I'm a rather huge fan of the Spyro the Dragon games. I own all of the PS1 and GBA games, and I still play them regularly. In fact, I just beat the third game again a few days ago. But even as a huge fan, I can't deny that the my purple friend has run his course.
It all started with Enter the Dragonfly. Spyro's first PlayStation 2 entry promised us Gnasty Gnorc's return, over 120 dragonflies to collect, a frame-rate of 60 frames per second, and over 25 levels. Clearly, someone at Universal had the right idea. But in a rush to get the game out by Winter of 2002, none of these features were added, and we got a practically non-existent story, 9 levels, 90 dragonflies, and a constantly chugging frame-rate. Sure, the game had colorful graphics and a lot of charm, but the frame-rate made everything way more difficult than it should have been, and a host of glitches made certain parts impossible.
Gameplay-wise, the game was somewhat playable, if you could look past its flaws, and there were some creative levels. But all the issues mentioned above really hurt the experience. As much as I wanted to like the game, I just couldn't; I can't.
After several entertaining GBA games, we eventually got A Hero's Tale. This game boasted colorful graphics, but there seemed, to me, to be an unintentional feeling of isolation. Every area was surrounded by rock walls that gave the whole game a rather lonely feeling. But that was far from the game's biggest issue. The controls were clunky and the level designs were confusing, and the redesigned characters were nothing like their PS1 counterparts. Moneybags was turned into a fez-toting pirate, and Hunter was missing his trademark yellow fur.
Eventually we got the DS game, Spyro: Shadow Legacy. This game attempted to combined the top-down gameplay of the GBA games with RPG elements, with awful results. The frame-rate chugged, the controls were clunky, and the combat was some of the worst I've seen. Charging your enemies just makes Spyro run against them as they occasionally flash white to indicate a hit. You can burn them, but it's equally frustrating. The game also attempted to tell an RPG-like story, but it wasn't deep or interesting enough to hold my attention, and I found myself quitting the game after a few hours.
After that, we got The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. This is the only Spyro game that I've ever owned and sold. I beat the game about three times, each time in about three hours. The transition from a light-hearted platformer to an overly-serious beat-em-up was strange and unnecessary, and the fact that Vivendi stuck to this design for several more games was frustrating. Sure, the graphics were nice, but this simply wasn't Spyro. There were no portals, no eggs, no home worlds, and the gems were just used to power yourself up. (Or, at least, I think they were. I'm not sure, since I made it through the whole game without powering anything up)
From then on it was all down hill. The Legend of Spyro games got drastically worse each time, and eventually stopped altogether with the release of Dawn of the Dragon. Now all we can do is go back and remember the purple dragon's glory days on the PS1, and just pretend that the following games never happened. Every day I wish that Insomniac would make one last game to redeem the series, but we all know that's not happening.
And that's just sad.
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