Filled with the fire of a thousand suns: It's The Legend Of Spyro: A New Beginning!

Greetings and salutations! My name is Lobst; you may know me and my compatriots Phenwah and DemoWeasel from Phen's recent Let's Play of Red Steel 2. Together, we'll now be playing the Legend Of Spyro thrillogy!

(IMPORTANT NOTE: If you're looking for the good Spyro series, look elsewhere. Possibly on PSN; $18 can get you three games' worth of the finest first-gen 3D platforming in existence. (As fine as was possible on the humble PSOne, at least.) Flare Elevar has a spectacular LP of the original trilogy on SA, currently on hiatus with one update to go.)

Shortly after Naughty Dog and Insomniac abandoned the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon licenses for other, more ambitious Sony second-party shenanigans, Vivendi-Universal took hold of them and decided to exploit them as much as they possibly could. They kept it going status-quo for a few years throughout the early-'00s with annualized platforming by-the-numbers on home consoles and Game Boy Advance, but eventually sales must have dwindled, because shortly after Spyro: Shadow Legacy on DS the license was heavily tweaked, disassembled, and rebuilt anew as a graphically robust God Of War clone.

Krome Studios, the recently-dissolved developer of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and the Xbox 360's Game Room, was selected to head up development. Not only that, but Vivendi pulled out all the stops with an all-star cast, featuring Elijah Wood, Gary Oldman, and David Spade in leading roles. They slapped the Sierra name on it and released it to a hungry gaming populace. Well, at least they tried something new. How did it fare?


The first game, the focus of this thread, makes this dragonly series's rebooted nature explicitly clear in its title: The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. Gone is the premise of exploring whimsical, brightly-colored landscapes to collect dragon statues/magical keys/glittering diamonds; now you're expected to move from corridor to corridor, fighting painstakingly-named monkey-men with nothing but more bleak environments and tedious, phoned-in celebrity-voiced cutscenes to motivate further play. It's the antithesis of Blue Skies In Games; they took a perfectly nice product and turned it into Lord Of The Rings, with a splash of Delgo thrown in for flair.

So, yes, these games are about as mediocre as they come. Thankfully, this LP isn't driven out of reverence; we're approaching this with the intent of pointing out anything stupid or backward about it that comes across -- and believe me, there's plenty to point out. In the process, we'll be exposing anyone who views our videos to the staggering mediocrity of these releases without the added inconvenience of having to play them. Consider this our public service to you, viewers, as we begin our magical, overwrought journey!


YouTube Playlist for TLoS:ANB

EPISODE LIST:
Part 01: The Currently Old Beginning Of The New Beginning
Part 02: Dire Visions of an Autumn Landscape
Part 03: B, B, B, B, A, B, B, B
Part 04: Confirmation Report
Part 05: Of Devrooms and Deathwings
Part 06: How To Stomp With Butt?
Part 07: Christina Ricci Was In Speed Racer
Part 08: Pinnacle At Fifteen Minutes
Part 09: Burning Flame, Higher And Higher
Part 10: In Which Dragon Moses Hangs Eleven
Part 11: Study At Full Sail, Kids!
Part 12: Melting This Dragon's Stone Heart With Ice
Part 13: Does The Game End? Y/N
Part 14: I Died For Your Cynders
Part 15: SPECIALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL


YouTube playlist for TLoS:TEN

EPISODE LIST:
Part 01: Time Manipulation, Done With Utmost Care
Part 02: Brown Hollywood Boned
Part 03: Of Ball Polishers and Name Generators
Part 04: Adventures of the Trash Bag Bunch
Part 05: "Game boots up! 5/5" - IGN.com
Part 06: I Was Born On A Pirate Ship
Part 07: All My Health Bitches
Part 08: You Can't GIF Being Racist
Part 09: Game Cards Do Not Actually Talk
Part 10:To Win The Game You Must Kill Me, John Romero
Part 11: 2 PURPLE 2 SPECIAL
Part 12: LOOK OUT, WORLD!
Part 13: Seven45 Studios' Next Great Project, Beat Pop
Part 14 (EXTRA): Let's Kick Some ICE

Momentary Glance: Spyro The Dragon
Recap 01: A New Beginning (Or Lobst Learns Vegas Pro 11)
TLoS:TEN Episode 01: Awful Audio Version
TLoS:ANB Theater Mode
TLoS:TEN Theater Mode

This is so fun. I'm looking forward to this LP.

I enjoyed the first Spyro games, but never played the later games because I heard they sucked, so it'll be enjoyable to see why they were so bad.

PS Were the Vivendi Spyro games before A New Beginning any good?

!

