The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon

"A fifty dollar gamble that paid off."

So, being done with Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, I have decided to put my thoughts down on paper on it. I will avoid as many spoilers as possible, as the only other person I know who has this game would murder me in my sleep if I did (you know who you are). With that in mind, let's get rolling.

Gameplay-wise, the game did well. Switching between Cynder and Spyro was easy, and the controls were mapped out pretty intuitively. X for light attack, Y for heavy, RT for element, RB for secondary element, LT to switch, LB to block, A to jump/fly, B for interaction. When you actually play, it works together well. The camera was uncooperative at times, though. Flying was something that took a bit of getting used to, but ultimately proved to be easy.

Flying at any time and for as long as you liked was proudly displayed as a feature on the back of the box, but when put into practice, wasn't quite what I expected. When I saw unlimited flight at any time, I expected to be able to fly around in the skies, seeing what was inside clouds, playing "Pigeon," and occasionally divebombing a baddie and shoving fire up his ass. What we got was skimming the ground. It's quite a sight to see a pair of majestic dragons flying a few hundred feet in the air, pulling some Blue Angels stuff, playing "Grab-Tail," or just cruising. It's quite another to see two majestic dragons flying about ten feet up. Some would say "terrifying."

Anyway, being a co-op game, there's a story reason for Spyro/Cynder being unable to be more than ten feet apart, keeping players from just running hither and yon and keeping the AI from chasing a stray butterfly when lava monsters are trying to rip your horns off. Unfortunately, it's not online co-op, so you can't join a friend across the world for a friendly jaunt of ruining people's junk.

I should mention here that the bosses, as a whole, were piss-easy. I only died at all because of me not paying attention to my health bar. I had more trouble with some of the regular baddies (Don't start me on the Super Elites. Those guys are just overpowered.)

Back to the AI, the enemy AI is simple: See Player(s), kill they ass. Allied AI, however, is just plain stupid. They'll only really do something when there's a switch or something that needs both of you (and there's a lot of those). This is negated somewhat by the ability to switch characters on the fly, but doesn't prevent said AI from being thick. I've actually given nicknames to both Spyro and Cynder (Frodo and Tails, respectively. I've mostly been calling for Mr. Frodo. ^+^) They will stand there and pick their nose while you busy yourself trying to suck up as many enemies as possible in a giant whirlwind and trolls knock you clean across the level. They will tail you everywhere, messing up a good idea you had if the AI would cooperate.

In the graphics corner, we have some lovely environments to traipse about in. I should mention a this point that the game also came out for PS2, a console that should have died long ago.

The environments themselves have good variety, ranging from underground caves to meadows and grasslands to the depths of Mordor (I'm sorry, the "Burning Lands"). All of them are fairly linear and contained (the aforementioned flight ceiling, along with invisible walls), but still big enough I sometimes wish for a map. The textures on these things are very good, from cooled magma rock to the grass. This is not to say they couldn't be better.

When we get to the characters' looks, though, is where the game stumbles. All the dragons in the game seem to look like they're perpetually smiling, something I'm not entirely opposed to, but I am opposed to their teeth. Or lack thereof. Instead of teeth, every dragon has a solid white plane where teeth should be, and that actually makes me think they forgot to put a tooth texture in. I can't see any designer in their right minds saying "Nah, the players will never notice that pretty much everyone has a stripe for teeth!" I mean really, look at the Halo 2 Elites. Their teeth were also not much more than a plane attached to a mandible, but they at least put a fragging teeth texture on it! It really makes the main villain less intimidating to see that.

The characters also tell me that this game was built for the PS2. I expected a scale texture on all of the dragons, not what amounted to some glisten. Seriously. A bump map for the scales. They look reptilian, but those scales would make them look better, I think. As they are, they look cartoony.

Hunter looks good, though. Again, more effort could have been applied, but he looks much better.

