Spyro: A Hero's Tail [GC]

What do you do with all these snazzy moves? As previously stated, you'll need to hunt down and destroy dozens upon dozens of pulsating Dark Gems dotting the landscape. But you will also need to collect things…many, many things.

A Hero's Tail splits the game world into sizeable regions, each with a specific number of Dark Gems to destroy. But that's not all you'll be hunting. You'll spend hours searching for jumbo size Easter eggs, or colorful dragon eggs, rather. And you'll need to stomp on dozens of enemies in order to find oodles of multicolored gems and rainbow colored shards.

Some item sit behind locked gates or inside locked treasure chests, while others find themselves guarded by armored and un-armored Gnorcs (standard issue baddies of the Spyro universe.) Taken each of these enemies out provides little challenge. A quick blast of Spyro's fiery breath will instantly roast most of the game's earlier foes. Later on, some enemies can only be taken down in specific ways.

Spyro needs to ram into Armored Gnorcs to destroy their armor before blasting them with flames, for example. The enemies never become truly challenging, even in the later stages, but seeing as A Hero's Tail caters to young (and perhaps slightly older) fans of the genre, the lax difficulty is at least understandable.

One of the coolest aspects of A Hero's Tail is the ability to ditch the titular purple dragon in favor of four new characters. You can brandish a bow and shoot enemies from afar as Hunter the Cheetah, for one. He can also perform combos by connecting punches and kicks. The first alternate character you get to control is a flyboy penguin named Sgt. Byrd. Using missiles and bombs, Sgt. Byrd can unleash explosive hell from above. Controlling the penguin feels responsive and smooth, and flying around shooting targets offers a lot of fun.

You'll also need to accomplish various challenges as Sgt. Byrd, such as shooting a specific number of targets under a certain time limit. Another cool character, Blink the Mole, uses explosive charges to progress through the environment and sports an arm-mounted laser. Blink is also an expert climber and burrower, so accessing certain areas will be his exclusive responsibility. Thankfully, each character controls well and none feels gimmicky or hastily implemented for the sake of making A Hero's Tail appeal to older gamers.

Graphically, the game looks decent with brief instances of visual coolness. The design of the game world looks similar to other modern platform title such as Tak 2: Staff of Dreams and Scaler, although it lacks the kind of detail and graphical effects seen in both those titles. Spyro's fire breath looks cooler than ever and features decent lighting and blur effects.

Throughout the game, you'll trek through pastel colored towns, darkened lava caves and snowy mountain ranges. One of the more noticeable visual features is the morphing terrain. Whenever you destroy a Dark Gem, the surrounding area transforms from a dark, perilous wasteland into a saintly place filled with overwhelming pleasantness. The actual transformation, much like everything else in the game including character animation and enemies, is silky smooth.

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