Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage

Spyro has returned to the game-scene, as evil as ever

Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage is the sequel to the first game, Spyro The Dragon, and second in the series which features the same Evil Dragon, Spyro and is based on the dragon's life. The game started out something like this. After 'freeing' all of the dragons in the five Dragon Worlds, Spyro decided that he needed a break. (Of course, he didn't 'free' them, they were all at the concentration camps getting their souls removed. But Spyro would never let anyone know that.) So anyway Spyro and Sparx headed off to Dragon Shores for a vacation, but just as they did, some nutty professor decided to kidnap Spyro by switching the portals around. Well after he got there, Spyro met Hunter the Cheeta, Elora the Faun, and Professor the...little brown guy.

The (So-called) Plot

The following documents Spyro's plunderings and ravages in Avalar. This is the stuff that Spyro doesn't want you to know, because if you played the real game you would have no idea that any of this is true. But just trust me, OK?

UNbelievable!

Upon reaching the land of Avalar, Spyro meets the Professor, a UN diplomat. He reveals that he needs a neutral third party to negotiate peace between warring groups, started on by Ripto, Avalar's warmonger dictator. Since Hunter lost his running shoes, and Elora is not likely to appeal to radical Muslims, a dragon is his last hope. So he rigged the portal to Dragon Shores to take Spyro into Glimmer, a situation which is reflected in this game's European name, Gateway to Glimmer.

Spyro Encounters Ripto

Ripto vants to suck your blood!

Spyro encounters Ripto almost first thing as he rides in on his pet dinosaur, Gulp. Elora, Hunter, and the Professor all tell Spyro he must eventually fight Ripto.

Ripto doesn't like dragons very much, however instead of being unbased prejudice, Ripto probably saw the TV series Dragon Tales before, which definitely gives dragons a bad name.

Ripto gets very mad that the professor brought in a dragon, and vows to kill everyone there, Spyro included. But just as he is about to draw his magic sceptre out, Gulp accidentally eats it. Infuriated, Ripto literally swears revenge, and rides off screaming and yelling obscenities which the ESRB later edited out of the game.

Spyro, who don't be wantin anybody talkin' 'bout him or his mama like dat, tells the gang that he is going to run off immediately on a quest to find Ripto.

Spyro goes on his Quest

Elora tells Spyro to hold up because he needs 14 talismans to defeat Ripto. She gives him a book to put the talismen in called a 'guidebook.' Spyro, who has no pockets to carry anything, eats the guidebook so he can take it with him. He then regurgitates it whenever he needs to add a talisman to it.

Spyro goes to different worlds using portals, and he kills the enemies of everyone who promises give him a talisman. He wasn't picky, and he frequently fought on the two different sides of a war.

He does this for about 3/4 of the year, in the summer, autumn, and winter. At the end of each of the three seasons he kicks Ripto's dinosaurs' asses, and then the ass of Ripto himself.

Elora finally tells Spyro during the winter of that year that the professor, Hunter, and herself actually caused Ripto to come into Avalar during a freak voodoo-ritual accident, so Ripto rips moneybag's face off, in all sequels, Moneybags always said, "I used to be such a good looking man, until a bastard ripped my face off!". Spyro actually takes this information pretty well considering all he had been through. The only punishment that he exacts is that Elora can never appear in any of his sequels ever again.

Gameplay

The brilliant video game scribes at Insomniac once again took Spyro's tales of adventure and plunders, and recorded them in gameplay that you can relive again and again.

Balls

Spyro did a bunch of tedious DIY tasks for the residents of each world to gain green magical spheres called 'orbs'. Spyro then threw the orbs at Ripto in the final battle, giving him a considerable number of welts. When Insomniac programmed into the game the tasks required to get the orbs, they were just a little bit different than what is listed below, which is what Spyro actually did...

