Spyro is greatly improved upon from the original in his greatest adventure yet.
User Rating: 9 | Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! PS
Spyro may look like child's play, with his stubby body, happy looking face and voice as childish as Tails, but this game isn't just for kids. Ripto's Rage is a great game that really expands on Spyro's gameplay and adds a huge amount of side quests and mini-games that give the game much more depth and fun that the first game didn't have. Although I think that most of this game's fun stems from torching sheep. The story takes place almost immediately after the last game's. Spyro is pretty tired, and is ready to take a vacation. Unfortunately for him, the creatures at Avalar are in freight from a terrible villain named Ripto, and need a dragon's help to fight him off. So they teleport Spyro from the Dragon's Realm to help them. Spyro can't return though, so he might as well clear up the problem with this Ripto guy while he's here. Ripto's Rage's gameplay is what the original's gameplay should've been. I'm not saying that Spyro the Dragon was a bad game. In fact it was a great game. But it's gameplay lacked some uniqueness to it and often descended into repetitiveness, with little to no reason for collecting all the gems. This time around though, there are many actual sidequests found throughout the game that you'll be surprised will distract you from your primary goal in each level. They're that fun and addictive. Also, Spyro has a few new tricks up his sleeve. Spyro will continue to learn new abilities from "friendlys" as you commence through the game. It's pretty nicely done how you practice these abilities. They're kinda woven into the game in a way in which you may not even think it's practice. Very nicely done. They'll teach you how to master all of Spyro's new abilities such as swimming under water, climbing, a super charge, and a ground stomp (reminds me of Mario's Butt Stomp) which opens up new challenges and puzzles. The game plays out really well in a certain order. Once you complete a Talisman Attack, you finish the first major task in the realm. You must also acquire all the orbs in that realm too. But most of all, remember the gems you had to struggle to collect from the previous game? Well they have a reason of being here now. You must collect them to leave the level and use them to get the portals to new levels working again. Gotta catch em all, gotta catch em all... Much of last game is incorporated in this game. Namely, the level designs and all of the way Spyro moves. His character animations and most other character's animations are similar to last games so you won't see anything new in that department. The camera, which was slightly annoying, is very similar to this game's camera angles, with some small changes. Nothing big here. Puzzles have really been improved though from the original. Ripto's Rage looks a lot like the original. Something annoying which happens a lot is the character's mouth can't quite keep up with the voice actors. Like the voice actors will be saying something, and by the time they're done talking, the mouths will still be moving a little. A lot of games in the 32 bit era had these problems so it went kinda unnoticed. And it doesn't really affect you at all. The richly colorful and well constructed environments coupled with the huge active world of Ripto's Rage make this a very nice looking game. You gotta love the music of Ripto's Rage too. There're a buncha jungle beats mixed in with platformer type musics that sound absolutely fantastic in each and every level. I'm not too sure I like the voices though. They sound a little average and didn't have much attitude put into them. They voices are funny though sometimes even when it's unintentional. Ripto's Rage is a fun game. Much funner than the original with many more sidequests and enough collecting to make it well worth your money. It's not as in depth or hugely revolutionary like Mario 64 or anything, but Insomniac has delivered a gem of a platformer here, and maybe the best platformer on the Playstation.
