One by one I’m ridding myself of many of my backlog games and Daxter was next in the list to see if it would stand the test of time, even if it is just two years old or so.

Jak’s irritating sidekick is getting a game for himself? Now how much fun could that really be? Surprisingly lots – this a great example of all that is good and right about the dying genre: Platformer games. You might have thought that using the dodgy analog nub on the PSP would be a dodgy proposition but, you’re wrong, it plays just brilliantly. And who would have thought?

Daxter, being a sequel, is bound to follow the footsteps of Jak and Daxter, or rather Jak 2. The game’s storyline is based between Jak & Daxter and Jak 2. If you played Jak 2 you would have realized that Jak was without any explanation found in Haven City prison, with Daxter appearing out of the blue to save him, hence Daxter, which explains why and how.

Our hero can now hop on to his scooter scuttling around Haven City (which is a bit empty sadly, due to the horsepower on the PSP in comparison to the PS2), and there’s a fair bit of racing involved. But to be honest, it mainly consists of running and jumping and building up new abilities until you’re mixing and matching platforming moves in a finger-twizzling display of gaming prowess.

Daxter is forced to take a job as a bug exterminator to tackle a pest problem in the city. The game is mainly all about this – hunting down bugs and squishing ‘em good. It’s really in Daxter’s equipment that the beauty of this game lies; he can hover in thin air using his bug spray or he can use it as a flamethrower, and eventually much more as well.

As we all know, Daxter is a loud mouth. He is always talking the biggest load of hogwash about fights, races, escapes etc. that he has been involved in. In this game you stand the chance to relive some of these “dreams” by jumping in Daxter’s bed which sends him into dreamland and you get to play the dreams as mini games if you have collected enough orbs around the city. The Matrix, Indiana Jones and Braveheart are just some of his fantasies. Quite hilarious as an insight into what happens in the little guy’s head.

Like all the best platformers, Daxter provides abilities that expand the world considerably and excitingly. And it all looks incredible – make no mistake, this is a genuine triumph for the PSP. Sure, Daxter doesn’t offer anything new, but it does platforming with such style that it’s impossible to ignore and is one of the best platform handheld games out there and definitely the best the PSP has to offer.

Pros: Great graphics; comfortable controls; nice to see some platforming on the PSP.

Cons: Can get repetitive; not terribly surprising; some of Daxter’s wisecracks are quite lame.

Purchase: