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Tuesday 4 March, 2008
Gameplay
I have to say that despite all the drawbacks of this game, it still is a fun game, although maybe not quite as fun as the first three. I really enjoy solving puzzles and beating time trials, and all the things that Spyro games challenge you to do. I really just like completing these games 100% and Spyro games usually make it a little bit challenging at times, but it us definitely possible to beat everything. I didn’t get that far in this game, but I was engaged enough in the “I have to beat EVERYTHING” mentality that I got pretty far, which I think, in itself is a pretty good game design technique to show the player the percentage they have completed.
It did seem to me though, in this game that there were glitches that made this impossible to do everything. It could be because I hadn’t played very close attention to the narrative, but it seemed like there was a part where I was told that I could go fight Ripto, that where they told me to go didn’t do anything once I got there. I actually tried to restart the game and read it over again, and it might just me being lame but it really seemed like it was impossible to do, and that was really frustrating for me. It also seemed like there wasn’t much flow in this game, the whole “you can fight Ripto now” seemed to me like it came out of nowhere, like the game depended a lot more on you to work out the story on your own, which definitely bugged me. Even though I have a tendency to skip over the narration, it is still nice to have cut screens and everything, because it does give you a sense of flow, so all and all this game was pretty much a disappointment to me.
Design
The level designs on these games I think are always fantastic, very sweet and fun, and give you a lot of different creatures to fight, or to help. They also use the same “friends” as they do in all the Spyros. This game uses a good example of reward elements also, you collect lots of gems in each level as your short-term reward, and every once in a while you collect your major goals, the dragonflies themselves. The game also gives you incentives to collect all the gems, because you must use the gems every once in a while to give to the bear “Mr. Moneybags” and he will let you into new areas. This game also makes it relatively easy to stay alive, when you get hurt, Sparx turns a different color, and if you get hit enough, you will eventually lose a life, however there are little animals all over the levels that are harmless, but when you hit them they turn into butterflies for Sparx to eat and he regains his higher metered color.
I find the race against the clock challenges the most difficult, although it usually involves blowing fire on a bunch of objects, and so once you’ve done it a couple of times and find out where the items are, it is usually pretty easy to beat them. I have always sort of assumed that Spyro was aimed towards kids because the challenges aren’t usually as tough as similar platforms, like Crash Bandicoot (at least the original one), and in general they keep it very rated G in the game design, no blood, no real violence, or sexuality whatsoever. There really isn’t that much conflict in this game, you do blow fire or whatever at people to get gems, but it felt less conflict oriented then the other ones.
It really is the variation in level design that keeps this game fun, I thought a really cute element was in a snowy level, Spyro uses his ice breath to turn some of his little friends (don’t worry, the ice melts after a few seconds) into icicles so that he can progress through the level. It’s touches like these that make the game a lot of fun to play. That being said, the creativeness of this game was really hampered by all the annoying glitches and loading times of this game, it really did seem a bit ridiculous at times, and no matter how much I enjoyed the art design of this game, I hated the technical elements of this game.
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