The first area that puts his skills to the test is a hotel that's suffering from a huge bug infestation. After getting off the elevator our hero steps into a lush greenhouse that's overrun with the little guys, but even more dangerous are the gigantic man-eating plants. But that's where another one of Daxter's abilities, Ottsel mode, comes into play. At first I thought that was a fancy name for something cool, but all it does is place Daxter into a crouched position, though it's certainly quite useful for sneaking past flesh hungry plants or accessing previously unreachable areas such as underneath tables and other objects.

After making his way past the plants, Daxter has to hop across some floating platforms which is easy enough, and then he slides down a metal tube, collecting precursor orbs along the way. And that's really the gist of the gameplay, at least from what I've seen. Just about everything in Daxter is fairly academic as far as adventure games go, but it's all been so well done that it doesn't feel tired and overused. Furthermore, the game just looks fantastic. The cut scenes are wonderful because it appears that Daxter's sporting some fur shading, but the in game graphics are very representative of the Jak series, and this includes buildings, character models, and animations. It's just a phenomenal looking PSP title.

Another neat thing about this title are the Dream Levels, these brief mini games that plop Daxter into interesting scenarios. I haven't been able to unlock them all, but the one I have seen takes place within the Matrix trilogy, a scene where Daxter, dressed as Neo and standing in a rain soaked environment, must destroy all these agents coming at him. In this game he cannot be moved, so the only way to beat up the agents is to tap the corresponding face button when it appears on the screen, so if X appears and it's hit at just the right time he'll execute some slick karate maneuver. It's cute and addictive, but it also has me seriously interested in what the others may be, so if anything, the developers have done a good job supplying me with another incentive to play through the game.

The only issue that I have with this game are the cut scenes, which are freezing every two to three seconds, but since it's preview code I'm almost positive that the developers will fix that annoyance. Otherwise, I'm enamored with Daxter and I'm looking forward to playing through the final version. It just may be the PSP game that I've been searching for, but I'm going to hold that thought till it's released this March and I have time to review it.