PS2 owners out there should already be familiar with the duo of Jak and Daxter as one of the better examples of the platform game genre to be released on that console. Daxter is a wise cracking Otsel (a small furry orange creature, a bit of a cross between an Otter and a Weasel) who originally had a more human looking form before being transformed by a pool of Dark Eco.

Up until now he’s accompanied Jak on his adventures, so you only occasionally took direct control of Daxter. He’s now been given his own game on PSP, so you too can be a small orange rodent who likes to back chat. The game is set between the first and second of the PS2 games, where Jak has been locked up in prison. Whilst Daxter tries to come up with a way of breaking his friend out of jail, he takes a job as a pest control expert (as you do), tasked with wiping out an infestation of Metal Bugs, smaller cousins of the PS2 games Metal Heads.

Daxter is initially armed with an electric flyswatter, which allows him to stun the bugs so he can attack them. New attack moves can be learnt from a series of mini-games which become available when Daxter sleeps. Later he gets awarded a spray gun which allows him to stun larger enemies. The spraygun has elements of Mario’s FLUDD backpack from Super Mario Sunshine, as it can also be used as a kind of jet pack to hover in the air.

The game certainly looks very nice, the graphics looking as though they really are pushing the PSP, as the game looks as good as many PS2 games. It is being developed by new company Ready At Dawn, not by Naughty Dog who created the original games. This is their first game, but since the team was formed by ex-Naughty Dog and Blizzard veterans it would seem to be in good hands. In fact, Didier Malenfant, president of the company, as lashed out at developers creating for PSP saying that there aren’t enough games being developed with the features of the PSP in mind. Obviously he’s pointing out that Daxter is a good example of a game which has been designed specifically for the PSP and so takes advantage of the console as much as possible. Let’s hope that his claims are backed up when the game gets released.

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