Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon review (X360)

Exciting, beautiful, majestic, fun, impressive and awesome are just a few adjectives I could think of off the top of my head that I would not have believed I would be writing about French developer Etranges Libellules’ Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon. I, like most gamers of my considerable old age, have become cynics. The very mention of a cute, cuddly videogame character in the Crash Bandicoot and yes, Spyro the Dragon ilk, makes me grit my teeth and shake my head at the games industry churning out pre-packaged garbage "aimed at kids" which is just cover for, "we don’t have to try as the little‘uns have no idea what’s good and what’s not."

So imagine my surprise when almost instantly I found myself marvelling at the graphical style and the quality of the voice acting in Legend of Spyro. And what an opening it is: a huge Golem make out of molten rock, screaming and flailing around wildly is attacking you. He’s so big he fills the screen. At the same time, you’re airborne, gliding across the map avoiding the ensuing hammer blow from your monstrous foe. Doesn’t sound bad, does it? It isn’t.

One of the best ways to describe Spyro’s graphical style is to compare it Rare, and that’s no insult. The environments are detailed, not only in terms of cracks in a wall, or moss on the floor, but the air space is full of life: if you’re in a cave, then fireflies and all manner of insects are floating around. When you’re outside in a lush, open, mountainscape, there are birds, butterflies, dragonfish swimming in the rushing stream. It really is a sight to behold.

Cynders goes to the ball

However, such backdrops would become mere distractions if your navigation through them was hindered by a poor control system: nothing is more frustrating than not wanting to put the effort in to explore your surroundings because of a poor control system. LoS both passes and fails this test. On the whole, flying, gliding and climbing is as straight forward as can be: one button to fly, the same to flap your wings and another button to grab onto something – dead easy. However, the fiddly bit comes when you really want to explore and have to use Cynder (or Spyro if you prefer her, just press LT to switch between them) as an aid.

For example, you can hang from a ledge as Spyro, swap to Cynder, and have her swing using the magic links that have welded you together across to a far reaching platform to your right, The reason that you can’t fly there yourself is well, because the game doesn’t want you to – sometimes it lets you fly high, others it adds an invisible ceiling meaning the only way to get where you want to go is to wall-climb. Now as I’m swinging with Cynder, I find that the trajectory length of the swing varies each time I push the left stick left and right. In fact, it never seems long enough for Cynder to be able to grab onto the platform that I’m trying to reach. Even explaining it is frustrating.

Another niggle – note 'niggle' – is that sometimes the play area is so open that it is quite easy to get lost and as there’s no frame of reference, no map, or mission objective page to remind you of exactly what it is you’re looking for, you’ll find yourself flying around in circles, scouring the map for something you might not have investigated thoroughly the first time around. A simple on-screen prompt would have done it or a reminder from Cynder when the game felt you were taking too long between objectives.

However, in Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, exploration is very rewarding. You can find life-ups, Mana-ups and experience crystals littered all over the game map. Some are hidden and some need to fight a very difficult Elite enemy to get at. The experience crystals add a certain RPG element to the game, as you have four elemental abilities, Earth, Electricity, Fire and Ice than can be strengthened and levelled-up, or not, as is your want. Armour can also be found that enhances certain aspects of combat, like stronger melée attacks, better defence, etc. The power-ups can be collected for both characters and as Cynder is a rather different beast to Spyro, the effects of her magic are rather different.

Rare quality?

Where Legend of Syro falls short is the combat: it's just repetitive. Although, there are combos to learn, you’ll never really need them. Simply mashing X and Y is enough to see you through most battles, which there are plenty of. Also, the fact that there are so many enemies of the screen all getting hits in, could discourage the young, target audience as although beside each battleground there are health crystals the you can use, I feel they will die a lot. However, as a counter-weight to that argument, it must be said that dying is pretty inconsequential as you simply start again with more health, so you’re never really punished at all.

So to sum up I would say that Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon is much better than I could have possibly imagined. That doesn’t however elevate it to greatness, but it does show that the game was a real labour of love for Etranges Libellules. It isn’t perfect, and the repetitive nature of the combat really can grind at times, but if you liked Rare’s Kameo but thought it was let down for being too shallow and not enough platforming then you really shouldn’t be looking any further. However, given the plot heavy nature of the game and the sometimes finicky control-system, I wouldn’t be buying this for small children either but with the great graphics, amazing soundtrack and beautiful environments, it’s a fantasy world everyone should at least have a romp around in, if only for while.