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 (Not to be confused with Spyro: Enter Da Superfly)
AWFUL GAMING
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
Developer - Equinox Digital Entertainment/Check Six Studios
Publisher - Universal Interactive
Genre - Platformer
Year - 2002
System - Playstation 2/Gamecube
Back in the mid-90s of platformers trying to be Mario with the personalities that furries and DeviantART would later embrace for years to come in various adorable/creepy/sexual ways, there were mainly two big characters that dominated this. Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot (interestingly both published by Universal Studios Interactive, perhaps intentional then).
Spyro and Crash both offered different kinds of platforming, each having their own equally large fanbases, with Spyro probably in the end becoming the winner thanks to the recent reboot in The Legend of Spyro games by Sierra.
The original developers, Insomniac Games, soon got tired of Spyro and went on to make Ratchet & Clank. And so Universal gave Spyro away to other developers. And let's just say, in the case of this game, Spyro was very cruelly abused.
At least the DeviantART members and furries do things to Spyro because they like him and at least the things they write and draw of him have more canon than this game ever will. But these developers, they don't give a fuck, so let's see how much they don't give of a fuck truly.
Story - The dragons are celebrating (sorta I guess) for not only the rite of passage for young dragons but also for the Grand Dragon Parade, with the coming arrival of new dragonfly guardians for the young ones to soon have their own health meters. But then all of a sudden Ripto from the second PS1 game bursts in with as much welcome and confusion as Andross in Starfox Adventures.
He wrecks the party (as well as the hopes of having a proper storyline) and heads off to capture the new dragonflies to weaken the young dragons like some kind of life-stealing Grinch.
 ("O hai can I come in and act like a total fucking REEEEEETAAAAAARD!?!?And look like one too? And be called Riptard?")
But then he fucks up with his spells and the dragonflies get scattered throughout the Dragon Realm. But he has the intelligence of a Saturday Morning villain and after his own minion has to tell his master that he fucked up, Ripto blasts both of them and becomes THE ONLY BOSS IN THE FUCKING GAME, and then Spyro has to get the dragonflies, defeat Ripto so he can piss off and swear he will be back again and then he never will.
Graphics - If this was one of the first PS2 games, released around early 2001 at least, you could be forgiven for having graphics that look like a Beta run of the game. Apparently somebody didn't look at the calendar often enough when they released this in November 2002. Let's remember what games came out in the same month as this game.
Splinter Cell. Metroid Prime. Ratchet & Clank. Now look at this game. Do you see something wrong here? What's wrong here is IT'S NOT EVEN FUCKING FINISHED! Somebody was pretty uninspired to put it lightly, even more than the draw distance of Superman 64 because draw distance was quite shit in general back then with some games.
 ("By golly, dem polygons sure are a chore to round up, ahu-hyuk!")
But this is the PS2 and Gamecube, games with bustling cities and environments were awakening. How do you make characters look like mutant bastardisations of themselves of an off-model quality not seen since the Zelda CD-i games? Naturally it's not even their own characters so this adds more to the problem. There's nothing necessarily WRONG with the graphics of the games in the sense they work.
But the real problem here is, they're clearly not fully-done. Some of the backgrounds are not terrible (though there are some exceptionally attractive areas thanks to good lighting) but the characters look retardedly horrendous. Now I've seen a LOT of porn of Spyro over the years and only 9% of it looked worse than this game.
To be fair, some of the areas do look okay, there is more of a general smoothness than the previous games, and Spyro himself looks okay....when he's not moving, then the moment his mouth animates, oh jesus christ it's like an 80s 3D cereal mascot, he looks at least like his original self. It's just everyone else around him seems to have suddenly developed Down's Syndrome.
 ( Uuuuuuugh)
Gameplay - In all honesty, the gameplay isn't that horrendous, because it is barely changed. You can still use all the same moves of gliding, breathing fire, charging, the same stuff that worked for Spyro in the original trilogy. Problem is they've somehow become more sluggish with the crappier frame rate of this game.
Adding to that the fact that the game is unfinished so when you end it in about a quarter of the length of time it took you to finish any of the original games, you'll feel pretty cheated out of your money. Because you were. It's also very lazily rehashing the concept of Spyro: Year of the Dragon but replace dragons with dragonflies. Oh, fucking joy.
It gets better too when everytime you find one, Spyro pipes up irritatingly going "Hey it's Zoe" or "Hey it's Aaron" when the game clearly tells you the name of the dragonfly but is trying to flaunt how much more space it has for annoying voice clips. Clearly it took a LOT of space if they couldn't make a full game out of it.
I mean I can accept the game isn't good but the fact it doesn't even feel finished is just a fucking insult. I have the decency to finish taking a shit, and so should the game developers. Also, long loading times. Jooooooy.
You think I'm joking about how short the game is? There are 9 levels. NINE levels, from one hub. Do you know how many worlds Spyro: Year of the Dragon had? 30, from four hubs.
So we have a platformer with only nine levels, 90 dragonflies to collect, one hub, one boss.
 (Fun fact, you can replace "magic" with "game" and it makes sense!)
Music/Sound - Even with the horrendous gameplay, they did have two things okay soundwise. Firstly, the original voice cast of characters since Spyro 2 of Hunter, Elena and Ripto reprising their roles for this trash hole of a game, which offers a glimmer quality and consistency. The other thing is this is the last game of the Spyro series to have music by the most awesome Stewart Copeland
Copeland, the drummer of Sting's band The Police, did the music of the first three games most awesomely (the first especially being a kickass soundtrack) and thankfully he makes an effort here with a good soundtrack of a rather soothing overall ambience, the false but lovely veil covering the pulsating mess behind it, perhaps the only thing not giving this game three 1s.
 (Actually this is quite nice this part. Yanno what else is nice? The end of this review below)
This was, for a while, the death of Spyro, until Sierra revived him with a more plot-centric series that for the most part has done rather well. But this game killed the old Spyro. Consider it a good or bad thing, it all depends on your opinion and which series of Spyro you started with.
But if there is one thing that the PS1 trilogy fans and the Legend fans can agree on TOGETHER, it's that this game is the most godawful piece of shit to ever have a dragon in it, it is an insult to Spyro, it is an insult to platforming, it is an insult to the previous generation of console gaming, so fuck this thing, it deserves to die, St. George style.
Fun and Innovation - 1
Replayability - 1
Gameplay - 2
Presentation - 2"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto  Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
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