Spyro The Dragon

I remember playing this game when we first got our PS1 back in... oh who knows? 1999? I remember loving this game. I also remember being very frustrated by it as a kid because "I'm a dragon why can I only glide???" And while that speaks to a child's petulance it also speaks to the great world design that left me wanting to explore the whole world.

I was talking to Sam McGrail about it and he said something to the tune of it being an early open world game design. And that's spot on. It borrowed the big, explorable hub worlds with gates to also pretty open levels from Mario 64, another fantastic game.

I thought I had completed it back then but in playing the remake I realized most of the content was completely new to me. Figures. When I was a kid I pretty bad at games and so didn't actually get that far into these games. This time I 120%'d it, gathering every single collectable in the game world. And it was fun pretty much the entire time.

There are so many things to love. I mentioned the level design but there's also a charm to the whole thing. The short little intro with someone pronouncing the "G's" in "Gnasty Gnorc". Spyro short stature mixed with his little quips. I loved that each dragon you freed, of which there are like 70, has a unique look to it. And a lot of them have unique voice lines. The enemy designs are fun. Everything is very colorful and beautiful.

And that kind of leads into the remake which did an incredible job breathing new life into this old game. The models and colors and textures-- everything-- is so beautiful. Like it's a tremendously good game to look. Maybe one of the best games I've seen ever. And I've seen a lot of god damned games lol. The dragons I mentioned all have a lot of love rendered into them through emotive animations paired with the unique outfits and looks. I can't imagine the budget that went into just fleshing out the individual dragons. But I'll say, whatever it was, it was worth it!

I have no hard time giving this game a 10. It had some slight blemishes maybe of enemies near the end being kind of cheesy but other than that it exists as a masterpiece in my mind. Maybe that's subjectively colored by my experience with it as a kid but I don't care. This game is amazing.