Considering all the accolades and attention they've received in recent years, you probably know that the Ratchet and Clank games are made by the fine folks over at Insomniac. What you may not know is that those same fine folks were responsible for the creation of another excellent series of platformers, the Spyro the Dragon titles. After cranking out some truly great examples of character and level design, Insomniac decided that they'd run out of ideas for the little purple fire-breather, and wisely abandoned the franchise. Vivendi and Eurocom, on the other hand, saw a perfectly good dead horse and just happened to have a stick with them, and thus we have Spyro: A Hero's Tail. Get it? Tail? See, 'cause Spyro is a dragon, and he has a tail, so it's a pun! Get it?

Ugh.

Deja Pew

For anyone who's played…well, virtually any of the previous Spyro titles, but in particular Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Hero's Tail will seem disturbingly familiar. The malevolent Red the Dragon is tweaked about something, and is dumping Dark Gems all over the Dragon Realms. Why? Oh, who knows. Who cares? The bottom line is, there are lots of things out there, and it's up to Spyro to either smash them or collect them, depending on what kind of thing they are. Dark gems: smash. Regular gems: collect. Steel chests: smash. Dragon eggs: collect. Sure, it was a lot of fun in Year of the Dragon, but that was released five years ago. I was hoping for a little more innovation when it came to overall game design, but perhaps the developers subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought, or maybe they were simply confused by the recent upsurge of interest in retro gaming. Either way, Hero's Tail is a collection-fest in the extreme. It seems like there's no end to the tallies being kept as Spyo makes his way from level to level.

Hero's Tail isn't just dull for players who've already experienced all the Spyro games have to offer, though, it's boring for newcomers, too. If there was a class called "Building Generic Platformers 101," then this game would be an A-plus-earning final project. Spyro starts off with a small roster of moves, just simple jumping, fire breathing, and charging. As the game progresses, he consults with Dragon elders who teach him new moves, such as the oh-so-groundbreaking double jump, or the horn dive. Eventually, he learns other breath attacks as well, including an ice attack and a lightning attack. Navigating the geography rarely takes more than jumping, gliding, or knocking through walls. The layouts are sprawling, simple fields that all seem to suffer from the same sort of ennui; if it's possible for a map to phone it in, that's what the environments in Hero's Tail are doing. Enemies are usually encountered one at a time, so that the challenge is never too great, and rarely require more than a healthy gust of fire to send them to the great arcade in the sky. Some do require specific attacks or combinations of attacks, but there are no real surprises in the combat. Hero's Tail is like the lowest common denominator of platformers, taking the most fundamental moves from everything that's come before it and combining into an enormous mélange of "been there, done that."

Making a list, checking it twice

Each area of the game comes complete with a checklist of tasks to perform, such as extending a bridge, speaking to a specific character, or finding all of something. Smashing all of the Dark Gems in a specific area clears the way to the next area, complete with its own checklist of things to do. Fortunately, a list doesn't have to be finished in order for Spyro to move on, and areas can be revisited by those hoping to achieve 100% completion. Environments are broken up nicely into pockets of activity, and flow together smoothly into the region as a whole. The only downside to this particular setup is that it can be easy to leave an area half-finished because taking a particular corridor or path leads to a completely brand new region to explore, and when a given goal is to collect all of something, backtracking can be frustrating.

As in previous titles, Spyro has a few friends along for the ride to help him out. There's Hunter the Cheetah, Blink the Mole (see, get it, 'cause moles have those squinty eyes! It's funny!), Sergeant Byrd the Penguin, and even Sparx the Dragonfly gets to take a crack at playing hero. As characters go, they're all pretty bland, but I must admit to being especially fond of Sergeant Byrd, because I think he's cute and he speaks with a British accent. (Hey, we all have our weaknesses, lay off.) Each character has a slightly different set of abilities than Spyro and their levels vary accordingly. Sgt. Byrd, for example, uses a rocket pack to fly through hoops and drop bombs on unsuspecting vultures and gnorcs. The sidekick levels don't exactly reinvent the gaming wheel, but they do break up the monotony a wee bit.

Not quite as bad as a kick in the shins

Although it wallows in mediocrity in much the same way most shows on the WB do, Hero's Tail does get a few things right. The environments and characters look like they came straight out of a coloring book, with cheerful hues to match, and the animations are silky smooth, especially when Spyro is running or flying. Controls are simple to learn, easy to execute, and responsive enough to make precision jumping a breeze, if only there was any. Loading time is kept to such a minimum that it's easy to forget the game is made for the PS2. Best and most surprising of all is Hero's Tail wry wit and self-awareness. It seems like maybe somebody on the development team knew they were designing by the numbers and wants us to know that they know that they're just following the same old platforming formula. At one point, the Professor tells Spyro that he has to collect eight Power Stars in order to be able to use the Ball Gadget. When Spyro protests that he hasn't seen any of them, the Professor asks "Well, what about red coins?" This exchange runs through a few more staples of platforming collection before the Professor finally throws up his hands and asks Spyro what he would like to collect eight of. If that sort of spirit and tongue in cheek awareness had carried over into the actual gameplay, Hero's Tail would have been…well, Ratchet and Clank, really.

Spyro: A Hero's Tail isn't a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination. It's very nice to look at, genuinely funny in places, and the controls and camera both perform admirably. Its bright colors and relatively low difficulty level make it an ideal choice for younger gamers, but for anyone else, it's a bad idea. Not because it's a bad game, but because there are just so many other titles out there that do the same thing so much better. The platforming library is especially deep on the PS2, and Hero's Tail simply can't compare with the likes of Jak, Ratchet, Sly, or Rayman. All but the most devoted of fans should give this one a pass.