter to get back to that area. Each area has things to collect in order to get a 100% ending, bugs will drop gold pieces for you to collect but more important thing to collect are precursor orbs. Not only does this unlock bonus content but they allow Daxter to have some pretty funny dreams. When you collect enough orbs return to the exterminator shop and you can sleep on the bed to get one of these dreams, all of them are spoofs of major motion pictures from Braveheart, to the Matrix. They all play on perfect timing of button presses in order to win. While doing these may seem pointless when you win you will gain either a new ability or had an extra unit to your life bar, in other words precursor orbs and dreams are a must pick up and do inless you enjoy getting your butt kicked on some of the later levels.

Of course not all power ups come from precursor orbs the little Ostell gets to pack some serious heat when it comes to his extermination weapon. First is a bug swatter mixed in with a jedi lightsaber (and a star wars line is even thrown in when you obtain it) this is Daxter basic attack where he can do some pretty cool combos to swat bugs. The next one comes from his bug sprayer. With it he can spray gas that will stun bugs for a short time and even use it to fly short distances. To power this up you have to collect green orbs. There are plenty of puzzles and pits that go around the flying bug sprayer, in order to keep flying you have to keep getting green orbs that are above pits.

Of course not everything is perfect about Daxter while the controls are pretty good the analog stick on the PSP can be a bit of a pain getting him across some of the trickier leaps, luckily the game doesn’t penalize you to much for dying. In fact dying usually puts you back in just a few feet from were you where when you died which may make the game seem a bit to easy for a lot of people. Luckily there is unlock able trailers and artwork for collecting everything that is in the game to keep people coming back for more.

Final Recommendation.
While I didn’t get everything in the story because I haven’t played Jak 2 and 3 the story is certainly entertaining and I laughed a lot at Daxters out takes. While being a bit easy most of the time the game is enjoyable and it has a lot of unlockables to keep you busy. It’s definitely worth the 20 bucks you will find it on sale now days.