I officially cannot wait for this LP

Episode 1 is up! In it, a massive reptile grows to a perfectly healthy size on a diet of butterflies. (sorry for the delay; it was a difficult birth! Spyro gestated without an egg-tooth, you know.)


Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly and Spyro: A Hero's Tail have awful Metacritic scores; The Legend Of Spyro performed about on-par with them. Enter the Dragonfly was panned for significant technical problems, bad level design, and overall sameiness; A Hero's Tail improved on it, but was still chastized for targeting itself squarely toward kids in a really insulting way (an especially bad move for a license that saw comparatively awesome critical and sales numbers by endearing itself to audiences of all ages) (though really, it's not like this series does it any better).

I still wonder who in their right minds was clamoring for Spyro to have a "rich" backstory.

Wow, this game is a bit overwrought with the dramas.

I am enjoying this LP

EDIT INSTEAD OF DOUBLEPOSTING: I just finished the episode and I really enjoy the Lobst/Phenwah/Demoweasel team. I now know for certain that Red Steel 2 was no fluke. Also, this game looks really boring. This is a game I do not wish to play. You're doing us all a favor here, Lobst.

Man, this game really does remind me of the lameness of the later Crash games...At least it's making for a nice LP so far, right?

Sorry for the update delays! My Macbook Pro is currently out for repairs, so I have to use my old laptop that lacks a microphone or any sort of advanced recording technology to do my bit in the LP.

In this episode Ignitus limps his way through some tunnels, Spyro errs alongside him, and Sparx sleepwalks his way to another paycheck.


The gap between this update and the next is going to be exactly the same length as this time! (Also considering changing a thing or two up in the recording process -- stay tuned~)

EDIT: There was an audio mixing issue in the first video! It's been fixed, now.

I didn't realize anyone outside of the Awful Forums saw our Red Steel 2 LP! It's nice to let someone else splice our rambling commentary into something coherent for a change.

Just caught up and I want more!

Great LP guys. I was laughing.

I just find it so amusing how they're trying to make one of the most pedestrian video game challenges ever into something super dramatic. "THESE STATUES HAVE BEEN DEFILED, THEY MUST BE RESTORED TO THEIR RIGHTFUL ORDER, BLUH BLUH BLUH"

Episode 3 is up! Known issues:

- I screwed up and started the video with the glorious cutscene that ended the last video. If you don't want to hear us spice it up with all-new commentary, skip ahead to around three minutes in.
- For some reason, my voice recording kept auto-adjusting its volume. I was able to work it down so it's not as noticeable, but I'll make sure it doesn't happen in any other videos from here on out.
- There's an inexplicable hitch of a few seconds or so near the end; one of Ignitus's incredible voiceover lines is lost. Huge loss, I realize.

Otherwise, enjoy! I really liked the commentary for this one, more than I usually do.

I'm staying far too optimistic, thinking the game will change at some point.

Will i be disappointed?

I think the dev team applying the "real is brown" paradigm to a cartoony action platformer is the first indication of what you're in for. That and the river of urine. I'm glad I'm not the one playing this!

Great commentary, though! Someone needs to go through after you're done and scientifically determine the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio.

Whoof! Sorry about the delay, everybody. Managing multiple projects at once is a crazy, terrible thing for me to do. Production has been going on behind the scenes, however; I recorded a video thing in-person with Phenwah over Spring Break that I'm determined to let you see ASAP.

There's more gameplay than ever in this one, which means we have plenty of empty space in which to get distressingly off-topic. It's okay, we can try again!


Forthcoming episodes will reveal this game's true nature: it's a depressingly formulaic brawler with workhorselike design backed up by half-decent production values. Having played a fair amount of both sequels, they each do a few things to spice it up -- but if you're wondering whether they're effective, ONLY TIME(ly LP updates) WILL TELL.

Sure, this game was a bust -- but who knows? Maybe things will brighten up a bit in The Eternal Night. hahahahahahahahahah

Substitute the word "platformer" for "brawler" in the above sentence and that just about exactly describes Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, which is the only Krome game I've ever played.

I am glad you're playing these so I don't have to. Can't think back on Spyro's PS1 days without wistful sadness, so having a good laugh at whoever decided this new direction was a good idea helps.

So, they've given you this huge toolbox and all you need to use 99% of the time are hit, breathe, dodge, and super attack?

Ah, so this is how it feels to get off my ass and do something! I should remember that.


I'm literally editing Episode 6 right now! Also: The LP now has a YouTube playlist, if you want to hear us introduce ourselves over and over.

Occasionally it benefits you to use the Y-button ranged attack, and to the game's credit each element's ranged attack does something different -- but yes, by-and-large, combos are really only for if you feel like using them.

