Spyro the Dragon doesn’t exactly feel the same today as it did back when I was a kid. This is probably because it was an early 3D platformer that suffers from nostalgitus. See, back when I was a youth and I had finally moved from the 2D perfection that was the SNES to the new and experimental world of PlayStation I was willing to accept the flaws of games like Spyro because it was 3D and the graphics were “awesome.” Only now I’m in my twenties, poor, and am amazed as to how this game is not worth the ten bucks I paid for it on PSN.
A lot of 3D platformers were like this back in the day, their graphics were blocky but not unbearable but the controls were stiff and the gameplay was dull, and Spyro the Dragon was really dull. There’s never a feeling of increasing in skill and you rarely get any kinds of buffers to make you more powerful thus all the insentive is based around wanting to see the end of the generic (“Save all the dragons!”) story. Without a reason to want to play or any signs that I’m progressing aside from changes in scenery there’s not a lot of reason to want to play.
(Side Note: The same could be said about games like Noby Noby Boy, except for that particular game there is a clear goal based around community and expanding across the universe. Spyro the Dragon has pretensions towards being a more epic plot but with no insensitive to actually act upon it. Why do I care about these other dragons? Why don’t I feel more powerful than when I started?)
The positive side of Spyro the Dragon is that it did have some interesting gameplay ideas: using a dragonfly instead of a health bar, gliding to get to certain areas, being a fire-breathing dragon, etc. But they were all crushed by clunky controls and constant repetition without much reward, which many other similar games back at the time (Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie) did not have. It’s just a sign that the PlayStation was really a second place console for 3D platformers and nostalgia can be a very bad thing.
Yeah, I played it the other day and was just thinking the whole way through… “Didn’t this level go for longer?” or, “Wasn’t there something difficult i must have missed in that level?” or, “Wasn’t this place bigger” etc. etc. etc.
I beat the whole game in 2 days.
