Reviewed: December 16, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Universal Interactive
Developer
Equinoxe Digital Entertainment
Released: November 5, 2002
Genre: Platform
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
6
5
7
7
6.2
Supported Features
Spyro is one of those platform games that I never got very involved with. I’ve played all of his adventures but I never finished any of them. My niece loves the little purple dragon (almost as much as Rayman) so this time around I decided to give our fire-breathing friend a fair shake.
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly is the latest installment in the ongoing Spyro series that began way back on the original PSX. If nothing else, you have to love that title even though it comes just a bit close to the Gex: Enter the Gecko game from 1998. But there is much more to like about Spyro than his clever title.
Universal Interactive decided not to mess up the award-winning formula that has made all of the other Spyro games a huge success. Playing it safe means you are going to get more traditional Spyro action but with no significant leaps in style or gameplay. Good news for those that want more of the same, but not so good if you want something revolutionary.
My big problem with Enter the Dragonfly is that while it is pretty much the same Spyro everyone has been playing for years, the rest of the platform gaming world is moving on with breakthrough titles like Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, and Ratchet and Clank. When you stack Spyro up to these technological wonders our purple little friend starts to show his age.
In Spyro’s forth big adventure you need to recover the new generation of dragonfly companions that have been stolen by your clichéd “evil forces”. You’ll get to join forces with Sparx and a few other favorites like MoneyBags, Zoe, Bianca, and Hunter as you explore nine enchanting worlds, each with ten dragonflies and several hundred gems.
The worlds are massive with each one breaking down into smaller sub-levels full of action and charming visual design. You will get to explore frozen tundra, tropical islands, Japanese Dojo’s (of course), and even quiet country farms terrorized by aliens. All of these worlds are connected via the standard hub-design that seems to be an unspoken rule in platform games these days. You’ll get access to new worlds as you collect more dragonflies.
While Enter the Dragonfly looks and plays like all of the Spyro’s before it, there are a few nice additions that give our dragon a boost into the 21st century. As you might expect, Spyro has plenty of new breath attacks including Fire, Ice, Electricity, and Bubbles…bubbles? Our dragon has a few new moves up his scales including a new climbing mode on certain walls and the ability to deflect incoming attacks.
Spyro now gets to pilot all sorts of vehicles including a Spitfire, Tank, and even a UFO. And when you aren’t breathing or driving you can tackle the amazing selection of mini-games Spyro has to offer.
But all of these additions still aren’t enough to conceal the true “collecting” nature of the title. You are still resolved to collect gems and the elusive dragonflies. These little guys represent the biggest challenge, as you have to chase them down and often use your bubble breath weapon to capture them.
It’s all a tried and true formula that fails to innovate but Enter the Dragonfly still gets the job done. There was enough challenging gameplay and interesting level design to keep me enchanted from beginning to end. My only minor complaint with the entire title would be some insufferably long load times between the levels. In its defense, the levels are huge.
Graphically, this installment of Spyro left me wanting a little more. I fired up a couple of the older PSX titles and compared the two and there is very little difference. There have been some moderate improvements in the overall animation quality and there are plenty of special effects that the older hardware couldn’t handle, but if you look at the big picture, not much has change.
The game worlds are massive with unique weather and environmental effects specific to each level. There are a few new visual effects such as reflective surfaces and realistic vegetation contrast heavily with some simple low-detail textures. It’s a very strange mix that is often hampered by occasional and unexplained pop-up of large areas and some erratic frame rates that often dip well below the normal 30fps.
The music was remarkably good in Enter the Dragon, although the music in Spyro’s previous games have always had great soundtracks. In this case the music flowed perfectly with each level and it never got repetitive. I was able to slip into a comfortably gameplay rhythm that seemed to blend right with the music.
Sound effects are creative and fun and all of the characters are voiced with fun voices that you would expect from an animated feature. Again, this is nothing more that previous games have offered and only slightly better in quality.
Experience Spyro fans will probably blaze their way through this game in 20 hours. My trip took around 24 but I was taking my time and having fun with all of the mini-games. There are more than 25 levels to be explored and thousands of collectibles.
The game unfolds the same way each time you play it and there is no real incentive to make a second pass once you have finished it the first time. You can probably play and enjoy this game comfortably in a normal rental period, but if you are a true Spyro fan you will want to make this a permanent addition to your PS2 library.
Spyro is a fun, yet unsophisticated game that never wanders far from the proven path of his successors. It doesn’t seem to take advantage of the power the PS2 has to offer, but instead makes marginal improvements that will thrill fans of the original games while leaving players of the more sophisticated platform games yawning.
This is one of those games that you can slip right into, play and finish without too much thought or effort. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, it’s just mindless fun that is great for the entire family. Rent it first or buy if you are a hardcore Spyro fan. Either way you won’t be disappointed.