Whoa, I had no idea this existed! Excuse me while I catch up.

Continuing to make up for my shameful absence, here's the second episode for today:


Commentary for Episode 7 has been recorded! I'll try and get it on the web incredibly soon.

Okay, caught up.

Man, this game makes me sad. I admit the only Spyro game I've played is Ripto's Rage, but that game was pretty awesome. To see the series become so... mediocre is kind of depressing.

She was also in Small Soldiers, Monster, After.Life, and Alpha & Omega! So, take that however you will.

Virtually nothing happens in this video -- aside from a cutscene around 15 minutes in -- so we spend our time talking about celebrities and TV shows. Also, none of us intend to LP Monsters VS Aliens, and I feel personally ashamed that I couldn't name the only competent voice actor in that film.

Not to get too cynical, but I feel like this game is the result of some businesspeople thinking the real work -- as far as making the Spyro brand profitable is concerned -- had already been done by the artists and designers at Insomniac back in 1998. The Legend Of Spyro could've been good, and clearly a lot of effort was put into it, but it doesn't do anything new or exciting; all it does is take you to four elemental environments and make you fight four elemental bosses, while Spyro rescues four elemental dragons and discovers his ability to breathe four elements. The end result plays like it was designed from a template, which isn't the feeling you want your bold new vision of a venerated franchise to give off.

Not to get too cynical, but I feel like this game is the result of some businesspeople thinking the real work -- as far as making the Spyro brand profitable is concerned -- had already been done by the artists and designers at Insomniac back in 1998. The Legend Of Spyro could've been good, and clearly a lot of effort was put into it, but it doesn't do anything new or exciting; all it does is take you to four elemental environments and make you fight four elemental bosses, while Spyro rescues four elemental dragons and discovers his ability to breathe four elements. The end result plays like it was designed from a template, which isn't the feeling you want your bold new vision of a venerated franchise to give off.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, that's what me and my sister thought to, especially when we played the finale of the third game. It wasn't really new, and it took more work to beat then the game deserved. On the flip side, I did enjoy certain parts of the game, and the voice acting was excellent. I still like A Hero's Tail more, if only because it followed the earlier characterization of Spyro, and got rid of the annoying BZZZZZ! noise.

Commentaries for the entire rest of the game have been finished! My edit/upload rate is no longer dependent on the schedules of others, which means I will be able (and doing my best to) pound these out one-after-the-other. The remainder of this epic saga's first chapter is already unfolding right at your face, starting with:


Additionally: This is the first video in which I ran the game audio through Levelator, and I liked the ability to hear the game so much I did it for every video I could without having to re-edit the commentaries first -- which amounted to every video to-date aside from episodes 3 and 4 (which I'll be revisiting in the break between A New Beginning and The Eternal Night).

Hooray!

Man oh man, am I glad that this isn't today's only update. The doldrums of having to slog through samey rooms and fighting the same enemies over and over end up sucking us into a vacuum of ennui and self-loathing, to the point where the three of us found ourselves in an oddly comfortable haze -- enough that the final few seconds of commentary were shifted backward from when DemoWeasel and Phenwah suddenly realized the video had abruptly ended.


Luckily, we're most of the way through what I like to call the "chewy center" of this game: the levels and plot twists that seem to exist purely to fill in space between the beginning and ending setpieces (which feature greater levels of production value and relevance to the plot). The next video will be up later tonight!

UPDATE: I've fixed all the links in the above posts, so they should work/not go to outdated versions! And there's another new video, too!

In this video Sparx has his Oscar moment, the game becomes fun for a few fleeting moments, and Spyro vows to rescue the Manweersmalls from the mining complex in Boyzitbi--okay, nobody at Krome knows how to name anything anywhere


I also have a super-embarrassing moment in which I, having not played a Spyro game with dual sticks in quite some time, become adamant in how the user has no camera control whatsoever. Turns out, that certainly isn't the case! I may have been thinking of The Eternal Night, which I was playing with a Wii Remote/Nunchuk at the time (and lacks camera controls in that mode).

Aside from that I was totally pleased with the commentary in this one, and the game's about to fire it up with something that makes it look like they're actually trying! (I think.)

Hooray! You've done it!

And now, something happens in the overarcing plot! Which makes me happy, since the last three worlds were standalone episodes built to convey messages such as "slavery blows", "adventuring's easier with pals", and "skeleton ghosts will hit you if you let them".


I absolutely adore the sequence at the end of this. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but they clearly tried to make a cutscene someone somewhere could take seriously, and the end result feels so much like a trainwreck I wouldn't be surprised if sabotage was involved. I could leave it on all day. I'm not even kidding.