Published by Sony Computer Entertainment and created and developed by Naughty Dog, the Jak & Daxter series has enjoyed about as much success as a 3D platforming franchise is capable of achieving, short of donning blue dungarees, growing a moustache and taking lessons in Italian (or just splashing a load of invisible paint onto its limbs, but that's just plain freaky). And while I actually have no official figures, sales reports, pie charts (inarguably the best kind of charts) or other tedious financial bits and pieces on hand to back up such claims, I'll remain entirely certain until the day I die that the sublime Jak trilogy - and to a lesser extent, Jak X, a Mario Kart esque combat racing spin-off - must be responsible for the sales of a truckload of PlayStation 2 consoles. [I can back this up - the original Jak & Daxter was one of the main reasons I bought my PS2! Ed] The latest game in the series - the duo's debut on the PSP handheld - more than lives up to the Jak & Daxter name in practically every area.

However, as the name of the game implies, Daxter sees you taking control of the motor-mouthed, trash-talking, sarcastic little ottsel (still don't know what an ottsel is? Nope, me neither). [Well, I do! And if you want to find out, then all you need to do is complete Jak 3… Ed]. Up until now, Daxter has remained solely a second-fiddle sidekick to the series' main protagonist, Jak. Daxter's game takes place between the events of Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and Jak II: Renegade. Jak has been imprisoned and Daxter sets out with the intention of rescuing his long-time buddy from his unfortunate incarceration. However, things suddenly take a surreal twist and Daxter unwittingly finds himself the newest employee of the Critter-Ridder Extermination Company, the only pest control organisation left in Haven City, which for some reason has found itself in the midst of a robotic bug infestation problem, a problem that turns out to have far more sinister origins and ramifications than our hero realises.

While all this essentially boils down to another formulaic 3D platforming adventure, Daxter is nonetheless a ton of fun to play, and the wit, charm and skilful execution (hats off to Ready At Dawn for what they've accomplished here) make this one of the most enjoyable and technically impressive PSP games to date. The running around and platform hopping that has always been the main focus of the Jak series returns in spades but, as mentioned earlier, Daxter now has to free various parts of the city from the clutches of bug infestations. Doing this requires expert equipment and the Critter-Ridder Extermination Company's owner, Osmo, has got our furry little friend covered.

Your main weapon is a peculiar electric fly-swatter contraption, which you use to attack the myriad of bugs you encounter. However, your other tool for dealing out death to anything with more than four legs is a bug pesticide disperser. Furthermore, you're soon presented with a gizmo to attach to the disperser, allowing you to not only spray noxious green gas in the faces of the creepy crawlies, but seeing how Daxter is a miniscule, light as a feather ottsel and not a six foot tall, two hundred and fifty pound, Mexican wrestling fan with BO and a southern United States accent (like the majority of pest exterminators, if television hasn't lied to me), he can also use the bug spray to hover when in mid-jump (in an eyebrow-raisingly similar fashion to how the F.L.U.D.D. device worked in Super Mario Sunshine, which is handy for crossing over large orifices and suchlike. Later on you also get your paws on further pesticide disperser attachments, allowing you to hover further and to turn the disperser into a flamethrower and a sonic blaster.

Each of the game's eighteen or so levels require you to fulfil a specific objective for your employer, navigating your way through treacherous terrain and zapping the hell out of any bugs you meet along the way. As was the case in previous Jak games, collecting a plethora of items also plays a fairly big part in Daxter. Each bug you kill drops a gold orb and you need to collect a specified amount - although usually not all - of these on most levels. You also collect Precursor Orbs (the reasons for which I'll get to soon), as well as green glowing orbs that replenish the gas in your pesticide gun and serve as a vast amount of the game's puzzles. You see, when using the gun to hover, you're only able to do so for a ridiculously short time before you plummet towards either the ground or certain death. However, grabbing a green orb whilst hovering resets the time you have left before falling. So, in countless parts of the game, you stumble across gargantuan gaps or chasms with these green orbs floating above them and you need to suss out which order to grab them to prevent yourself from falling to your doom, sometimes unhindered, although more often than not with enemies and other hazardous obstacles swinging in your way or threatening to slap you in the face. By-the-numbers items such as health packs are also scattered around for you to find.

While platforming and puzzle solving make up the bulk of Daxter, there are plenty of other tasks that are thrown your way, all of which help to vary things and keep you on your toes. You can find yourself spraying and mowing down larger bugs on a clapped out hover-bike contraption, jumping around and across the tops of some speeding trains, or taking on some ridiculously oversized bugs in a few obligatory boss fights. Furthermore, collecting those Precursor Orbs opens up Daxter dream sequences, where at certain points in the game, Daxter goes back to Critter-Ridder Extermination Company headquarters, takes a nap and has a dream where he basically kicks the crap out of a load of people and comes across as a total hero. These dream sequences are all essentially identical, each simply requiring you to perform well-timed button presses and not get trounced; and each is based on a famous movie, including Indiana Jones, The Matrix and Braveheart. They're not particularly hard when they start off, but the more time you spend without dying, the faster the enemies attack you and in greater numbers. While it's fun to find out what movies Ready At Dawn decided to parody in these sequences, they're never as much fun as the main game and personally I was happy when each one ended and I could resume the platform-hopping that makes this game so entertaining.

Before you even start to actually play Daxter, you'll undoubtedly notice how utterly unparalleled this game's presentation is by anything else on the PSP to date. Everything looks absolutely spectacular, setting a brand new milestone for the PSP, as well as raising the bar in what developers should now be churning out in terms of visuals. Every environment is gorgeously detailed and radiates the appropriate atmosphere, while the outlandish trademark characters of the Jak franchise also animate with just as much quality and splendour as they did on the PlayStation 2, with lip-sync and character behaviour perfectly nailed, especially in Daxter himself, who is complemented excellently by the stellar effort that has been put into the game's sound. This in turn is boosted by fantastic script-writing, as many of Daxter's remarks and reactions are genuinely hilarious, a quality that is rarely found in videogames, with only Conker's Bad Fur Day springing to mind.

From a gameplay standpoint, the game is also for the most part technically sound, with any nuances in terms of control stemming from the PSP's lack of a true analogue stick, rather than inherent flaws, of which the game has very few. Players might take an hour or two to grow accustomed to the new stick and as with any 3D platforming game, the camera can sometimes get a little retarded in spots, but it's by no means terrible and rarely - if ever - spoils the game at all. Also, Daxter is a relatively short game; it should take nobody any longer than ten hours to finish the main story mode, collect every Precursor Orb and complete every dream sequence, although the game is so entertaining that it's perfectly feasible to go through a second time and enjoy it almost as much.

Daxter is one of those games that pretty much everyone will enjoy. The mixture of tried-and-tested 3D platforming, quirky new gameplay elements and sublime presentation, coupled with the laugh-out-loud humour of Daxter himself and the charm that very few games can provide, all comes together to make this a prime candidate for numerous Game of the Year awards and also undeniably one of the best PSP games to date. Only the issues of its periodically dodgy camera and short lifespan - along with the rock-paper-scissors-esque two player bug fighting game, which is frankly not much cop and not really worth a mention - even come close to bringing it down, and even with those minor faults, you really should make sure you pick up Daxter as soon as possible.

Reviewed by Mark Reece for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).