Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night

1. Official Site
2. Platform: PS2
3. Publisher: Sierra
4. Developer: Krome Studios
5. Release Date: 10/30/07
6. Genre: Platform

by Mitch Youngblood

I’ll admit it has been a long time since I played a "Spyro" game, so much so that I found myself astonished to see Wendys has a promotion going on for the character. Apparently, Spyro hit the big time when I wasn’t looking.

The latest platformer featuring his visage bears little resemblance to the original colorful and charming world I recall from the first game. Spyro is the little dragon who could and must now confront a growing menace to the dragon universe while searching for a lost femme fatale of sorts. The result is a series of levels shrouded in darkness before eventually brightening up, a metaphor if ever there was one for the game in question.

The graphics pleasantly surprised me considering how one-note they are at first glance. The majority of the game takes place under cover of the titular Eternal Night so one might assume everything would be dark and gloomy as befits the subject matter. Imagine the shock of seeing brightly colored plants and other vegetation as well as detailed enemies who bring the pastels along with the fury.

The character models for Spyro and the enemies are fairly blocky and one-note though, so if you’re expecting Gears of War then look elsewhere. Without resorting to cell shading, an effective though overused technique in my opinion, the developers managed to craft a world and characters that all sparkle with personality. It looks a little rough around the edges though, and I experienced significant slow down whenever tons of enemies were on screen at once, but overall the game looks good.

By "good" I mean "passable yet colorful."

Elijah Wood struck me as an odd choice to voice Spyro, but he does an excellent job. It never seems as though he is sitting around reading a script in order to get through it. He infuses Spyro with a quiet and reserved dignity and gives Spyro, more than anything else, a genuine soul. Regrettably, he’s countered by Billy West who is atrocious as Spyro’s "wacky buddy" Sparks. West has to deliver some of the absolute worst dialog in an attempt to be wacky and funny for, one presumes, the kids in the audience. He isn’t as annoying as Jar-Jar but he comes dangerously close.

Gary Oldman voices the dragon Ignitus, Spyro’s mentor and leader of the dragon clan, and he brings a well filled with gravitas to the role. Ignitus may not appear frequently, but his presence is felt throughout. So too is the role of The Chronicler, an ancient dragon who speaks to Spyro via dreams. Martin Jarvis does an absolute spot-on imitation of Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings, so much so that I continue to believe McKellen performed the role under a pseudonym.

The sound effects are largely recycled from the previous game with Spyro’s breath attacks, combat moves, and footsteps all sounding appropriate. There isn’t much more to say about this seeing as how the majority of the game is Spyro fighting through a mission to reach an all important cut scene which Sparks promptly blathers all over in his further futile attempts at comedy. The rest of the voice acting is stellar, but if there was a chance in the first mission where Spyro could eat and/or roast his sidekick the game would be better for it. I’ll hold out hope for the sequel.

The controls are easy to pick up and run with so we’ll go over those first before discussing why the score is low. Controlling Spyro and the camera via the left and right thumbsticks, respectively, follows basic gaming conventions. Spyro’s breath attack is fired by hitting the square button, jumping is performed by hitting the X button, his melee attack is the circle button and his element-specific special attack is the mapped to the triangle button. You kick off Spyro’s Dragon Time by hitting the L1 button and ignite his special “destroy everything in sight” move by hitting the R2 button once a certain meter is filled. You select which element Spyro uses by hitting one of the directional buttons.

All of this is very basic, but the camera is a massive pain in the neck. Far too frequently, players will try to rotate the camera around to see what is in front of them only to find the camera stuck on the neighboring terrain. It doesn’t pass through trees or bushes or anything else, and it gives one the impression that Spyro is nothing more than a rat trapped inside a colorful maze. Combine this with the camera’s slow response time while Spyro is under attack, and sometimes he’ll be knocked off a cliff you never saw coming.

I’ll say one thing for The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night – it keeps you guessing throughout. At one point early in the game, I goaded it for repeating a boss so early on only to realize a second later I hadn’t reached the boss yet. Once that level is completed, Spyro finds himself kidnapped by pirates and forced into a gladiator arena, at which point I realized that trying to anticipate future levels would be an exercise in futility.

This is, of course, a very good thing.

The basis for the game is the standard platform modus operandi where you jump throughout a level trying to simultaneously ward off enemies and vertigo, but this title seems a bit more focused on combat than it should be. Spyro may look like a dragon, but he kicks like a Prince of Persia ninja. In addition to his arsenal of claw-to-claw combat moves, he learns four earth-based magic attacks through the course of the game.

Spyro first learns fire, naturally, then picks up ice and then it becomes obvious that he will learn whatever power is needed to complete the next level. It seems as though the platforming aspect of Eternal Night was almost an afterthought because throughout each level Spyro must constantly fight, spray fire, and fight some more only to jump across a few moving platforms to fight yet another battle.

One might consider this repetitive but in a surprising twist the game is actually sort of fun. I wouldn’t go so far as to heartily endorse it for kids primarily because it is far too easy to become surrounded by enemies where your only recourse is to spam the combat buttons hoping their life bars run out before yours. Oh, and while you’re surrounded by enemies fighting for your life, the camera has a nasty tendency to get stuck on the rather narrow levels.

Even when Spyro is supposedly fighting out in the open, the level feels very claustrophobic. Everything is built in such a way as to force Spyro along a specific path, but there are better ways of doing this than funneling him through a gussied up cattle chute. Yet in spite of the game’s shortcomings, I found myself genuinely intrigued by his journey and the chance to find out where everything was headed. It was even fun hunting down the collectible magic quills which unlock pieces in an art gallery, and leveling Spyro’s powers up throughout the game. We have all played this sort of game before, probably more than a few times, but this one is actually a cute and fun title for the holiday season.

This Spyro may not have a large amount of replay value, but it remains consistently fun throughout to ensure a solid gaming experience. Add to that collecting well-hidden items scattered across each level along with (for the most part) solid fighting mechanics, and this is a genuinely neat game to play through. It isn’t groundbreaking, nor is it particularly epic in scale. But I for one had fun playing it and I suspect you may as well.

I found myself surprised to enjoy The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night and found it to be a fun title. It may be classified as a platformer but that is not an accurate description. This is definitely an action oriented title which also happens to feature a sizeable amount of platform hopping. If you can get past the hiccups and slight annoyances, you’ll find a game that is fun to play.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what this hobby is all about?

Gaming Trend Score

84

1. Graphics: 84
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 80
4. Gameplay: 84
5. Value/Replay: 87
6. OVERALL:84