The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night (DS)
It's been many a year since I've played a Spyro game, the last one being Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer back in 1999. The series obviously has maintained a decent level of popularity as next year marks the tenth year in the business and you only have to ask Bubsy the Bobcat how hard that is to achieve. Now I have a little place in my heart for Spyro. OK so it may have got labelled a kids game due to the cutesy graphics but it was very popular with past girlfriends who up until they played Spyro had little interest in games. That was because it was accessible and interesting. I, myself enjoyed the little Dragon's adventures so when I was asked to review the new game for the DS I was genuinely quite excited. Eight years have passed since the last one I played and Spyro has been passed from Insomniac Games (those responsible for the critically acclaimed Rachet and Clank series) to Krome Studios (who are responsible for a bunch of games I've never heard of) and has gone via many other games designers. Can Krome continue the magic whilst evolving the game?
Before I even slipped the cartridge in, I took the unusual step of handing it over to my young cousin, Thomas, to get a child's perspective on the game. Cue much irritation on his part, complaining of several things before reaching for the manual. "Oh dear," I thought. Let's be honest, how many of us have ever reached for a manual on a game before? That gives me the impression that things were not being explained properly. After a half hour's play, he put it down and described the games as, "puzzling but in need of more action." To be totally honest, I think he was being a bit too kind.
Firstly let's take a look at the graphics and I know there will be many of you thinking that a fully three dimensional game on the DS would be worthy of praise but within a few seconds of play I witness a horror I haven't experienced since the early games on the Playstation 2. Graphical fog. For those who don't know what that is, graphical fog was a trick used in early 3D games to hide the fact that the gaming engine couldn't show all of the scenery at once, therefore the fog covered the areas they couldn't show. I could understand it in the early Playstation days - but not now. Not since the DS has already produced a picture perfect version of Mario 64. There's no excuse for things like this.
The fog does one other thing too - it makes the game look even gloomier then it would normally, which is pretty gloomy. There really is very little to write home about.
Now let's move onto the sound which is probably the one decent point of the whole game. Real speech is very impressive on the DS and is in right from the word go and the music sets the mood very well. Sound effects too are pretty good.
Now we move onto gameplay and here's where things really go downhill. First there are the enemies which have several problems. Some of them are regular but others just randomly appear out of thin air which wouldn't be a problem accept the 3D camera often doesn't show enemies that have appeared behind you until they're feasting on your tail. There's also another of my top gaming peeves, regenerating enemies. You spend time beating an enemy only to have it regenerate only seconds after you've killed it. So what's the point of killing it in the first place? To make matters worse, if you run away from them they will chase you before eventually disappearing into ash. What happened to them? Have they got some kind of fatal form of asthma?
Every so often you have to complete a puzzle which takes you to what looks a physics experiment. You have to direct light onto beacons by using mirrors which will destroy boulders that are blocking your path. What I don't understand is why? The puzzles seem so detached from the Spyro universe that you temporarily feel you're playing a different game. Which would be good if it didn't slow the game down even further.
Speaking of slowing the game down, let's talk about the various attacks. Spyro's a Dragon so obviously he has the ability to breathe fire but unfortunately, he can only breathe fire for a short period of time. Maybe he suffers from the same asthma problem as everyone else? So if you run out of fire, you have to rely on Spyro's charge attack which is far weaker and thus takes far longer to do the job. You can knock some enemies up in the air where you follow a specific pattern with the Stylus to do extra damage. It sounds cool but consider it is the only purpose the Stylus has, it's just another reason to slow the game down whilst you pull it back out of its holster. Add that to the regenerating enemy problem and my language got worse and worse.
Am I finished? Oh no. Let's have a look at the first boss fight which was me against a large orange dragon whose only attack was a headbutt that was so telegraphed I could have got up, made a coffee, sat back down and still avoided the attack. I charged at it, I tried jumping on its head and I breathed fire at it. I also proceeded to die seven or more times as after hitting every part of its body I decided I must have to hit the head in some way to kill it. I gave it one more try just hitting it everywhere. All of a sudden, out of the blue, it took damage. Thinking I'd discovered a weak spot, I attacked again but sadly it had no effect. The weak spot just moved at random with no explanation making killing a, quite frankly, terrible boss incredibly long winded.
About now I'd start talking about lifespan but I'm going to be honest with you here - I've stopped playing it. I have better things to do with my time such as playing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass which coincidentally is what all DS owners should be doing right now anyway. What you have to consider is I played this game whilst driving on the M4 to Reading (I wasn't driving I hasten to add - I'm not that skilled a gameplayer) in the most horrendous hailstorm I've ever witnessed and I spent the majority of the time trying to get to a save point because the weather conditions were more interesting then the game. Sad thing was I realised later you continue from whenever you turn off which is a shame as I lost the ability to claim half an hour of my life back.
Now in reality, this game is probably worth a two out of five because it is playable. Just. However, I'm going to make a stand here. What Krome have managed to do here is take an absolute classic and turn it into something a little less enjoyable then History GCSE homework and that is scandalous. Universal Studios need to go on their hands and knees back to Insomniac and beg them to save this series before it's too late.
I give it 1/5
Johnny James
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