Backlog Beatdown: Being a Dragon with Spryo the Dragon

Don't mess with the dragon...

I’d never even have thought about buying Spyro the Dragon back when it was released on the PS1, and frankly I wouldn’t have thought to buy it now. However, last year my partner Kirsty bought the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy on the PS4, which I played when I wanted a game I could play around my young daughter.

It turned out to be really good! It is a 3D platforming game where you control a little dragon called Spyro on a quest to free the other dragons of the world from a spell put on them my Gnasty Gnorc that caused them to turn into jade statues. You run around the various stages, defeating enemies by charging in to them or burning them, and collecting treasure in the form of differently-coloured gems, before setting off on a hot air balloon to the next one. And having now not only played through the game but completed it 100%, I can honestly say that I don’t play enough of this type of game!

It's not looking good for that chicken...

Back when Spryo was first released, around the middle of the 5^th console generation, 3D platforming was still in its infancy, and while there had been some notable successes, (Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie etc) they were often poorly presented and didn’t handle very well. With Spyro, the rulebook had been thrown out of the window. The whimsical, fun design of the game wasn’t usual for Playstation games, (at least, not without being overly silly,) but opened the doors for a wider audience. The level design – bang on point, for the most part – had to compensate for the fact that Spyro can glide huge distances, so they are more explorative in nature. Different enemy types responded to different attacks; some were vulnerable to charging, and some to fire. And while the game’s enemies rarely present much of a challenge, finding all the collectables and rescuing all the dragons was a large part of the experience. But the best thing about the game is the support from the dual analogue sticks, which allowed you to control Spyro’s pace as well as the position of the camera. All of this makes the game fluid and an absolute joy to play. The flying levels in particular, while little more than showing off, are a great change of pace and offer a different kind of challenge to the rest of the game.

The graphics and sound are very good; the art style works well on modern consoles and will still look good in years to come. The music was composed by Stuart Copeland, and while not particularly memorable after the fact, supports the game very well. The voice acting was good as well; it knows that it’s camp, silly and fantastic, and makes no pretence to the contrary.

It was actually harder to get the trophy for making
Gnasty run around the level five times than it
was to beat him...

I probably could have blitzed through the game in a single afternoon if all I wanted was get to the end, but I found that the real fun of Spyro is exploring the levels for the treasures, hunting around for those last few gems, and figuring out the secrets. For the most part this works well; it’s always good to have the answer to the problem lie somewhere in the level design, and the skills and move set you start the game with. The only slight clanger are those sections where the solution is based on the charge jump: By the time you’ve done the first one, you’re moving far too fast to plan your move; it’s going to cost you a few lives as you veer off the edges and plummet to your doom. I admit to having to look up some guides to find out what to do – if I’m looking to 100% a game I don’t want to get bogged down – but none of this is required to beat the game and is thankfully rare.

Spyro the Dragon is a great little game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with. It’s competently designed and great fun. It’s not for everyone – hardcore gamers will find the presented challenge too easy, and even completionists may be expecting a little bit more – but for most people who enjoy playing games, you’ll have a great time with Spyro.

Final Score: 4/5: Great game.

Last Week's Games: Dragon Quest, Spyro and Legions

At one point in the week I found myself with quite a significant gap between one engagement and the next, and decided to fill the time with a couple of hours of Dragon Quest, which was released on the Nintendo Switch recently. It’s a relatively early form of JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game) and the start of a long-running series of games. I’ve spoken quite a lot over the last few years about playing the first iterations of games to see their core mechanics; they rarely provide as deep an experience as their later games but it’s always interesting to see. Dragon Quest plays like an early Final Fantasy, or Phantasty Star game, where you’re set on a quest to find the Ball of Light and rescue the Princess from the Dragon Lord. This doesn’t sound particularly inspired, but sometimes the simplest plot lines are the most effective!

Stay off the purple patch until you can handle it...

