A Game Completed! Spyro The Dragon
Running, jumping, breathing fire and oh-goddamit-i-fell-from-the-edge-ing for a good few hours, Spyro The Dragon, the first from the well known adventure game series is here-by completed.
The five dragon clans have been living peacefully in their five worlds until one day an interviewer vists the dragons and they are asked about Gnasty Gnorc, who they describe with ..unfriendly words. For their bad luck Gnasty was watching the interview and punishes the dragons by a magic spell, which turns all the dragons into crystal statues and his minions take over their worlds. Except a certain dragon, Spyro, who is so small, that he manages to dodge the spell. He sets out to a journey to release other dragons and to punish and banish Gnasty and his subortinates.
Ah, old games and their graphs. The time has been rather kind to Spyro in fact, since its looks were cartoonish and simple from the start, so now in the outdated looks, it's cute in some way with its blocky characters and bright, bold colors. When the game was released, the graphs were representing about the finest 3D of its time.
The storytelling is kept very simple, between the opening and the ending videos the only dialogue you encounter is between Spyro and a dragon he releases, which is three seconds of "Thanks for rescuing me" or a small tip how to handle some enemies. The characters are kept just as simple, and only character that we follow is Spyro (and mute sparks dragonfly who works as his healthmeter) and all we know is that he is a witty dragon. For a short, simple game as Spyro The Dragon this is alright though, not trying anything too deep but a good little platformer.
The voice acting is simple, and there isn't that much of it in the end, but one thing that still needs to be menioned is the gaming music. It supported the game wonderfully, had some good pieces in it and, well, nothing would have suited the looks and the feel of the game better.
The world is divided to five different realms, from which you can enter short area dungeons through portals. In these areas Spyro needs to collect gems and sáve dragons in order to advance in the game towards the final boss Gnasy Gnorc. The enemies are simple on-trick monsters, which will be defeated by fire or by charging at them -which are the two ways of attacking that Spyro can use. While the fighting is very simple, the player is also encouraged to sreach areas with care in order to find all the chests and gems they hold -this is propably the feature that takes most of the time and is most of the fun. Jumping and running will get you everywhere, though this can be surprisingly tricky at times, for some enemies and to access some areas, the timing is everything. It's easy to start seeing red at the harder places, even thought completing the game to 100% is not impossible for mortals. The camera didn't respond perfectly all the time, but when one was not in a super tight place, it didn't cause any big problems.
To give some variation to simple areas of enemies and gem collecting, there are also few special areas where the time is limited, and in that timeline you must collect various things. These are a good add, and surprisingly hard too, even though the game can easily be played by the young audience.
Spyro the Dragon is a great example of a good, old platform game which fits fine the younger audience, but is a nice little treat for some of the older gamers too.