#2018 games

For the last three years, I’ve taken photos of my most-played games to publish alongside related blog posts. The snaps you see here are of the bulk of my most-played games in 2019, 2018, and 2017. 

ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD [2018 games 2/?]

It’s 1999, i’m 7 and i’m at my friend CJ’s house, we’re passing the controller back and forth as we play the hottest new game two Playstation owning kids could want: Spyro 2 Riptos Rage.  It’s 2018, I’ve just come home from a grueling day of college classes but I’ve got it, I’ve got the hottest new game a Playstation 4 owning adult could want: Spyro 2 Riptos Rage.  The more times change the more they stay exactly the same, and thankfully in the case of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy that ends up being a good thing.

The Good:

The Fulfillment of an Imagination:  Looking back on the visuals in the original three Spyro games can be a rough time, in fact I’d say that entire generation of video games has aged incredibly poorly in the visuals department.  Spyro Reignited Trilogy however, uses the same imagination that developers asked people to tap into back in the day to create absolute wonderlands of spectacle and color that 5th gen consoles couldn’t even dream of producing.  Levels that were once unclear and painted with broad ideas and concepts are now all incredibly distinct.

For instance, in Spyro 2 the level Hurricos was always presented as this odd clifftop society, the closest thing it came to the title, obviously named as such to be close to the word “Hurricane”, was the fact it was raining.  Today though, Hurricos is a small island, locked in the middle of an endless storm and surrounded on all sides by whipping waves, with the grass being violently blown in the rain and the science loving people living their suddenly making sense for choosing this chaotic place as one in which to do research on the wind!  Every level in the trilogy has a loving amount of detail put into it, if there was something you always imagined being a part of the Spyro games but was never really there, well I have news for you, chances are it’s there right now waiting for you to see it.

The updated world designs extend beautifully to the mid level homeworlds, which all feel ripped straight out of an animated movie you get to play!

Spyro’s Just A Little Airborne, He’s Still Good!:  Last year when the Crash Bandicoot remakes came out, there was a fervor of questions raised about the originals in relation to the remakes.  Were these games always this hard or was I just really patient as a kid?  Has the “Sonics Ass” game franchise always been this linear?  I didn’t find myself asking any of those questions about Spyro.  The Spyro games gameplay were always very simple, it’s all about finding a way to glide to that far off platform or hunting down that last gem you missed in a level.

In this way Spyro has aged leaps and bounds better than Crash before it, because the mechanics were just the right kind of simple and laid back for the time that they’ve translated incredibly well to our modern era.  I was almost never stressed out playing these games again, and while you could argue they’re maybe too easy in retrospect I’d say that relaxing pace and lack of roadblocks is a feature we all always loved, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

An Adventure Reborn:  All three of the original Spyro games are present in this collection and if you have a favorite character or moment in any of those I feel I can guarantee you that it’s here and it’s been redone in loving detail.  Spyro the Dragon has unique models for every dragon in the game, a far cry from the repeating six or seven we saw on the PS1.  Spyro 2 lovingly re-designs all the supporting cast, from Hunter the Cheetah no longer looking like a Muppet and Elora still looking exactly like a Faun you dork.  

The cast of Spyro 3 gets the same treatment, with all the new playable characters sporting looks that are clearly updated but evoke the same classic feeling they gave off in the original release(Except, unfortunately, Sheila who comes across as massively over designed).  The Homeworlds in Spyro 2 still exude a sense of peace, The Gnorcs still moon you for some reason in Spyro The Dragon and even the Skateboarding mini games in Spyro 3 have aged about a hundred times better than you’d imagine.  It’s the small details that really decide whether or not a remake team got the spirit of a game right, and i’m glad to say all of those are here in the Reignited Trilogy.

The remade Autumn Plains absolutely took my breath away, it’s always been one of my all time favorite environments in a game and with it’s new level of detail it’s going to keep that place for a long time.

Copeland Plays The Hits:  I’ll readily admit that I was worried for the music in this game, Stewart Copeland of the police turned in incredible soundtracks for the original three games.  Not only am I happy to say his tracks are here and undisturbed if you want them that way, but the remastered versions of them are incredible as well.  They all feel just like you’d want them to in these updated versions of the games that were all so driven by their tunes, with new wrinkles like a soft thump tone being added into the peaceful tracks of the Spyro 2 home world and new instrumentation adding a layer of depth to some of the first games more simplified tracks.  Honestly as it stands, it’s the choice given to you the player to listen to the new stuff, or just go back to the originals you love that puts this game over the top in regards to the music.

The Bad:

Well, for one, Jack here looks like someone used voodoo to bring a Funko Pop to life, does that count as bad?

Supercharged Past That QA Huh?:  Much like the Crash remakes last year, it’s not only clear these games were made on a very tight time frame, but that they were made sequentially and their quality decreases the further you get into the series.  Now to be fair, I encountered nothing game breaking, but I did notice that bugs, visual quality and other smaller details tended to fall by the wayside the further you get into the series.  Where the original Spyro seems to have got the most attention, Spyro 3(Ironically, much like it’s original release) had a fair amount of bugs waiting to rear their weird looking heads.  During the skateboard races, for example, the enemy A.I would sometimes just seem to switch off.  Only to reactivate at random intervals and jerk back into place, suddenly shutting down any lead you may have gained due to their non action, even if you were still playing properly while they were freaking out.  

Where levels in Spyro one and two mostly escaped this, you could see the beginnings of a reliance on re-used assets and quick production in Spyro 3.  Like Crash before it, the third game in the franchise seemed to get the least amount of attention, which is a bummer because that one has always been my second favorite.  The game was delayed once, last minute even, and I’m very glad it did, because despite what I’ve written here the game never stops functioning or is ever unplayable, if anything these bugs are just minor annoyances, but i’d have definitely hated to see what a version of Spyro 3 even more rushed out the door would have looked like.

Didn’t stop me from platinum-ing the thing!

FallOut 76 - November 14th 2018

Just Cause 4 (December 4th 2018)

Kingdom Hearts 3 (January 29th 2019 ... Supposedly....)

Days Gone (February 22nd 2019)

Anthem (February 22nd 2019)