This game doesn’t have the depth and options of games that followed, either to its sequels or to the vast amount of games it inspired. The turn-based combat is entirely menu-driven, the magic system is very basic, there’s no party, no visible customisation and no crafting. With that being said, I’m pleasantly surprised about how much fun I’m having with it. It’s challenging, but well-balanced. Admittedly, the first fight I got in to was with a monster that was too high-level for me and I died straight away, but this is actually quite a rare occurrence and the difficulty of the monsters scale up quite well. You have a choice of where to go in order to complete your objective, but not too much choice. The world map looks big but doesn’t look like it will take too much time to see the significant areas. There is a certain amount of grind required to get through the game – you’re relying on your equipment to a certain extent, and treasure is not dropped at a rate where you have more money than you can spend, so it will be a while before you get enough gold together to buy the best gear – but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. The result is a standard but enjoyable experience that I’ve had a good time with so far, and I hope to be able to pick it up again soon!

I’ve also been playing Spyro the Dragon, and this time I managed to complete the game 100%! I’ll do a blog about that at some stage, so I won’t say anything more about it here other than what a delightful experience it was, and hopefully I’ll get some time to play the other two games on the disc!

At this point I'm just recycling pictures of Legions
I've used before and seeing how long it takes
people to notice.

Finally, I was putting a lot more time than I expected into The Horus Heresy: Legions. I got caught up in the politics of the Warrior Lodge I am a part of – it takes itself a bit more seriously than my last one, and there is an expectation that we will get a certain amount of points before the end of the bi-weekly events or we will be kicked out. I came to within about a day of this happening, so I stepped my game up and actually ended up doing quite well, which at least partly resulted in the lodge getting the second highest reward crate available. They’ll never do any better by my intervention, as I refuse to spend any money on tickets, but they’ll have what help there is in me!

I also found myself enjoying the cards in the new event, as for once I’ve read the material it’s based on: Macgragge’s Honour, a graphic novel. Also, Ouon Hommed – my preferred choice of warlord for this – has a very powerful card-drawing ability that I suspect will get reduced for balance purposes in later iterations. However, I managed an eight-win run with him, which is my best run yet, and won the achievement for doing so which is a positive thing! I’m going to try a few more runs with Hommed to see if I can get him up to twelve wins – the maximum you can get off one ticket – before his abilities are modified, as for once I might have a hope of managing it!

Backlog Beatdown: Fortune and Glory with Lego Indiana Jones

I find myself playing a lot of the Lego games these days, and a lot of the points I make about them are covered in the review I did of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga a while back. Given my preference to play games in order, and having beaten Lego Star Wars, the next step was Lego Indiana Jones, and I’ve been playing this game quite a lot over the last couple of weeks!

He doesn't always have that gun...

The premise of the Lego games are simple enough: Play through the plot of whatever property they’re based on using Lego characters, in this case the original Indiana Jones trilogy. They are competently designed, easily accessible and provide a challenge in puzzles and collectables. The puzzles are largely based around deciding which characters and their abilities to use for each level, either to progress through the story or unlock all the extras later. One slight criticism is that it doesn’t work quite as well in multiplayer as some of the other games, as this one was designed before they started splitting the screen to accommodate both players, but as this was very much a single-player run-through, this didn’t affect me.  

I wondered how Telltale Games would make it work with Indiana Jones, as at first glance there didn’t seem to be a wide-enough range of characters to make it work, but I soon found an understanding of what everyone was supposed to be doing. Indy has his whip to swing across certain gaps and disarm opponents, archaeologists have shovels and can dig for treasure, mechanics fix things, scholars can open hieroglyphic doors, Nazis can open certain doors restricted to them and blow things up with grenades and rocket launchers. The ladies in the game have certain skills that apply to their characters. They can all jump slightly higher than the men and that is as good as it gets with Marion, Elsa also has the scholar ability, and brilliantly, Willie has a scream that can shatter glass and later destroy certain enemies. I also liked how certain characters have phobias: Indy clams up when he’s near snakes, and so does Willie when she’s around bugs.

