Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Universal Interactive Developer: Universal Interactive Studios Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Platformer
Graphics & Sound: Well here it is. Universal Interactive's Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly is Spyro's first incarnation on PlayStation 2. Excited yet? Well, hold on a second before you get too worked up. Insomniac Games, the folks responsible for the previous Spyro games on the PSX, aren't the ones behind Spyro's latest excursion. For whatever the reason, Enter the Dragonfly is an extremely sub-par game and plays as if it was released before it was finished. I won't dive straight away into the game's problems. We'll start with the cosmetic stuff first, which isn't a real problem. While nothing's horribly wrong with the graphics in Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, there's nothing really special about them either; it's all pretty mundane. All the models and environments are crisp, clean, colorful, and attractive. Unfortunately they were all also pretty boring. There were no really impressive special effects and most of the texturing seemed pretty ho-hum. It looks like something out of a first generation title, something akin to Dark Cloud. While the graphics certainly aren't going to win Enter the Dragonfly any awards, it's sound is probably it's strongest point. The voice acting isn't horrible, but it's not top-notch either. The sound effects are interesting if a bit limited, and the music, well, the music is excellent. It's not something that will win a Grammy, but it's still well above par. The serene melody while you glide in the tranquil skies above the dragon dojo, or the catchy rhythms while you race bandits above pyramids of the thieves den, its all gravy.
Gameplay: Oops, we did it again. At times Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly plays something like a session of 'loadtime fun' with intermissions of 'gem collector 2000' in-between. The gameplay is pretty standard. You have a general 'world stage' from which you access the rest of the levels. Each level consists of nothing more than wandering around looking for gems and dragonflies. The levels are pretty much linear and have walking, jumping, and gliding from platform to platform. Each level also has 2 mini-game areas that can net you one or two more flies. Well, I'm going to complain about the gem collecting now. Most 3-D platform games have a lot of item collecting in them, but they also usually have a nice variety. Enter the Dragonfly only has two collectables, gems and dragonflies. There aren't really too many interesting ways to get the flies either; most of them are just out in the open. Also, while Sparx (Spyro's own personal dragonfly) does assist in gem collection (he'll fly out and bring back gems that are a few centimeters away), overall, collecting gems sucks and is very boring. Now, there being 700-900 gems in a level isn't a problem, until you realize that the majority are in one or two gem increments. I'd prefer working my brain to find higher value gems that are harder to find and not just an endurance test of getting 500 gems spread out all over the place. To top it all off, aside from a character wanting 200 gems in the first level, which is negligible when you realize that there's 7000 total gems in the game, the gems aren't even actually used for anything. The only purpose of gems is to get your score to 100 percent so that you can get the 'good' ending. As for the story, there's only a single cut scene between the opening and ending to push the plot forward, and it barely does that. Even the intro and ending seems rushed and very poorly written. The story was almost assuredly an afterthought, if it was finished at all. Oh yes, no bosses except the final one, even though all the cut scenes show the villain with some rather large and impressive looking minions at his side. 'yawn'
Difficulty: Always irritating, never innovative pretty much sums up Spyro: Enter the Dragon's difficulty. Now, if you don't care about getting 100 percent then the game is relatively simple since you don't have to worry about gems. None of the enemies present anything that would pose a challenge and, aside from the mini-game areas, the game is left as nothing more than a treasure hunt, which is fine I suppose, if you like treasure hunts. Your progression in the game is barred only by how many dragonflies you've found. None of these critters are really hard to find anyway, the levels are all pretty linear. As long as you can tell which platforms you can glide too and you don't let your eyes glaze over too much, you won't have any problems. Now if you want to get 100 percent, you may have a bit more trouble. Finding every little red gem in a stage can be extremely irritating and some of the 'clue phrases' to the dragonfly locations are just downright unhelpful.
Game Mechanics: The game mechanics in Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly are another of its problems. The control scheme is simple and effective, but the small 'hovering up' action you can perform at the end of a glide would have been better left as something to be used when you make a small mistake, and not a requirement to make most of the glides in the game. The two biggest problems that crop up are the load times and bugs. The load times are bad, very bad. Something long enough to be totally unacceptable in a PlayStation 2 game. With games around like Jak and Daxter which boast little to no load time, you can't have people waiting close to a minute to enter a level. Then there are the three bugs, two nasty and one irritating. The irritating bug crops up around the magical portals that lead to mini-games. The portals have a fairly loud and unique sound to them. Most of the time this sound stops when you walk away from them. Sometimes, however, the sound will keep playing most of the level. The lesser of the two nasty bugs is a camera bug. It didn't happen often but on two occasions, the camera decided it just didn't want to move anymore. So my perspective would just kinda sit there while Spyro walked off into the distance. Finally, be careful when you talk to people. On three occasions, the game would crash when I would initiate a conversation or even when Spyro would begin to do it automatically. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly isn't a very polished game. You can probably get some enjoyment out of it if you don't mind the extremely rough edges.
-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche
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