The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning review

Note: these images are from the PS2 version of the game.

Ah, Spyro.

It's hard to get away from the general feeling that as competent as Vivendi's pet dragon may be, he can't seem to escape a rut of predictability when it comes to his games. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that; being predictable often means bringing a sense of comfort and safety. For Spyro's younger target audience, this is something that can't be taken for granted. But at the same time, the lack of invention has led to stagnation and diminishing returns, which culminated in a rather dejected response after the poor effort that was Spyro's last DS outing; Shadow Legacy. So A New Beginning is an attempt at exactly what it says: forging a fresh direction for the ickle fire breathing lizard. And in some ways it succeeds.

Some.

Fighting fire with cliché

For a new beginning, it's sad to see the storyline failing to escape the hackneyed pitfall of travelling down a worn narrative path. A fresh origin it may be, but in essence the story opens as a classic 'displaced nurture/nature' plot a la Mowgli in The Jungle Book (of if you will, parts of The Bible), with a large dose of 'chosen one' foreshadowing dripped in. Due to the instructions of the Dark Master -for he is Evil- all dragon eggs have been ordered to extinction. Red dragon Ignitus manages to escape with the last remaining egg carrying a pre-birth Spyro, and sends it down the river. It's eventually picked up by a family of dragonflies, who hatch the egg and raise Spyro as one of the own.

Fifteen years later, Spyro realises he's four times bigger than his parents and brother, Sparx, and can breathe fire. Puberty, eh. So with his dragonfly sibling, he sets off to find out the truth of his past, stumbling across a grizzled Ignitus who teaches him more of The Force... erm, sorry, his dragon powers and the threat of the Dark Master's disciples, including a dangerous black dragon by the name of Cynder who's planning to bring Voldermort... oh crap, I mean the Dark Master back into the real world. While capturing the remaining dragons and destroying their lands. Oh, almost forgot, there's also a prophesy that one dragon will eventually rise and... well, I'm sure you can guess the rest.

Yes, new beginning, old storylines. Just to underline it all, the six worlds that Spyro must travel through each has a different theme, like ice, lava, electricity and rock. Each land provides new elemental powers to learn and a boss to fight in order to free the imprisoned dragon. Hmm.

Burning hot

Despite this blazing trail of unoriginality, the ever important first impressions of A New Beginning are pretty spectacular. The story is beautifully presented, with full FMV, high quality Hollywood acted (Gary Oldman and Elijah Wood, to name a couple) voice-overs and suitably dramatic, fantasy styled music. While all these things come in small doses once the game starts proper, the excellent production values are a welcome addition to the DS iteration of the franchise.

The game itself is lush and vibrant, with small but well-animated 3D models in an isometric style pre-rendered environment. There are slight problems where a lack of definition makes it difficult to discern perspective and what's elevated or not, which can make exploration and the occasional platform a frustration, but otherwise Spyro is a visually attractive title.

The sound effects are equally well done, making each environment appear to be teeming with life. Although their frequency gets a tad obnoxious at times, there's no denying its ability to immerse you in the game world. Sadly, as polished as the presentation is, there's a large dose of reality that comes with it as you progress.

Out of the frying pan...

A New Beginning is very action driven. There are a few touch-screen reflection-based puzzles to engage in, which are well done, but for a bulk of the nine hours of play-time you guide Spyro around the numerous environments, battling baddies and collecting items. Also, the boss battles are 3D on-rails dogfights that manage to keep things varied. It's all very well intentioned, but suffers one glaring issue that manages to persist throughout each part of the game: bad design.

Almost every section of A New Beginning is plagued by a poor decision that keeps it from being as fun as it could have been. The battle system is terribly flawed, for a start. It uses a lock-on targeting cursor which is a good idea, but often clumsy and unreliable when it comes to multiple enemies. Worse, there's an occasional stiffness when it comes to registering your button presses, while baddies take advantage of some dodgy collision detection that can have your attacks miss them as they hit you.

It only gets more frustrating. Item destruction and puzzles require touch-screen activation, but for that you need to change grips on the DS, which is not only uncomfortable but deadens the pace of the game. It may be easier for users of a DS Lite, but anyone still lumbered with the original and more unwieldy first DS 'brick' model may find themselves irritated by certain sections which require a change of hand positions every few minutes. Things aren’t helped by wave after wave of enemies who must be defeated to advance certain areas. With the bad collision detection, battles soon become a chore, but you can't escape them. And during the rare times you CAN avoid them, there's sometimes a touch-screen puzzle to deal with. So you're having to fend off opponents while trying to change grip to do the puzzles. Not very well thought-out.

Doused with cold water

Even something as basic as tutorials come with a slap in the face, as they're occasionally unclear and will leave you in the dark if you try getting ahead of yourself, making it difficult to continue unless you figure out what you've done wrong. This is certainly true of the puzzles, where early experimentation will make the game ignore you should things accidentally go off track. So you're left having to experiment your way back out of it, bucko.

Learning Spyro's large number of abilities is further lumbered with the caveat that you gain too many moves at one time, with no gradual spacing to allow you to become slowly proficient. Instead you get flooded and then end up going through them almost randomly in an attempt to try each out in battle. Irritatingly, some are made almost ineffectual by the uneven collision detection anyway.

All of which makes the average play through an annoyance. Which is actually quite tragic, as when it's not so dunderheaded, A New Beginning is fun and has some novel ideas. It's just difficult to see past the poor design choices that hinders so much of the game.

An old ending

The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning is a step in the right direction. It's just plagued with mistakes that make it an uneven ride of missed chances. What makes it all the more galling is that it's presented so beautifully and uses the touch-screen in enjoyable ways. But all the sugary coating and good ideas can only go so far if the execution is damaged. And in that vital area, Spyro's attempt to bring the heat is left barely lukewarm.