Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs

Just like the last two games, Spyro's homeland is in trouble – his nemesis (an evil Muppet named Ripto) is back, cutesy platform enemies are marauding the land, and all of Spyro's friends seem to have their own little personal problems. Our four-legged friend is the only one who's capable of fixing any of these crises, and he does this by breaking pots, gathering crystals, trading items, opening up secret safes, and... well, collecting lots and lots and lots and lots of junk.

It's not that Attack of the Rhynocs is completely unoriginal. It's just that it's original in ways that aren't conducive to addictive gameplay. The main new feature is a fully-integrated game world – instead of being divided into levels, there's one very large universe to explore, kindly divided into 14 themed areas. Accessing each world will require you to gather story-based items and complete quests handed to you by the game's inhabitants – both features being new introductions to the GBA Spyros. The game's not all isometric, either – as before, two other playable characters (Agent 9 and a penguin named Sgt. Byrd this time) provide for a little wacky side-scrolling action to "spice up" the mix.

This sprawling-world approach to platform design is both a blessing and a curse. It does make the game seem a lot longer (in fact, it's more than a feeling – you're looking at a good 10 hours or so of gameplay if you're serious about exploring everything), but it also means you'll spend far too much time backtracking and combing over previously-discovered areas for stuff you missed. And you'll be doing it a lot, too, for Attack of the Rhynocs brings item-collecting to Donkey Kong 64 levels that will bore you sick if you've played one too many platformers in your lifetime.

The best thing you can say about Spyro – and, oddly enough, the worst thing as well – is that the developers at Digital Eclipse accomplished what they set out to do. The game's an okay platformer with colorful visuals, decent (if generic) music, and control that gets the job done. It's just that there's nothing at all special here, and on a handheld where Mario and Sonic's fighting it out on even ground, you need to have something at least a little bit special if you want to stick out from the crowd.

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