• Picking up bones, then helping a shaman complete a voodoo ritual by re-animating them into a skeleton who dances. The tirual is then completed by burning the face of a passerby and scattering the bones throughout Skelox Badlands, so Spyro has to do the whole bloody task again!
• Playing a one-on-four hockey match against a team on steroids.
• Making turtle soup out of innocent little baby turtles, before serving said soup to beach clientele.
• Helping a cave-man find a leper left outside in the snow, while feeding it fish taken from a frozen stream (don't ask how this works - it's a videogame, remember? You stupid noob).
• Destroying a bunch of spiked metal balls.
• Doing a trade sequence to get the Professor his pencil back
• Gathering monkeys with Hunter, and making sure he doesn't get hit with poop.
• Take some old-as-dirt senior citzen for a walk around his front yard three times, while making sure that some impossible-to-beat golems don't kill him. If, by some divine miracle, he does make it, then Spyro and Hunter go hunting for the golems for sport. The golems naturally scream and run for their rocky lives, and the record number of golems shot down in a second is four, made by Spyro (though Hunter insists it was really himself and that Spyro has taken the credit like a tough bitch).
• Journeying deep into a volcano and racing Hunter in collecting ten asbestos crystals before he does.
• Knocking down all the tribesmen's homes before lava-lizards can come set them on fire.
• Following secret agent Jack Bauer to his hideout by hiding behind trees and following him.
• Shooting sheep in flying saucers (don't ask...)
• Feeding fish to a stone idol (they're not even trying to make sense anymore!).
• Eat waaaayyyy too much guacamole lul lul lul

Spyro's Mad Skizzills

Spyro can even swim in the air.

In this game Spyro can swim, climb up walls, and headbutt. Hell, even Lara Croft can't do all that! In order to get these mad skills, Spyro had to pay the baron Moneybags, who then gave Spyro specific sterroid injections into certain areas of his dragon body, which gave him these skills.

Spyro can swim in this game in water. He can even swim in the air, too! Spyro had actually asked Insomniac, the video game developers, to have him learn flying too. But they were just too damn lazy to program in flying as a fourth skill (Ofcource Spyro gave Insomniac 30 days in the freezer for this), so they decided to accidently leave in a 'glitch' where the player can make Spyro swim everywhere! (A 'glitch' that happens in about ten levels of the game, and in an additonal five levels of Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon too).

Wall climbing was one of the powers of Spyro's alter ego, Spyro-man, so only it made sense to have Spyro have the power to climb walls as well.

As far as head-butting is concerned, this skill is only used like five times in the whole game. I'm dead serious. But head-butting sure is useful for making Spyro fall off a cliff faster if you screwed up a glide and know he's going to fall anyway, and you just want to hurry it up.

Soul Harvesting

Spyro drinks the souls of slain enemies to give himself more powers. The game refers to the souls as 'spirit energy' but we all know what that really means. Spyro actually discovered this when he was experiencing withdrawl from dragons' souls because he had been in Avalar away from the Dragon concentration camps for so long. Out of desperation he ate a slain mountain goat in the Colossus level, and discovered he had grown stronger with new soul energy. Spyro started drinking more and more souls, and he got powers such as supercharge, super flame breath, Ice breath, and even flight.

Music

Stewart Copeland did the music for this game, again. He didn't do it willingly, though. After his awful experience with Spyro composing music for the first game, Copeland ran away, hid in his recording studio and locked the doors. Who can blame him? But then Sting told Spyro the address of Copeland's studio. What a bitch. Spyro came charging in, square button held down, and forced Copeland to compose another soundtrack for his second game.

Critical Reception

This game was critically acclaimed by IGN, GameFAQs, and all the other games review websites. Wow, it must have been a great game. NOT! Spyro actually sent everyone reviewing his game with personal letters which threatened the reviewers' houses, family, and intimate relations if they even thought about giving his game any less than an 8/10. Some gave it a seven, and they were quickly burninated by Spyro.

Faulty Copies

On Christmas 2007, it was reported that 99.99999+0.00001% of idiots who bought this game had problems. Apparently, the box blew up, causing the victim to fly backwards, through 5 walls and then the disc would fly towards them and cut into their brains like a circular saw. Most believed that it had something to do with The Axis of Evil-Doers, since Spyro is a member. This is now being referred to as the 'Exploding Box and Flying Disc Straight to the Head' incident.