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Half otter, half weasel, Daxter has been companion to Jak for three PS2 platform games. The typical wisecracking sidekick, he added a lot of character to those gamesﾗand he needed to, because quite frankly Jak had none. Jak went from silent hero to brooding warrior, but Daxter drove most of the scenes between the two, so it's only fitting that the little furball gets his own game.
The events of Daxter take place just before those of the PS2's Jak II, with Jak landing in prison, and Daxter left to fend for himself. What does an ottsel do to raise a little cash while thinking of a way to free his friend? Why, he becomes a bug exterminator, of course! Haven City is infested with nasty mechanical bugs of all sizes, and the citizens are turning to the Critter-Ridder Extermination Companyﾗprimarily because they are the only exterminators left in town. As Critter-Ridder's newest employee, Daxter takes orders from his boss Osmo and wipes out all the bugs, armed only with an electric flyswatter and a multipurpose insecticide spraying utensil.  The gameplay is not exactly innovative. For each mission, you go to a designated start point, kill all the bugs, perhaps face off with a boss monster, and move on to the next area. Along the way you participate in the usual platform game staplesﾗitem collection (in this case, Precursor Orbs), navigating between platforms (natch), and upgrading your armory (via Taryn, Osmo's daughter). Daxter is quite agile being able to run, jump (and double jump, another platformer must-have), and crawl through tight spaces. But you also make a lot of use of his insecticide sprayer as it doubles as a handy jet pack. If you've played Super Mario Sunshine you'll feel right at home with jetting around. At other times, Daxter is given a vehicle to pilot, either to get around Haven City faster, or for specific bug spraying missions. Again, none of this is really groundbreaking, but it's certainly well done. To break out of the platform game mainstays, Daxter adds a couple of neat extras. There are a series of mini-games based around Daxter's dreams. As you collect Precursor Orbs, you unlock different dream sequences. It turns out that ottsel dreams are remarkably like contemporary movies, with scenarios straight out of Braveheart and The Matrix, among others. You do basically the same thing no matter what the dream: timed button presses to thwart enemies. But these homages to familiar movies are rather enjoyable drawing you back to obtain higher scores (score high enough and you earn upgrades for Daxter). Outside of the main game is a completely different game, Bug Combat. Solo or multiplayer against another PSP, you put your bug up against your opponent's bug in a game of enhanced rock/paper/scissors. You find upgrades and extra bugs within the main game, and while this Pokemon-with-creepy-crawlies wouldn't work on its own it's also not just a throwaway extra. Finally, if you have a copy of Jak X for the PS2, you can connect Daxter to it to unlock some extra cars in that game. On technical merit alone, Daxter easily earns top marks. It is better than any other PSP game in looks alone. The levels, while not particularly inspired (obligatory mine stage included!), look gorgeous, are vividly colored and vast. The animation is as good as any big console game, with Daxter in particular animated full of life. Voice work is top notch, and the music is varied and fits the action well. If you thought all this means a lot of loading screens, think again! Ready by Dawn have set the bar for PSP games, with all loading being done in the background, cleverly hidden by elevator sequences and entrances. It's not the first game to use such a schemeﾗMetroid Prime on the Gamecube springs to mindﾗbut implementation on the PSP is admirable.  There's more to a game than how polished it is and with Daxter there are a few things that bring it up far short of perfection. Daxter can be a little hard to control. There are times when you struggle in a particular section because of the little PSP analog nub. The difficulty is uneven, with some missions being very easy and some sections leaving you pulling your hair out. The main criticism though is that you've seen it all before. Maybe a little extra story would have helped here, rather than being barely more than "go here, kill bugs, repeat". Still, unless you're absolutely sick of 3D action-platform games, Daxter is a worthwhile purchase, and the technical bar has definitely been raised for future PSP releases. 
Daxter is kid-friendly but it did raise my eyebrows a couple of times, and these instances usually involved Taryn. Long pointy ears aside, she's obviously a "sexy girl"ﾗthong and allﾗand Daxter's first encounter with her results in a protracted conversation with her chest. It's nothing explicit, but the innuendo is obvious enough, and Daxter keeps this sort of cheesy chauvinistic chatter up when he's talking to or about the female characters.
As far as the fighting goes, the bugs do splat, but the resulting goop doesn't look like blood, and the enemies are not humanoid. When Daxter runs out of energy, he just falls to the floor melodramatically. He doesn't die. He does plummet to his doom (a lot, if you're not careful), but I wouldn't call his scream blood-curdling. Alcohol isn't shown, but Daxter does appear in the bar a couple of times. The game starts with him in one, in fact. It looks like everyone's drinking milk, but still, it's definitely a bar. Reading skill is not necessary, as all dialogue is voiced, though captions can be switched on. Like any action-platform game, the frustration level gets high, something you should be aware of if your children aren't persistent and patient. However, the ability to continue as many times as you want (there are no lives) coupled with the save anywhere system does counter the difficulty somewhat. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Daxter |
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