The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning [GBA]

One of the best arguments for handheld gaming came in the form of a mischievous purple dragon. Gamers (probably ones that are over 16 or so) will remember Spyro the Dragon, who busted onto the Playstation in the mid '90s. Since then, Spyro has been tossed around to multiple developers, and his console adventures have been hit or miss. But for the Game Boy Advance, Spyro was a solid title that never disappointed. Vicarious Visions brought the dragon to life with varied gameplay and nice visuals. The past is gone though, and a new dragon is now the future. Spyro is back, but he's not the dragon people remember. This Spyro is considerably less of everything that made the other games good. And while he may be saving the world in his game, he's not saving the GBA.

Forget everything that ever happened in the previous Spyro games. Forget the bad guys, forget the plot, and even forget Hunter, that cheetah guy. Developer Krome Studios has started over, bringing players all the way back to Spyro's birth. As an egg, Spyro is sent off on a river, so that evil dragon Cynder won't kill him. He's raised by a family of fireflies, living his life in peace until one day he finds a fiery dragon that explains who Spyro really is and how he's the savior of his entire race. So essentially, Spyro is to dragons as Moses is to the Jews. But whereas Moses liberated slaves and led them out of Egypt, Spyro rescues other dragons, and defeats Cynder's evil forces.

The majority of Spyro's adventure is a pretty basic platformer. Spyro runs around, jumps over bottomless pits and pools of lava, and beats up countless bad guys. It's nothing news, and isn't very exciting. It's just a lot of running, and then mashing on the attack button over and over. The game gets repetitive pretty fast.

Being a purple dragon, Spyro can learn all the four elemental dragon abilities: fire, electricity, ice, and earth. As the game progresses players unlock these abilities to help defeat enemies. Players earn points by defeating enemies and can use the points to upgrade the attacks. The upgrade points can be switched around at any time, allowing players to customize Spyro as they see fit. The abilities are all similar, but each have their differences. These differences try to keep the gameplay from getting stale, though it doesn't help too much.

It's not all just platforming though. Numerous boss battles and minigames separate the levels. The bosses are usually some big creature that Spyro has to breathe fire at while dodging attacks. The minigames are usually some sort of race against the clock thing, having players get Spyro up a mountain or through a mine as fast as possible. There isn't a lot to these, but they're more like interactive respites from the platforming levels.

As solid as the entire game is, the experience doesn't last very long. Players will be able to finish the game in a matter of a few hours. Spyro is ridiculously easy, more than even a kid's title should be. Plus, with how long this series has been around, it's not a title that should be made just for kids anyway. Powerups litter the levels, and downed enemies leave them behind. It's nearly impossible not to have a full health bar and the elemental attacks are recharged almost as quickly as players can exhaust them. Krome could have at least stuck in a hard mode for fans of the series that wanted a game that has some challenge to it. It's not too much to ask that a game requires some small amount of skill to play. This is probably the easiest Spyro game so far, and the series as a whole is not a challenging one. Players are getting a downgraded game from previous installments.

The graphics got a downgrade as well. Whereas previous games boasted either isometric gameplay, or large, vivid characters, this Spyro looks bland by comparison. The enemies are repeated over and over with just minor color changes. The levels run together in each world since there is little variation in the landscape. There are some neat effects with the elemental attacks, but for the most part, they all look the same. The fireball looks just like the electricity ball, which looks just like the ice ball.

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