Like most 90s-born gamers, Spyro was one of the first ever video games I’ve ever played in my life and when a remaster was announced I couldn’t wait to get it…Until it was only released for the PS4 and Xbox One. And then I had no choice but to wait.
Now its finally out and what do I do? Why, I take my Switch out to the park of course!
Nah that’s a lie. Its waaaay too cold for me to sit outside to game! S’cold, guys…
As soon as the music starts I felt like I was thrown back to 1998 except in everything is in HD. All three games were absolutely stunning and the reimagining of some characters was a delight for the child in me. Spyro doesn’t look as scary as he did before and Hunter looks lean and mean, and female characters – Elora, Shiela and Bianca look heaps better without their right angle bodies. Some people have an issue with the latter few’s new design being “too feminine and cutesy” but honestly I really don’t see it. Polygons be gone!
I’m not sure if anyone else had gotten triggered as soon as they heard the Egg Thief’s taunting, or as soon as they see Moneybags across the ways but I sure as heck did… And I enjoyed giving them both a good smacking all the same 😀
The controls still haven’t been updated and they’re as wonky as I remember. Everything was alright when I played Spyro the Dragon but when I got to playing Ripto’s Rage the controls started going a bit nuts causing me fall into the abyss/lava/purple goo and Game Over, whether or not I was docked. Then playing Year of the Dragon, everything was fine again. Saying that I’m confused is an absolute understatement.
Except when I got to flying levels or tasks… Controls automatically become inverted without prompt and I am not used to inverted-controls. I tried, but after failing again and again I gave up doing them all together.
Just remember to forget about your double-jumping instincts unless you’re using Shiela…
It seems that there hasn’t been any updates to the game since it was launched on PlayStation and Xbox – frame rate tends to drop significantly to the extent that you’re unable to get stuff done.
This is something I haven’t seen anyone talk about: the loading times. Whether its going from world to world or while “reigniting” (after you die), it really takes a long time to load. I can eat a whole bowl of cherries in the amount of time it takes to load. You would have thought that a remaster would include a little bit of modernisation or maybe have some updates after the initial launch to fix bits here and there but no…
There’s nothing much new that I can say that hasn’t already been said with the PS4 and XbONE versions, except that I absolutely love being able to bring around this classic game. Spyro Reignited is a reskinned version of the original with no hint of modernisation and sadly no updates to the problems found in the PlayStation and Xbox versions. The controls are the same, loading times similar sans scratchy disk sounds but it’s hard for me to put it down.
Playing Spyro felt like I was meeting with an old friend – they may look different but they’re still the same person inside. It was absolutely bittersweet.
Blaise gib dis game…
Three & a half stars!
Originally written for The AU Review. Review copy kindly provided by Activision. Screenshots are all mine tqvm 🙂
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Plug/Play by Blaise 