The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning

Before the Ratchet and Clank games, Spyro ruled the scene on Playstation. Spyro the Dragon dominated sales because of it's excellent gameplay, story and inspiring level design but once the Playstation 2 came out, Ratchet and Clank was Insomniac's main focus and they sold Spyro to Vivendi Games, owned by Universal. Vivendi Games was not well known for inspiring games, infact they were very new to the console gaming market. Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning is the first in a trilogy of games, which tried to reboot the franchise and as a Greatest Hit on PS2, it certainly did but was it actually a good game?

[FONT=&quot]Story[/FONT]

There is a prophecy that the purple dragon would defeat the Dark Master, a being that has wreeked havoc on the world of Dragons. He...or she found out about this prophecy and ordered his forces to attack the Dragon temple, in search of the purple dragon, who at this time was an egg. He was rescued by the guardian of fire, Ignitus. The egg was taken down a river, which led to a dragonfly village. He was then born and raised by dragonflies. He was bred up like a dragonfly and believed he was one of them until he breathed fire. He now is on his way to find out about his heritage, with his best friend Sparx. The story is pretty good but you can expect what will happen and Sparx can be annoying. Elijah Wood (Frodo from Lord of the Rings), as Spyro and Gary Oldman (Sirius Black from Harry Potter), as Ignitus succeed at telling the linear but well voiced story.

7/10

[FONT=&quot]Gameplay[/FONT]

Gameplay is kinda lacking and repetative because you have to face the same enemies all the way through. Baboon....after baboon....after baboon...AAAAAHHHH....and another baboon..... That's very annoying. There are also only 3 types of enemies in size. Small, medium and large. They don't become any harder throughout the game, which is irritating but you can get power ups on your special attacks and breaths. Throughout the game, you learn different elements, including fire and ice. There are quite a few varieties, in the powers. With fire, you can blow explosive bombs and with ice, you can blow ice shards. It's quite fun at the beginning but after a few hours, the game hits an iceberg.

There are different combos you can use and it's really cool, when you've got them in the air and then slamming them down to the ground. Sometimes, the gameplay goes into slow motion and it's funny when you see them flying in the air, slam them to the ground and then follow it with a fire bomb. As a result, you receive a very good feeling in the bottom of your stomach.

As said before you can upgrade special attacks and breaths by collecting white crystals from the enemies you defeat. This is how you tally up your experience. You start off with Spyro having a small amount of fire coming out of his mouth and then towards the end of the game, a raging inferno comes out of the little purple dragon.

The game is very boring in terms of gameplay but the added ability of getting upgrades helps the game become slightly interesting

5/10

[FONT=&quot]Sound[/FONT]

Another problem with A New Beginning is that sometimes the audio becomes dysfunctional and you can't hear fire coming out for example. Also the voice acting can't be heard over the music and enemy sound effects but you can tweak the audio on the options part of the game menu. The music is very boring and uninspired just enemy design. You cannot even notice the music in the background sometimes.

The sound quality is very poor and you can tell that the developers of The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning really have taken no effort into it's sound other than the hollywood actors taking part in the game. It is quite simply; herrendous.

3/10

[FONT=&quot]Graphics[/FONT]

The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning is very average. There are no sparks of great imagination or design on the levels. Everything is bland and uninspirational. The one thing that was impressive though, was when you look from the distance and see the faint image of a tower in the background, that I had been on fifteen minutes ago.

2/10
[FONT=&quot]
Replayability[/FONT]
The game's very short being 6-7 hours long. There is no incentive to play it once more because of the enemy design and story, being consistently boring. In earlier Spyro games, you had to revisit worlds to finish missions, collect rupies or to collect missing dragon eggs but in The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, the only incentive to carry on playing, after the story has finished, is upgrading your powers.

4/10

[FONT=&quot]This game is a shambles for the Spyro series. It has enraged many fans of the series and Vivendi Games has, arguably, ruined the series for gamers, who have played the original Spyro games on PS1.[/FONT]

21/50

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