Blast From The Past: Spyro the Dragon

"Spyro" was just like "Crash Bandicoot" -one of the greatest PS1 titles- with a whimsical purple little dragon that was adored by all and played by thousands, this however was short lived as Insomniac gave their legacy over to new developers to potential wreck their creation and ruin it they did, but a small light for the "Spyro" series still lives on within the original trilogy. 

The favorite of many fans out there but just like it's counterpart Crash, this game too had some initial teething problems to start with. The idea of this game was to find all the dragons that were encased in stone and free them, so it was essentially a big game of hide and seek. These statues however  were usually easy to spot and the developers made little effort to hide them (they couldn't anyway as they didn't create any good hiding places in the first place), even if there were one's you could see but couldn't reach, you could still easily get to it if you decide too work backwards.

Since each level had an average of four dragons to free it meant that the stages in this game were very short, you could go straight from the initiation of the level to the end of it in a matter of seconds, this comes across as a bit disappointing as it seems to lack obstructions and obstacles making the only challenges finding the statues (which is quite easy), collecting all the gems (which is easy too but time consuming), and finding the hidden keys (well I say hidden but they weren't really) which opens a chest which will have some of the levels gems in it.

Despite "Spyro" having it's problems it still doesn't mean that everyone should avoid it, with an interesting soundtrack that covers a spectrum of atmospheric settings and well created level layouts (which were sadly too short), the first game in the trilogy was still a success. 

Insomniac looked back at their first game and made a note not to make the same mistakes in "Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer"and they were brilliant at fixing them, with much longer levels and challenges that ranged in difficulty, this game outshined the first one.

For this game you had two main goals rather than one, collect talismans by completing the level, and obtain as many power orbs as possible which were given to you by completing challenges or finding the rare one hidden in hard to find places (which was actually well hidden this time), this game did also have the time consuming task of being able to collect every gem but this time in doing so you were rewarded with a bonus level at the end of the game making your efforts worth it.

This game also gave players new abilities such as swimming and climbing ladders however there was a downside to it, you had to pay in order to get the ability which robbed us in a way of completing earlier levels in one go as you might have needed to climb a ladder but wouldn't have the ability meaning you would have to come back at a later time.

The challenges in this game as I said before ranged in difficulty but some of them were a bit too difficult, for example - you goal is to get the fishes into the idol's mouth, you needed to feed it ten fish, blue and orange fishes are acceptable but red fishes made the idol sick and decreased the amount you had already given him, oh but did I mention the fishes leap out of the water giving you a fraction of a second to determine the colour and chose whether you can feed him or not, while this may not sound hard at all I can assure you it was and still is a tough challenge.

 

This was the final "Spyro" game in the trilogy and was undoubtedly the most critically acclaimed and longest one. In "Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon" players would find themselves seeking out the stolen dragon eggs which is a bit similar to the first game but instead of 80 statues this game had 150 -or 151 if you count the twins- eggs, making it last much longer than the first game as collecting the eggs was a mixture of finding them (varying in how easy they were to find), doing challenges for them and paying for them.

Just like the second game "Spyro 3" allowed players to swim, climb ladders and so on but this time they corrected their fault and allowed players to have those abilities right from the start and required no gems to purchase the skill.

Along with the third game new content came with it, new playable characters, new types of gameplay such as FPS, top down shooters etc and skateboarding areas were newly added into this game but they managed to get this right the first time without another game coming out and fixing the problems, this game is hard to fault with it was the best and sadly the last great Spyro game that was created.