The original games on the PS1 were developed by Insomniac, which since those days has moved on to bigger and better games. Now, the franchise is owned by Vivendi Universal, and the latest game is being put together by the fellas at Krome Studios. It’s easily one of the biggest games to have been handed to an Australian studio, not far behind the likes of Melbourne House's Transformers. And so far, things are looking alright for gamers. The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning takes the series back to the beginning, and looks like going to a lot of effort to explain Spyro’s origins. Basically, the land of the Dragons is under siege, and there's only time for one of the dragon eggs to be saved. That egg happens to be Spyro’s and, in true Moses style, is sent down a river. He happens to be found by a family of dragonflies and thus the (new) adventure begins.
You'll start off by bug burning.
We began with the obligatory tutorial, which took us through the necessary motions. You learn most of your basic moves as you chase Sparx, the dragonfly who will be accompanying you throughout the game. The X button will be your melee attack, Circle your fire attack and Triangle jump. For the most part, we were walking a linear path while fighting off hordes of enemies. While the game is obviously catering for the lower-age demographics, the fighting was solid and had a decent variety of moves to keep things interesting. However, things were quite easy, with the enemies often dropping generous health and magic power-ups, and with Sprax always on hand to show which way to go.
For the portion of the game we played, we followed the path that was laid before us, which happened to be a forest. Hence, we’re not sure whether the game is split into levels, but a cut-scene did lead us into each objective. Spyro started off its life as a pseudo 3-D platformer, not unlike the older Crash games or the predecessors to games like Jak. However, there wasn’t that much platforming in the actual game. We wondered into the pause menu to find a level-up screen and room for six powers, though we didn’t get a chance to find them. Regardless, the game played quite well and the combat was, at the very least, solid.
And make your way to bigger bugs.
One area of the game that was very impressive was the amount of effort put into the presentation. Despite being an unfinished PS2 build, the game looked quite fantastic. The character models were especially detailed and well made, and although the environments weren’t quite as finely detailed, they boasted a size element that made them feel vast. Parts of the story were conveyed through a wonderfully stylistic story book, and the voice-work was impressive, with talents such as Elijah Wood, David Spade, Gary Oldman and more taking part. That, and the sound track was suitably composed thus far.
Whilst we only spent about an hour with A New Beginning, it’s shaping up fairly nicely. OK, so it’s not going to revolutionise the gaming world, and there's certainly some accommodating of the younger demographics here. But at the very least, we expect the game will provide a solid and enjoyable experience for gamers across all age groups. We were quite pleased to see that Krome is handling the game quite well and, if all goes to plan, it could be the real return that the few remaining fans have been waiting for.
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