I found Lego Indiana Jones more challenging than Lego Star Wars, if nowhere near as long having only three films to cover rather than six. The enemies are harder to take down as in most cases they have to be taken out in close quarters, and will take three or four hits to drop. Guns will destroy most enemies straight away but very few of the characters have guns by default; you need to pick up guns dropped by the enemies. While this rarely gets in the way of progressing through the game, it can make certain of the collectables hard to find if you’re not careful.

Funny how this scene is so iconic with Indiana Jones,
given that it only happens for moments in the film!

This being a game about archaeology, there are a lot more traps and puzzles to get around which provide an even greater threat. It’s not insurmountable though, and there’s a nice sense of achievement when you figure out how to open a door, or disable a trap. It’s a good way to vary up the pace and fits the theme of the game perfectly.

But of course, this being a Lego game, the heart of it is all about the collectables, and this is why it took me a relatively long amount of time to play through a somewhat short and easy game – I was aiming for 100% completion. To do this, I had to do the following:

·        Beat the Story Mode: This is easy enough, you need to get from one end of the game to the other, although I did get stuck on one of the bosses at some point. It was the boxer from Raiders of the Lost Ark; I didn’t realise that the plane had guns you were supposed to be firing!

·        Post all the Mail: This was a bit of a funny one. At some point on each level there is a parcel you have to find and put in a red post box. You almost always have to do this in Free Play mode, as you need different characters to access the locations they’re in. You’re rewarded when you do by optional ‘Cheats’ you can buy – anything from faster digging to multiplying the number of studs you pick up.

·        Collect all the Artefacts: There are ten treasure chests in each level, and collecting all ten forms an artefact; an ancient relic of some description that may or may not have featured in the films. Collecting all of these opens some of the bonus areas. This provided a challenge to begin with, but it got much easier once I’d unlocked the Artefact Detector in the previous section. Some of the things you have to do to make the chest appear are a little contrived, though, and on these occasions I found myself using a guide to find the last few chests. By this time I was looking to complete the game, not get bogged down.

·        Achieve ‘True Adventurer’ on all the levels: This is a feature common to all the Lego games where you have to collect a certain number of Lego studs along the level to achieve the reward. This only becomes a problem when you keep dying, because you lose all your studs. Funnily enough this happened to me because I couldn’t work out some of the puzzles and traps far more often than getting killed by enemies. It became much easier to do this once I’d unlocked the score multipliers!

·        Beat the Young Indy, Ancient City and Warehouse stages: This is the best kind of Post-Game content; things that you don’t have to do in order to see the story through to the end but provide some fun nonetheless. The Young Indy stage takes you through the opening scenes of The Last Crusade, but there are no collectables this time; you only need to beat the level. The Ancient City is an interesting one; you have to destroy some scenery and build some other bits of scenery to get one million studs. It was challenging because there’s no guidance on it this time. It’s not a case of getting from one end of the level to the other; you have to work out what to do with everything in it and the solution isn’t always obvious. The Warehouse has the same goal, and I thought I was going to have to faff about making tracks, as that was what some of the Lego blocks were insinuating. In actual fact, if you head over to the right side of the level there is a target there which cannot be destroyed and releases studs every time you hit it; I just did this to beat the level.

Once I had done all that the game was completed to 100%, and I just had to unlock a few achievement points to get 100% of those as well. This is one of the few games I own on the Xbox 360 where I have a hope of managing it, because in this case none of the achievement points are tied up in online multiplayer. Most of them unlock as you’re playing through the game, some you have to do by destroying one specific character with another; they were easy enough. I had a bit of bother with the one where you need to kill five enemies with one explosion, but after looking at some community advice, I chucked a grenade onto a group of spiders that rush you in one of the Temple of Doom levels and the problem was solved. The ones that were hard were the ones that require you to perform same action multiple times, such as using Willie’s scream to shatter 50 glass panels, or using the Nazis to unlock their restricted areas 50 times. It wasn’t difficult, but it was a faff! I found myself restarting the City of Danger level several times, as there is an opportunity to do both right near the start of the level.

