Usually, when a 3D adventure game with a stupid pun in the title comes along, I don't expect to enjoy it. You know how they can be; collect the items, move to the next area, yawn a lot. I had never even played any of the previous Spyro games when I laid hands on Spyro: A Hero's Tail. However, Spyro surprised me; I actually had fun with it.

Spyro starts with the staples of the genre - collecting items and learning new moves. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the bulk of it. There are plenty of other playable characters in their own little mini-games. For example, you can control Blink the mole, equipped with bombs and lasers, to play an underground area that Spyro would be ill-equipped for. When Spyro meets up with Sgt. Byrd, Byrd can take off with his jet pack (with a "tally ho!") for an aerial mission. Spyro himself can double-jump, dash, glide, and breathe fire. That's nothing new, to be sure, but the other characters definitely break up the pace.

Spyro's graphics look preposterously good; the entire game world has an extremely vivid, colorful, and slightly trippy look to it. The graphics have a very sharp look to them, unlike most multi-system games. The framerate never, ever drops below 60 fps, either. The characters animate like muppets hopped up on meth, and I mean that in a good way. They gesture and emote almost furiously, and along with the clever lines and excellent voice acting, you can't help but laugh.

Spyro hasn't been very difficult so far, though. Every enemy has been a total pushover. Basically, all they take is a dashing into or a shot of fire breath, and they're done. Sometimes, you can walk right up to them, and they'll take a few seconds before getting around to actually trying to attack you. There have been a couple of tricky platforming parts, but still, nothing too tough. On the other hand, sometime after writing those last few sentences, I took a minute to skip to some later levels and found that some of them are extremely tough. For example, a reccuring minigame entails manning a turret and defending something from enemies (as seen in Conker and I-Ninja). The first couple of times, it's dead easy, but later ones have totally overwhelming amounts of enemies. Spyro definitely isn't without any challenge.

So far, Spyro is reasonably fun enough for a nutcase like me, even if it is supposed to be very family-oriented. If you liked I-Ninja, you'll probably like A Hero's Tail too.