Toys for Bob delivers another beautifully restored slice
of 90s nostalgia, although the mechanics could have also done with a
polish.
It's 9 o'clock on a Sunday evening, and after what feels like hours
of grinding, I'm seconds from throwing down my controller in absolute
disgust. It's all due to a toad: an irritating, wretched toad that won't
stop rolling around in all its remastered splendour over the TV screen -
and my poor purple dragon. This, of course, is a boss fight in the
remastered version of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, and like the rest of
the trilogy, the aging mechanics make you suffer. But god does it look
and feel wonderful.
Hot on the heels of last year's Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy,
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy is the latest attempt to feed the
near-insatiable demand for gaming nostalgia. If the title hadn't already
given it away, Reignited takes the three games from the original
trilogy - Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of
the Dragon - and gives them a fresh lick of paint. Aside from some
aesthetic changes, Reignited dutifully follows the level and gameplay
design of the originals practically to a T. It's effective at fanning
the flames of nostalgia, yet with this sense of familiarity comes the
weirdness mechanics long forgotten (with good reason). It's pleasant and
engaging at first, but I wonder whether Reignited is able to provide
sufficient motivation for players to replay it. Really, it's a tail of two halves.
For returning Spyro players, much of the joy of Reignited comes
from re-discovering familiar faces given a new and stylish twist. Gone
are the hard polygonal lines, and in are new, soft, Dreamworks-esque
designs. Frankly, I'm relieved that Spyro has finally been given the
makeover he deserves. Rather than the weirdly squashed face of his
Skylanders predecessor, he now wears a perpetually cheeky grin and
displays some charming quirks. If you leave Spyro alone for a little
while, he'll start licking his claws like a cat - while his dragonfly
companion Sparx will zoom up to the screen and give you a wink. This
sort of attention to detail extends to the wider environments, as
characters and enemies have been embellished with endearing animations.
When Spyro shoots out flames, the grass blackens and smoulders with
glowing embers. Enemies cheekily shake their butts at you, while
starfish you can kill to feed Sparx will dance with hearts in their eyes
as you approach, just to make you feel guilty as you slaughter them.
It's a world that feels alive and bustling, making exploration a
delightful aspect of the game. Reignited and it feels so good.
One of the few quibbles I have about the redesign is that the
softer look does remove some of the menace of the original Spyro
trilogy. It's now more kid-friendly, perhaps, but levels like Idol
Springs don't evoke the same sensation of impending doom as the early
PlayStation titles. Maybe that's just the necessary price of upgrading
the graphics, as you lose the implied nature of the low-polygon art
style, which often made monsters appear more terrifying. The
introduction of curves also seems to have extended a little too far for
playable character Sheila, whose design has already been criticised by
much of the Spyro community for the use of an excessively tiny waist and
addition of highly feminised features. It seems a bit unnecessary, and
frankly a little out of place, in what is otherwise an excellent art
style. This did not go down (unda) very well.
Beyond the re-discovery of treasured Spyro levels with new art
style, Reignited also succeeds at recreating (and perhaps improving) the
wanton destruction of the original games. Crashing around feels great,
and the charge mechanic manages to strike the balance between
maneuverability and the slightly out-of-control sensation of stampeding.
Mercifully, some of the old controls have received an update, as the
camera can now be rotated with the left thumbstick rather than right
trigger, which has been swapped to the flame mechanic. It feels
significantly more comfortable - although you also have the option to
change back to the retro controls should you want to do that, you
strange person.
An area in which the player has little choice but to
experience slightly dated features, however, is the guidance (or lack of
it) given throughout the Reignited Trilogy. It's a hangover from the
originals, but the tutorial system is a bit of a mess. Messages about
how to play appear in strange places, long after they would have been
useful to know during the gameplay. Some modernisation would also have
helped with signposting where, exactly, you're supposed to go at certain
stages of the game. At the end of the first world in Ripto's Rage, I
spent a considerable amount of time trying to find the place to take my
six talismans, before eventually stumbling across a corridor I'd missed
somewhere within the castle of the first world. The guidebook only shows
your progress in terms of a percentage and the amount of items you've
collected, so isn't particularly helpful if you get stuck. Thank god the
old Spyro guides are still relevant - but having to resort to this
isn't ideal, and some changes in terms of guiding the player would have
aided the situation.
Something that could have also done with some tweaking is the
game's difficulty, which seems to ricochet between too easy and almost
impossible. In classic Spyro fashion, many of the grunt-level enemies
can be defeated with a simple fire blast or charge, while flying levels
require pin-point accuracy and speed, and the bosses (including that
damned toad) are frustratingly punishing. Rather than presenting a fair
challenge, defeating Buzz felt like repeatedly banging my head on a
brick wall due to the limited hints given to guide the player. The
breakneck shift in difficulty, meanwhile, felt like I'd suddenly been
dropped into Dark Souls in the middle of a game of tiddlywinks.
Defeating this oversized toad was more relief than a triumph, and
unfortunately many of Reignited's bosses also fall prey to this pattern.
A major buzz kill.
In some ways, it's rather fascinating to see the game design of the
late 90s in a modern setting. The simplicity of rampaging around makes
for wonderfully mindless gameplay, but things can get a little stale,
even with the inclusion of power-up gates and flying levels. The main
motivation for players in Spyro games is item collection and speed,
which is great for completionists and speedrunners, but may not offer
much for those seeking inventive gameplay or gripping stories.
Collecting dozens of eggs gets incredibly repetitive, and with only the
occasional world boss to really break the pattern, the trilogy's
replayability is limited.
If you want a blast from the past, Spyro: Reignited Trilogy will
certainly stoke the fires of nostalgia. Thanks to its charming redesign
and smooth controls, exploring Spyro's world is a rather magical
experience for returning players, while its soft and welcoming
aesthetics could make this a hit with a new generation of youngsters.
And, importantly, it feels good to control. Yet once the
novelty wears off, I'm left without a burning desire to return - making
this an intriguing window into the way we used to play, but one which I
won't gaze through repeatedly.
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