All this took me about two or three weeks; it’s nice to have a game that can be fully completed in that time! I’ve really enjoyed my time with Lego Indiana Jones, and while it will be a while before I come back to it, it’s there should I ever want to give it another go!

Backlog Beatdown: Collecting EVERYTHING with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might be forgiven for thinking “But Matt, haven’t you already beaten Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga?” And you would be correct, well done, especially if you’re not one of the (currently) 33 people who read that blog in the first place. And you’re right, I wouldn’t normally count a game as ‘beaten’ if I’d already done so. However, I allowed myself a free pass with Lego Star Wars. And here’s why:

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga is the first full game on the Xbox 360 I have completed 100%. That is to say, I have completed all the campaigns, collected all the collectables (and this is a Lego game so there are a LOT,) and got all the achievement points.

Playing as Obi Wan in his full 'Cool
Old Guy' glory. What's not to love?

In fairness, this is probably the only game in my collection where I have a hope of achieving all the achievement points. It’s not because I’m bad at games, not just because of that anyway. It’s just that for the vast majority of games I’ve got on the 360, a lot of the achievement points are tied up in the online Multiplayer mode. And since I’m always going to struggle even to get a game in now that most people have moved onto the Xbox One, the chances that I’m going to get many achievements that depend on multiplayer games are slim indeed. There was one achievement, in this case, that required me to complete a level with another player online, but I managed that one a couple of years ago.

I got a long way to doing this when I was participating in No Game New Year back in 2014, but after collecting all the mini-kits and other various achievements, I realised I was essentially going to have to play through the game at least another two times in order to complete the game and it got filed under “can’t be arsed.” Nearly a year and a half later, I came back to it and found that I needed to get all the Blue Mini-kits in challenge mode. I used an online guide for this because I was looking to complete the game, not get bogged down, and even then some of those kits were very tough to find in the 10-minute time limit. It took a while, but I got them all.

Then I needed to complete the bounty hunter missions for the final few gold bricks. These turned out to be quite easy and very enjoyable; the bounty hunters are always fun characters to play and it’s nice to play the familiar levels with different characters. Yes, I know Free Play allows you to do this, but the Bounty Hunter missions lock you with those 6 (I think) characters so you have to utilise what abilities you have – some have more than others – to get through the level.

The final thing I needed to do was to complete Super Story Mode – in this, you apparently have to get through each story in less than an hour and collect 100,000 studs along the way. Now, I’m not complaining, but I found in my play-through that I only actually had to do the latter, as some of the stories took me well over an hour and were marked off as complete anyway. Collecting 100,000 studs is really not that hard to do, so it was just a matter of getting through the story again, but I managed it for the final achievement of completing the game 100%.

Fitting that this was the scene at the end of the
Lego Star Wars - TCS journey...

And that should be it for Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. I’ve done everything there is to do and there’s no reason for me to own the game anymore, so I should probably just get rid of it. Except… for some reason, I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know whether I’ve got an ill-proportioned amount of investment in this game now, or whether I’m thinking of playing it through again in the future, but I don’t want to delete it from my hard drive just yet.

Maybe it’s because whatever else it might be, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga is actually a really good game.

No Game New Year: Game Backlog

Hi there.

This week, I've been playing more Gotham City Impostors and Streets of Rage II. I haven't really got time to write a full review of what I've been doing as I'm about to go on holiday, however last night I saw a post from Cassandra Brabon mentioning a Kotaku article about managing and playing your way through games more efficiently. The article did suggest some good ways to organise your play-throughs, though it is a little presumptuous about how long it will take to play through most games. It fails to take into account the fact that I suck. Nonetheless, after reading this, I decided to compile a list of my games to check my progress on them, and I thought I'd share it with you today.

So, there are 3 things I'm looking for (my list, my rules):

1. Whether or not I've played the game, because I'm always horribly astonished when I count the games I own and never actually played.
2. Whether or not I've completed the game, that is to say got to the end credits. Where N/A appears here it is because it is not a game you "complete" in the usual sense, usually either because it's a puzzle game that goes on indefinitely or it's a multiplayer-only game with no single-player campaign.
3. Whether or not I've got all the achievement points, which is the point at which I decide I don't need to own the game any longer. Where N/A appears here it is because the game does not use achievement points.

