darkSpyro

This is a long read. Don't give me your 'tl;dr' nonsense.

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly Review

PART 1

During the days of the PlayStation, we had Spyro the Dragon, a series of classic platforming adventure games filled with brilliantly crafted worlds and gameplay that was immense fun. They were really hard to fault and deserved all the praise that it had received. As the Playstation 2 arrived, it was a no brainer that Spyro would make his debut on the new system. Sadly though, it never lived up the reputation of the originals, not even close.

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly sucks the big one. How much more could the developers possibly **** up his Playstation 2 debut? There is almost nothing good to comment about this disgrace of a Spyro game. It is all just awful and I don't know where to start.

Well, I guess I should start from the beginning. The very beginning.

1. LOOOONG LOADING SCREENS SUCK

The first and most obvious flaw of the game is the extraordinarily, painful long loading screens. You will first encounter this at the very beginning of the game.

Okay, as soon as the PlayStation 2 boots up, we have to look at a small picture of Spyro's face, then go through the company logos and then there's a black screen with a loading bar at the bottom. This is then followed by a long loading screen. Now you have to select the language you wish to use. Another loading screen and then finally we have the title screen.

I actually timed this; one minute and seven seconds. I also timed the original Spyro the Dragon to compare, it took less than thirty seconds to get from the PS logo to the title screen, no loading screens. There's no excuse.

*I must point out that the Gamecube version of the game has significantly shorter loading screens.*

2. A BORING STORY THAT WE DON'T CARE ABOUT.

Finally, we can start the game. We are yet again treated to another long loading screen before we introduced to a cutscene. In opens up with Hunter screaming in terror to a stupid big balloon and Spyro is mocking him. What the hell is this crap?

From what we can gather from this cutscene, there is a party, the baby dragons are getting their very own dragonflies. Everyone is happy...until Ripto appears and has brought Gulp and Crush with him too. Why did the developers bring this guy back? Could they not come up with their own villain?

Basically, he wants to steal the dragonflies for whatever reason but his plan backfires which causes the dragonflies to scatter across the Dragon Realms, including Spyro's friend Sparx.

'Without dragonflies, dragons are useless', says Ripto. He then goes away.

Why didn't he attack Spyro when he was vulnerable? Anyway, after the cutscene, another inglorious loading screen appears followed by the next cutscene, where Spyro and the other characters (Hunter and Bianca from the previous game) who we don't care about find Sparx and the hunt for the scattered dragonflies can begin.

3. PRETTY GRAPHICS BUT INCONSISTENT

After the cutscene, there is yet another loading screen and finally we can actually begin the game. In the homeworld, the first thing that you will notice is that everything looks bright and colourful just like previous Spyro games have been. The fire effects are good and the locations are fairy detailed. The game is not as good as looking as the likes of Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter but this game is by no means bad in terms of visuals. Good job. That's the first positive thing so far!

I must point out that there are minor inconsistencies in quality, for example Spyro's shadow is the the exact same shape as him but other characters have shadows that are just circles. Some of the characters models in the game look good where as some of them look less as good. In the levels, the characters have no lip sync when they talk, which was forgiveable on the PS1 but come on, this is the PS2 with better technology. The characters also move in a very unnatural way, some worse than others, especially Ripto in the final boss.

You may end up discovering some bugs in the game. Collision detection is awful, you can bang your head even if it doesn't touch a wall. You can stick you head through a gate, if your lucky you might go through the gate. Sometimes, you will see a beam of polygons stretched across the screen from some characters in a level. Also, if you just barely touch one of the platforms to go to a level, it will leave without you on it but you still end up entering the level. These bugs are minor but there are many of them which shows lack of testing.

PART 2

4. GAMEPLAY THAT WE'VE DONE BEFORE BUT WITH ADDED SLOWNESS

Let's get to the most important aspect of the game, the gameplay.

Your objective of the game is pretty much the same as any of the predecessors. You need to enter a level, find the scattered dragonflies and collect treasure. Most of the dragonflies can be found just hovering around in the levels, others can be earned by completing challenges and mini-games. You can use your treasure to pay Moneybags to open passageways etc. like in the previous two games but this time you only do this once
, which makes Moneybags rather useless.

