Preston Ward Condra Ranks All 101 Spyro 1-3 Levels

by Preston Ward Condra

A project I made when I was 15 years old, during my sophomore year in High School in September 2009. I critiqued and ranked every single level from Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage and Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon in, one consolidated project from worst to best. It doesn't matter if you agree with my opinion or not. All that matters, is that this ended up getting finished.

13. 90: Country Speedway

Yet another Speedway / Flight level appearing on the countdown. What else is new? However, this is the first speedway from Spyro 3 appearing on the countdown and with what I stated in the past, the Spyro 3 speedways are improved in quality in comparison to it's Spyro 1 and 2 counterparts thanks to other things to perform and do in terms of gameplay in them such as the races.

While in such that I will admit the races against say the pigs and butterflies are good in terms of at least something new to perform and do to keep you busy to have more fun in the level, I found the race bonus courses from Spyro 3 to be very repetitive and bland, thanks to in part of the enemy AI acting for most of the time lifeless with the ability to not able to attack you at any time on the course while racing is taking place and also with the fact that AI will take a very linear and boring pattern fashion that is easy to follow and remember from making it very easy to way away as the winner.

As for the Hunter mini-game in this Speedway, at least it makes up for the crappy and boring race sections for me. I found it cool to take down the flying saucers and space cows in sequence in a rail shooting game fashion and protect the townspeople in them but, much like the races and unlike some of the other Hunter secret mini-games from Spyro 2, the ones in Spyro 3 play out often in a repititive action tone, which in meaning can be boring from time to time to play through due to how the AI functions in a repetitive way. Don't be surprised that while the mini-game has cool charm to it, expect yourself doing the same process over and over again.

At any rate, not much else to say. I didn't really care too much for the presentation and style in the stage since I have no real personal state or love for dry country levels from Video Games with that in such, I rank it as the worst of the four speedways from Spyro 3. Country Speedway was good for what it's worth but definitely not nowhere near the caliber of fun to the main levels in the PS1 Spyro Trilogy and that goes for pretty much every bonus level in of the series.