Last weekend I was walking through San Francisco's Virgin Megastore and I was a bit disappointed with the PSP section. It's not that it wasn't stocked with decent games, but rather, nothing immediately jumped out at me and I've felt this way about Sony's hand held for months. It's great for Lumines and WWE SmackDown, but I've been searching for a lengthy platform adventure that'll keep me entertained on one of those long ass plane rides back to New Jersey. But as luck would have it (more scheduling than luck really), I recently had a chance to play through a couple levels of Daxter, Sony's latest adventure in the famous Jak & Daxter series and it left me wanting more, so much so that I'm almost confident that as soon as it's released this March I will be more than willing to buy a copy.

What's especially cool about Daxter is the time in which it takes place, during the period in Jak 2 when Jak's captured, so its narrative is an interesting side story that revolves around Daxter and his exploits to save his friend, though that's not immediately explained in the beginning. At the onset, he's a loud mouthed exaggerator who enjoys telling tall tales to whoever wants to listen. In fact, the game opens with such a scenario, as Daxter attempts to wow a bunch of bar flies that refuse to buy into his grand stories and laugh in his face. Dejected, he begins to do some serious moping but is quickly approached by a strange white-bearded man named Osmo, the proprietor of an extermination company. He offers him a job to rid the land of these annoying metal bugs, Daxter agrees, and with electric fly swatter and bug spray in hand he embarks upon his quest.

Most times when I play games like this I'm searching for some innovative quality but I'm actually glad that developer Ready at Dawn isn't reinventing the proverbial wheel. I certainly haven't had the chance to play through the entire game but what I've seen is the standard issue assortment of frantic button mashing and platform jumping and it's all extremely well done. Controlling Daxter with the analog stick is quite easy and extremely comfortable, and swatting bugs with the Square button is quite rewarding, especially since pressing it a few times results in him performing this flip that concludes with him bringing the swatter down on his opponents' heads. And to top it off, he can also use bug spray to temporarily stun his enemies, a necessary item since those pesky metal bugs enjoy taking quick bites that drain lots of energy.

Past attacking there's also plenty of chasms to clear and Daxter can execute a double jump which enables him to avoid potentially treacherous falls. He can also climb and leap from wall to wall, so he's certainly an acrobatic little fella, but he needs all of those moves because the developers have hidden precursor orbs about the map and some are not so easily found or reached.