The Legend of Spyro - A New Beginning for the GameCube tries to capitalize on the fantastic Spyro series which I adore. However, this is not a worthy sequel (or prequel).

First, a lot of the hype about the game is that they have great actors voicing the parts now. Elijah Wood (Frodo) is Spyro. David Spade is Sparx the dragonfly. It just doesn't work well. The Sparx character really annoyed me at several sections of the game. They moved away from cute and fun to "turn the sound off". Speaking of which, the background sound balance is off so that half the time you can't heard what's being said.

On one hand the graphics are pretty - on the other hand the camera drives me completely insane. Nice eye-candy jewels do not make up for frustrating gameplay.

The gameplay feels more violent. The creatures scream in agony as you repeatedly flame them. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be darker or more brutal. Either way it detracts from the fun to me. Pretty much all of your game is beating up on things. You're missing the fun mini-games and quests that other Spyro games offer.

Also, the game is SHORT. At least if there was long playability here you could excuse a few other problems, but for what you've paid for the game you barely get into a weekend with it.

I'm not quite sure what happened here. It's not like the game makers had any question about what really works in the Spyro game. The previous Spyro games were HUGE sellers and had a very loyal fan base. Why deliberately harm a franchise that was doing so well? Why deliberately shorten it so drastically? It really seems like they wanted some quick, easy cash and hoped that nobody would notice how poor the game was. Or if they did notice, that it would be too late because they already played the game.

I highly suggest you rent this game for a weekend - you'll undoubtedly finish the game over that weekend. If you really find you adore the game, then great! Buy a copy and enjoy. I really think though that you'll find a weekend is more than enough time with this.

NOTE: This does play fine on the Wii system.

Rating: 2/5