Back in 2010, I had a PSP that worked for about a year and a half before some weirdo issue with the battery meant that I could no longer play it without having it hooked up to the charger. At that point, I left it in the hands of my older brother who briefly used it as a SNES emulator, while I eventually caught the (3)DS bug.

Of the handful of games I'd gotten for the PSP during that short period of interest, Daxter was one I remember liking a fair bit and I even played through it a couple times. Now that I'm trying to revisit the system, I thought it'd be nice to get reacquainted with it, find new stuff to appreciate and all that good stuff.

That did not happen.

I'm genuinely shocked at how much I didn't care for Daxter on this go. I remember so little about the game it legit threw me for a loop. Most of the environments, characters, music, setpieces, none of it had left any lasting impression and going to places didn't even trigger the faintest memories. It really did go in one ear and out the other, and going through nearly the whole thing again did nothing to change that.

The gameplay's serviceable enough, but apart from a couple of moments (mainly the subway stage where you're jumping across trains and dodging overhead obstacles), it's wrapped up in an adventure that doesn't do a whole lot for me. I like that every stage takes about 10-15 minutes to beat which is good for handheld play, but that's really about it in terms of stuff I appreciated.

I didn't even beat this, despite managing to do it over a decade ago, and gave up somewhere round the final stage simply because I'd had enough of a stupid platforming puzzle. A real shame that my opinion on this has fallen as much as it has, I faintly recall thinking it was excellent once upon a time. Maybe getting a fully fledged 3D platformer on a handheld was part of that, as I was well into the genre at the time and such an idea was still novel enough to me. Guess there isn't much for me when that novelty's gone.

Helo aquí, el primer videojuego de PSP que termino aunque no el primero que pruebo. Hacía mucho tiempo que quería jugar Daxter pero supongo que nunca sacaba tiempo para ello y francamente, tremenda estupidez con lo cortito que es. No considero que ninguna de las historias de la saga de Jak y Daxter sean grandes historias, mas bien un pegamento que hila los escenarios y las acciones a realizar dentro del juego en cuestión, y este no es ninguna excepción, de hecho está incluso underlevel en ese aspecto pero francamente me da igual, es exactamente lo que esperaba. Solo buscaba un rato de diversión en el que es el primer y único juego que ha visto (y probablemente vea) el acompañante precursor.

Cortito, divertido y un festival de fanservice para aquellos que nos encanta la trilogía original. Y los minijuegos referenciando escenas del cine de su época no tienen precio.

The only game I remember playing on a PSP, even before knowing about the Jak & Daxter series... kind of ironic honestly.

But I actually have a lot of great memories of this title. It is a pretty straightforward but really fun action oriented platformer able to stand out as its own game despite being heavily linked to Jak's main story.

It's also in my opinion the perfect compromise of the tonal shift in the series, since it's able to blend both the whimsical fantasy of the Precursor Legacy, with the darker and "mature EDGE" of the rest of the franchise (Daxter is not even that annoying here is it is in Jak 2)

Some of the mission can feel tedious and overall the game doesn't do anything that special to make it stand out next to other 3D similar adventures.

But it is a really charming gem to me. Give it a shot if you are curious.

As a person who hasn't played the Jak & Daxter games yet (outside of a very brief sample I had with the 1st game), but has heard about them many times, I was and still am curious in trying out the series.

Since this game was pretty cheap, and I already knew of some of the plotlines of the other games, I decided "why not play this one first?"

Daxter is a simple 3D platformer, where you hop from mission to mission in order to exterminate bugs and take care of problems that are happening around Haven City, and maybe also find Jak, since this game takes place a bit before the Jak's inital rescue in Jak II.

Even though it's a small handheld game that really doesn't have much berring on other titles, it was pretty fun to play!
Outside of fighting enemies, you're pretty much constantly platforming through various levels, and from what I've seen, it sort of brings back the visual variety that the 1st game had, that the 2nd game lacked.

There are also the dream sequences you can play that are optional, outside of the 1st one, where they simply involve Daxter playing some role that normally is parodying a movie of some sort, like The Matrix and Braveheart, and you simply press buttonsin in timing with what's happening on screen.
They're fine little additions, but I really like that you gain more moves and health upgrades with them, so I'd say it's always a good thing to check them out.

I didn't find this game really that difficult, but I did die at various points, but the checkpoint system is pretty good, so you'll always make some progress.

The story itself is pretty vanilla. I do like the characters that Daxter interacts with, but they don't really get much development, and never come back in any other future, as far as I'm aware, so they're just there to bounce off of Daxter, who is pretty funny in of himself, so at least the game's writing is good enough.

For a PSP title, I'd say the game looks pretty good, but I did run into some lag while travelling in Haven City, which goes to show their ambition in bringing that city over to the handheld, and even then, you don't travel through the whole thing, as far as I'm aware.

Overall, Daxter is a nice little platformer to play on your PSP and I had fun experiencing it, and I hope to get to the main Jak & Daxter games sometime in the future, when I'm able to.