The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (Wii) Review

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon is a competent, but unimaginative conclusion to the Legend of Spyro trilogy. It is technically excellent, features great art direction and superb audio, but suffers with mediocre gameplay, overly simple puzzles and a generic, recycled narrative. Aimed at children, it is most often quite light-hearted, but it does explore some deeper themes of friendship, trust, and good and evil.

The storyline continues three years after the second instalment of the Legend of Spyro series, The Eternal Night. Spyro and his dragon companion Cynder awake after being frozen in crystal for three years in the ruins of the Mountain of Malefor. They have been chained together by a group of mysterious creatures known as Grublins. They quickly meet Hunter, who explains that Ignitus, Spyros mentor, sent him when Spyro did not return to the dragon temple after battling the Ape King, Gaul. Hunter tells them that the Dark Master has escaped from Convexity and has covered the land in Darkness, launching Spyro and Cynder on a new perilous quest.

Disappointingly, the player is left to guess what has occurred in previous titles in the trilogy. There are a few hints for the player, but it is never made clear. The narrative as a whole suffers because of this lack of a story recap, as many of the characters’ motivations are unclear. In fact, the storyline suffers from more than a lack of clarity, with huge portions of the story and many of the set pieces seemingly lifted from a certain popular fantasy film adaptation of a classic literary trilogy. The influence of the Lord of the Rings is evident from the opening scene, where Spyro and Cynder are faced with a battle against a massive fire-breathing demon from the depths. There are plenty other clear references to the famous fantasy trilogy in the storyline too. While the familiarity may appeal to some, the similarities are too close and too frequent for it not to become bothersome to most players. The parallels extend far beyond just the storyline and often creep into the art direction and audio too.

From a technical viewpoint, the game is extremely well made. It features some beautifully realised environments with well crafted 3D models and sharp, vibrant textures. There are plenty of special effects and graphical flourishes that help it stand out visually against most other third party Wii games, with the animation and frame rate all smooth. Some of the environments do borrow heavily from the Lord of the Rings films, but that doesn’t detract from the overall high quality. The audio is equally excellent with a rousing, exciting orchestral score and fantastic voice work from some of Hollywood’s best acting talent. The likes of Elijah Wood, Gary Oldman, Wayne Brady, Christina Ricci, Blair Underwood and Mark Hamill make the most out of what they are given, but a generally poor script means the quality of the cast is somewhat wasted. There are some really bad one-liners and clunky moments throughout and more attention to the writing could have helped make it all a little more compelling.

The game is controlled with a combination of traditional button presses and motion controls, and for the most part, they work well enough. There are a few instances of frustrating motions that don’t always respond as expected, but these don’t ruin the game. The camera can be frustrating, but mostly does a good job of showing the action.

The gameplay is a mixture of platforming and adventuring. The stages are quite wide open and require plenty of exploration, but the sense of freedom is artificial. There is still a start and an end to each level and the design is quite haphazard, resulting in quite a bit of aimless wandering. This causes some odd pacing as players look for the next objective or place to go. Compared with some of its contemporaries, Dawn of the Dragon’s stage design is archaic. Where a Zelda title has objectives and paths complementing each other, always prompting the player in the right direction, Dawn of the Dragon seems to just throw objectives out randomly and hope the player stumbles across the right path. It is frustrating, unnecessary and is a problem that should not be afflicting a third generation 3D platform/adventure game.

The game’s artificial intelligence is quite limited, resulting in plenty of repetitive button-mashing combat and a sometimes frustrating computer controlled team mate. Even though there are plenty of different attacks and special moves available, most are unnecessary as enemies can be beaten with repeated use of the same simple moves. The co-operative gameplay is a nice touch, but it is best when there are two human players directing Spyro and Cynder rather than a solo player and the computer.

The single player experience is quite lengthy, but the addition of a drop-in/drop-out cooperative mode adds a huge amount of replay value to the game. Even though the core gameplay is quite limited, playing with a friend improves the experience immensely. It is not enough to lift the game out of mediocrity, but it does add greatly to the overall value of the package.

Personal thoughts

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon can best be summed up as a next generation sequel with last generation gameplay. There are just too many of the same 3D-platforming tasks we have been doing over and over since the early days of the Nintendo 64. The Wii has proven that next generation gaming is not just about better graphics, it is about advancing the gameplay past that of the previous generation. I really do get disappointed when developers and publishers are happy to just slap a shiny coat of paint on top of the same tried and tired gameplay. It is really sad to see that The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon seems to have ignored that lesson and repeats many of the mistakes that have been plaguing 3D platform/adventure games since the Nintendo 64.
There are still plenty of positives experiences to be had with the game and I was especially impressed with the extremely high production values of the title. I think it’s great to see video games are now able to attract such high profile actors. Unfortunately, the effort and developmental budget to secure such Hollywood talent could have been better spent on improving the gameplay experience.

Motion controls have been the Wii’s strongest selling point, but I still think third parties have failed to correctly understand how they can use them to improve their games. I found the controls in Dawn of the Dragon to be a little frustrating, with the blocking to be the worst culprit. Lifting the Nunchuck to block means you will constantly have to be conscious of the position of the controller. As a result I could never be completely relaxed when I was playing. I think it would have been far better to use a button for blocking. Again, it is a case of a developer substituting button presses for motion controls. This has been proven to not work as well as using a simple button press and it is disappointing to see that developers have still not learned the lessons of many failed attempts at using motion controls in Wii games. In this instance, I think the responsiveness of the controls do go a long way to making up for things, but I do think it would have been much better without it. I am a firm believer that motion controls should complement traditional core controls, not replace them.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Dawn of the Dragon, because it is not a bad game. Its high production values make it stand out from the crowd, but the mediocre gameplay sadly just drags the whole thing down. Less emphasis on trying to replicate the Lord of the Rings and more emphasis on trying to make the core gameplay fun would have made this a much more worthwhile package, but as it is, it is just not able to stand out in a Wii market that is fast becoming crowded with excellent platforming and adventure games.