Also, please be aware that this list refers only to the Xbox 360. I have yet to compile similar lists for the Xbox (original,) Playstation 2, Playstation 1, Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance. That will take me a lot longer.

Xbox 360	Compilations inc.	Played	Completed	Achievement Points
Ascend: Hand of Kul		x
Assassin's Creed		x
Batman: Arkham Asylum		x	x
Batman: Arkham City		x
Battleblock Theater
Beyond Good and Evil HD		x
Bioshock		x	x
Blood Bowl		x
Borderlands: Game of the Year		x
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons		x	x
Brutal Legend
Call of Duty Classic		x
Capcom Arcade Cabinet
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Charlie Murder
Civilisation: Revolution
Command and Conquer		x
Crackdown		x
Dark Souls
Dead Island
Deadlight
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Dishonored		x
Dragon Age: Origins		x
Dragons Dogma		x
Dungeon Defenders
Dust
Dynasty Warriors 7		x
Fable 2		x	x
Fable 3
Fallout 3		x	x
Farcry 2		x
Farcry 3		x
Gears of War		x	x
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 3
Gotham City Impostors		x	N/A
Grand Theft Auto 4		x
Grand Theft Auto 5		x	x
Halo 3
Hitman: Absolution
Injustice: Gods Among Us		x	x
Iron Brigade
Kill Team		x	x
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning		x
L.A. Noire		x
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Lego Harry Potter I-IV		x
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga		x
Madden 12		x
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance		x
Mass Effect		x
Mass Effect 2
Mortal Kombat (2011)		x
Oblivion		x
Prototype		x
Rad Raygun		x	x	N/A
Rainbow Six Vegas
Red Dead Redemption		x
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X		x
Resident Evil 4		x	x
Saints Row		x
Saints Row: The Third
Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection	Alex Kidd	x		x
	Alien Storm	x		x
	Alien Syndrome			N/A
	Altered Beast	x		x
	Altered Beast Arcade			N/A
	Bonanza Bros.	x		x
	Columns	x	N/A	x
	Comix Zone	x	x	x
	Decap Attack
	Dr Robotniks M.B.M	x	x	x
	Dynamite Headdy			N/A
	E-SWAT
	Ecco the Dolphin	x		x
	Ecco: The Tides of Time	x
	Fantasy Zone			N/A
	Fatal Labyrinth	x		x
	Flicky
	Gain Ground	x		N/A
	Golden Axe	x		x
	Golden Axe 2
	Golden Axe 3
	Golden Axe Warrior			N/A
	Kid Chameleon	x		x
	Phantasy Star	x		N/A
	Phantasy Star II			N/A
	Phantasy Star III			N/A
	Phantasy Star IV			N/A
	Ristar
	Shining Force			N/A
	Shining Force II			N/A
	Shining in the Darkness			N/A
	Shinobi III	x	x	x
	Shinobi Arcade	x		N/A
	Sonic the Hedgehog	x	x	x
	Sonic the Hedgehog 2	x	x	N/A
	Sonic the Hedgehog 3	x	x
	Sonic & Knuckles	x	x	N/A
	Sonic Spinball	x		x
	Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island	x
	Space Harrier	x		N/A
	Streets of Rage	x	x	x
	Streets of Rage II	x	x	N/A
	Streets of Rage III	x
	Super Thunder Blade	x		x
	The Story of Thor
	Tip Top			N/A
	Vectorman	x
	Vectorman 2
	Zaxxon			N/A
Shadowrun		x	N/A
Shoot Many Robots
Skyrim		x
Sonic CD		x
Space Marine		x	x
Spartacus Legends
Super Street Fighter IV
Tomb Raider		x	x
WW12		x
WW13		x
The Wolf Among Us
XCOM: Enemy Unknown		x	x
XCOM: Enemy Within		x

As you can see, I've still got a long way to go...