The gameplay itself is no different than before; Spyro can charge into enemies, breathe fire, jump across platforms, glide, swim underwater, head-bash and climb. The developers have given Spyro the ability to gain new breath attacks as you progress through the game such ice and electricity. He is also given bubble breathe which is used to capture the missing dragonflies. This is the only thing that is new to series which is a real shame because you would expect some innovation since this is on a different generation than the original games.

The game lacks originality and creative ideas but what makes the game even worse is how sluggishly slow the controls are. Spyro moves so slow, much slower than he used to. The frame rate is terrible. Why is he so slow now? It's so boring to travel around a level at a pace of a sloth. The camera is also slow to move around. The enemies are slow. Everything is slow.

Mini-games have returned in this game but again, there is nothing we haven't seen before. The speedway rounds have returned but is the exact same as Year of the Dragons, except it's slower. You can also ride a tank and fly a plane which is kinda new but it still sucks. There's also a simon says game involving drums which is so dull and boring. You can also slide down a volcano which is the most fun that I had in the entire game.

5.ONLY NINE ****ING LEVELS!


The level designs of this game are nothing special. They are pretty much longer versions of the levels of the previous games. To be fair though, there are some new themes that we haven't seen in Spyro such as honey and Jurassic but really, that's about it. The levels don't really offer any challenge, it is all fairy straight forward.

Compared to the previous games' twenty or so levels, this game has nine! Nine levels. That is all. I know that the levels are a bit longer but there shouldn't be as little as this. What a joke! There is also one boss fight, Ripto which makes Gulp and Crush completely useless. You do actually fight Ritpo three times but they are identical and so basic. Remeber the epic boss fight in Spyro 2 where you collected power-up orbs and flying over molten lava? This boss fight is not in any way epic. Flame/freeze Ripto a few times, that's it.


6. SOUND OF RELIEF...KINDA

There are many bad things about this game but there is one good thing worth crediting and that is the soundtrack. Stewart Copeland returned to compose this game after composing the previous games and done a pretty good job. It is not his best work by any means but there are some great tunes to listen to.

Sound effects like Spyro's flame breath and breaking caskets are pretty much standard, nothing good or bad to say about them. Voice acting is alright, it's the not best I've ever heard in a game before. I don't think that the voice actors gave their best efforts, I'm convinced that they sounded much better in the previous games. To be fair, I don't think they were given good material to read out, the dialogue is rather pathetic. There are some really annoying moments for example whenever Spyro rescues a dragonfly, he says 'Hey, it's...'. Every time.

7.WHAT WENT WRONG?

In conclusion, this game is an abomination. It really is. So how could this game possibly turn out so bad, you may be wondering.

It's quite simple really, it was rushed. Universal wanted this game to be released early, so the development team had no choice but to release this game unfinished which is a shame because it might have a decent game if it carefully designed with a longer production time.

I skimmed it since I don't have much time right now, but that's prettttty much right on, sadly. I'm reading the whole thing later. lol.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

EVERYTHING!

Compared to the Insomniac games, this was mediocre.

However, I still enjoyed it. I have no problems with the loading times because I was clever enough to do my reasarch, buying the GC version, instead of buying the PS2 version and helping Sony. I also liked a couple of the level designs- Lulu(?) Island, Dragonfly Dojo and sections of Dragon Realms in question. I never got far into it, though, because I have trouble with the minigames. Need to play though this again.

Well, that summed it up nicely.

Meh, dispite all of the glitches in this game, I still like it, lol, I don't even know why, but I find it really funny and weird, so I still like it.

Nice Review This sums up the game pretty well. There are sadly only a couple levels in this game that are cool, but I hate the glitches. :l Some were cool but others were soooo annoying. o.o

This game must be for retards... Because they are SLOW too... I bought this game when I was little. Practically , I begged my parents to death for them to get... I took it hoke that night and remembered thinking, " damn, this game sucks

I believe your review sums it up perfectly