The latest instalment to the Legend of Spyro trilogy, Dawn of the Dragon, will give you some things to look forward to but on the other hand, it will give you much of the same basic linear gameplay that you will have already encountered in previous games of the series.

Continuing on from “The Eternal Night” the young purple dragon finds himself in search of the evil Dark Master, Malefor. Throughout his quest, he will be joined by his ally and former enemy, Cynder, and will also bump into a few familiar faces such as Hunter the Tiger. As you progress through the game, you will unlock lots of combat upgrades and armour for both Spyro and Cynder. These prove themselves very important as some enemies you will encounter later on in the game will be quite difficult to beat.

The games seems as though it is partly based around scenes from The Lord of the Rings as you will fight huge fire breathing daemons in the underground mines and you will even take part in a battle similar to the ones in the films where you need to destroy all of the siege towers to save the city stronghold.

Melee combat is one of the biggest factors in the game. With small enemies you are able to hit them into the air and then smash them around a bit but with larger foes you will need a bit more skill and will need to evade and block their attacks. The fighting system is not rewarding enough to make it completely worthwhile. It gets repetitive, boring and tedious and you will begin to lose interest in it very quickly.

Both Spyro and Cynder are able to use their elemental fire powers in the game.

Spyro:

Fire

Electricity

Ice

Earth

Shadow

Poison

You can further develop these powers in the game once you have enough point to gain a rank. You are only able to use these powers id you have enough Mana. You can collect Mana by smashing green crystals and by defeating most enemies.

You are also able to fly around much more in this game rather than having to glide everywhere like in previous games. This gives you more freedom of movement and you can get around faster this way. In many levels you are given a task to complete before you can progress any further through the game. Usually you have to figure out what to do yourself and it can sometimes take a while. Sometimes you will be wandering around for ages before you find out what to do. Upon completing this task, you feel more relived rather than fulfilled.

The game will probably take you around 10-20 hours to complete and you can play through the story mode by yourself or you can do it co-operately with up to 2 players through the convenient drop in, drop out method. The only problems with this are that you have to stay within a certain distance of each other. If you choose to pay through it alone, you can switch play between the 2 dragons and the other one is controlled by the AI. Occasionally this becomes problematic as you computer player may become stuck and you will have to go backwards to fix this issue.

There are plenty of environments such as volcanic lava pits and magical forests which are all filled with vibrant colours to create a vivid fantasy world. Unfortunately you cannot always make the most of them due to the lack of camera rotation. This can become annoying especially when you are in the middle of combat. Graphics are not spectacular and you will see some sharp edges on characters and objects which could do with some polishing up. Fortunately this can be backed up by the good voice acting of spyro by Elijah Wood as well as a few other characters.

Spyro games were at their peak when the classic platforming games were released on the original Playstation just over a decade ago. Since then they have gone downhill and don’t offer the same standard of gameplay as their ancestors have. Hopefully this will be something we can look up to for Spyro’s next appearance.

+ Easy to use co-op system.

+ Nice looking gameplay environments.

+ Elemental powers a great to use.

- Occasional AI glitch.

- Combat can be inconsistent.

- Bad camera angles and control.

6.0/10

By Ian Ratledge Posted Saturday, March 14th, 2009 6:32 pm