As far as story goes, this game is itself the third part of a trilogy from my understanding, and I never played the other two. But this was never really a hindrance to me. The game never lost me (okay, maybe a little whenever Malefor was talking, but more on him later) or made me wonder what in the burning hells I was doing (I'm looking at you, Devil May Cry 4). I can't help but feel that, in some way, not playing the first two games of this trilogy actually enhanced this one. Take the Star Wars series for example. Lucas started off with 4,5,6, and we were only told a few key events of what had happened before. It left the imagination to wander, to imagine what exactly transpired to turn the galaxy from not a bad place to cesspool in a matter of twenty years. It works here, too, as we're told key events, but not given precise details of said events. Cynder herself is an example of this. We're told a few things about her, but no flashbacks to it or details, giving her a Vader-like quality in my mind.

There's also a love subplot in there, which games seem to have to have now by law or something, and we never really see it exposed to us very much, like Force Unleashed. Unlike TFU, however, I can see this one working. It's not really shoved down our throats, but this is a case where actions speak volumes. We were never told how close Frodo and Sam got on the journey to Mt. Doom, but simply being on such a journey, with no one but each other to rely on, they became brothers in the end. I'm not saying it's the same here, but the journey is the same kind of thing, and I can see that forging a deep bond. There are moments where it's shown more clearly than others. In TFU, it was two breathing humans contractually obligated to be in love.

As far as the main story, it was half decent, even if it reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings (get to chapter 4 and tell me with a straight face that it doesn't look oh-so-much like the siege of Gondor.) It has moments where it's done well, but it also has moments where I can't take it seriously at all. *insert "Why So Serious?" here* The art style doesn't help this at all. The Spongebob Squarepants movie was a more serious story than we normally get with Spongebob, but it worked because the story was built around the traditional Spongebob framework of wacky antics and immature humor. It managed to find the balance between being funny and being serious at the same time. Spyro's story is simply too serious for the art style it has. Sparx is a valiant attempt at lightening it up, but just doesn't quite cut it.

At last, we roll up to audio. I'm not going to say much about the music here, other than it did its job well enough that it didn't irritate me. Sound effects are the same. But let's jump to the voice actors.

Wondering why I made so many references to LotR? Spyro is voiced by Elijah Wood, possibly better known as Frodo Baggins. Honestly, I think he does a very good job in that capacity, and I now believe that that is Spyro's voice. Like Robert Downey Jr. really sold us Tony Stark, Mr. Wood sells us Spyro (there are some lines I would have done differently, but... *shrugs*)

Malefor is next, and he is voiced by Mark Hamill, better known to nerds as Luke Skywalker (or possibly The Joker). My first thought on hearing Malefor speak was, "That sounds nothing like Mark Hamill." They distorted his voice quite a bit in an attempt to create an extremely evil voice, but would up making him unintelligible. Seriously, I only caught maybe, 70% of what he was saying. Maybe less. Malefor has very few lines in the game, and has some plot-specific lines toward the end, but I missed most of them. Next run through, I'm turning on subtitles when I know he's going to speak.

Now we hit Cynder, voiced by Christina Ricci (I might have spelled that wrong.) I'm still not 100% sold on that voice coming from Cynder's mouth (her appearance gives me a vibe that her voice should have been an octave or so lower.) I think she could have tried a bit harder, but I didn't find her irritating.

Next up, Spyro's sidekick, Sparx, played by Wayne "Does Wayne Brady have to choke a *****?" Brady. It works. I can see this voice coming from Sparx' mouth.

There are moles with British accents. Make of that what you will.

And now, the elder dragons. For the most part, they sound okay for the few lines that they have, but I could really see Patrick Stewart and/or Sean Connery voicing two of them. As they are, they sound like stereotypical old men.

For all the flaws I just mentioned and the mediocrity of many parts of it, I found it did extremely well in one special capacity: entertainment. No matter what, it was always entertaining to me in some way, even if I inserted Duke Nukem quotes, internet memes (300, shoop da whoop ), or calling the AI names, it never really stopped being fun. And that forgives a good bit in my book.

Final verdict: I'd say that was worth my fifty bucks.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/08

Game Release: The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (US, 10/21/08)