Hours later - days, in fact - when I was finally able to pry him away from playing long enough to talk to me, Josh had this to say about Spyro: At first it was really hard. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. It's really weird when Spyro goes into the shadow world, but cool too. I really like having to save the Dragon Elders. Spyro is the only one who can do it.

Mom comment for a moment: I think one of the reasons Josh has really liked the game is because there is a storyline behind it. There's somewhere to go in the game to find out what will happen next in the story, not just rehash your way through the same battles repeatedly against ever more difficult enemies.

Josh again: Spyro has different abilities in the shadow world from the real world. You can't burn things in the shadow realm, so you have to think your way around stuff. And figure out how to fight the bad guys without just fire breathing them. And you get missions that you have to do to save the creatures. Some of the quests are collecting things like medicine ingredients. But sometimes you have to find something, too, and that's harder. You're always trying to rescue the Elder Dragons, though, so Spyro can learn new abilities. Its like this game is going to be part of a game, and you have to play the next one to see what happens to Spyro next. It's a good story, not just a game.

(Insert from TheZoo (not Josh's dad, but we've got a DS in the family, also). Velea's mentioned the story; let's talk gameplay for a little bit. This first point is the most important - Spyro isn't an endless series of meaningless fights. It's got plenty of fight in it, but there's a reason for most of the combat. A fellow dragon is being held captive, or you need the chest a shadow creature is guarding, or whatever.

There are random encounters, but you can avoid most of them if you want to. (Of course, anything you defeat will drop something useful to pick up, but you can only hold on to so many jewels.) And part of the strategy is deciding when to fight, and when to find another way around the problem. (A note to the wise - those rascally sheep can be hard to target, but each one is worth at least 10 hit points, as are the crabs. When you need a quick HP recharge, take out a few sheep and crabs, then dive back into the shadow realms.)

Spyro also makes good use of the touch screen. Well, in one major area it does; less so in other ways. We'll get to the drawbacks, below, but first let's just talk about drawing. As Spyro advances in the game, he learns more skills. Some of these are combat skills, which are triggered with button sequences. (Most of these aren't very intricate - for example, punching "B" twice quickly gives you a special attack.) Some of what he learns are spells, and that's where the touch screen comes in. Each spell is triggered, not with a button sequence, but by drawing the appropriate glyph on the screen - a triangle to teleport, a simple lightning bolt to cast lightning, two parallel lines to move a heavy object, and so forth. It doesn't take a virtuoso to draw these lines; the game is pretty good at recognizing what you're trying to do and acting on it.

The graphics won't win any prizes, but they're nice; it's usually easy to see where you're going and what's around you. The dialogue screens are good, giving NPCs personality and interesting conversation in just a few words. (On the other hand, the dialogue sequencing has occasional problems, which are highlighted by my inability to ever play a game in the order the designers intended me to play it.)

The controls are pretty easy, as well; the only difficulty there was that you could only face in one of eight directions, so lining up to face in just the right direction can sometimes be a pain, especially when you're having to maneuver quickly. On the other hand, the combat AI is very nice - the strike area for your attack is usually pretty broad, and you automatically turn to stay engaged when your opponent starts moving around. And many of your attacks can strike multiple opponents, even things like head butts and tail spikes.

Oh! I almost forgot one of the most important features - getting knocked out doesn't require you to go way back and run a long sequence again to get back to where you were. When you get knocked down, you'll have to rerun a bit of gameplay, but usually no more than a minute or so. Spyro has enough gameplay that it doesn't have to rely on lengthy "restarts" to keep you playing longer. I like that a lot in a game; I can get real aggravated when I have to repeat a long sequence over and over, until I get every last step right in it.

So it's fun. The first time I sat down to play, I spent five hours on it; I just wanted to get one more thing done before I quit. And then one more thing …

But it does have its drawbacks. Two in particular stand out. First, there are five touch screens, and only one of them displays your hit points and magic points. When you take damage, they show up briefly on the top screen, but I really want to know how many HP I have left before I start a fight, not after I've been hit. And just as bad, the top screen bars aren't real precise. I can be at 2/3 HP, while the bar shows me at about 95%. So I have to keep the HP/MP touch screen open to track my health, when I'd rather have the spell screen ready for use.

The second major drawback is the manual. It's in itsy-bitsy 5- and 6-point type (that means each letter is about 1/12th of an inch tall) and it simply doesn't tell you what you need to know in several important areas. For example, there are a couple of items on the inventory touch screen that aren't labeled or described. And when you cast a spell that requires a target, a second screen appears on which you're supposed to select your target. That isn't mentioned at all. That's somewhat intuitive, so it's not a problem unless there are no targets available when you first try to cast a target spell. In that case, the target screen flashes briefly, then disappears, leaving you with the impression that you should have done something (quickly!) but with no idea what you should have done. A kid had asked me to move some rocks, so I triggered my handy mental-movement power … and nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. There were several seconds of glowing screen effect, plus the target-screen flash, during which I tried a wide variety of presses, punches, stylus lines and so forth for about half an hour (off and on). It wasn't till I learned another target spell, and tried it on another target, that I realized I didn't have a good target with the first one.

(Back to Velea:) Josh is 10, so conveying to you just how much he has enjoyed this game isn't easy for him. Suffice it to say that he had no problems completing homework the first week we had the game because he had to get to playing Spyro. Even after that first week, when he had other new games to play too, he would still go back to Spyro to get through the next part of the game. In fact, I had very little play time on the game myself, because every time I did get my hands on the DS, I had a shadow over my shoulder offering help and advice. I simply couldn't get ahead of the kid no matter how hard I tried.

Of course, this is one reason why I recommend it to a family, not just to the children in the family. It's a game that has enough of a story to it to appeal to adults, with controls that are easy enough to not frustrate people with less than rapid-fire reflexes (which means me, in other words). I also have trouble mastering the little stylus thing that comes with the DS, so believe it or not I like that I can play the game and don't have to use it all the time. Of course, the best part for us about the game is that it comes on a portable system. The best testament to how much fun our family as a whole has had with this game is to share a brief story about a recent restaurant experience.

We'd gone out to a nicer restaurant to celebrate, but I was dreading how long we might have to wait for a table, and even after that for food. As we were sitting waiting for a table, I handed two kids their DS systems in hopes they would stay entertained for the half hour wait. My son started up Spyro and settled in to one of the chairs. Within moments, he had a small crowd of not just other kids, both boy and girl alike, watching him play and offering advice, but adults paying attention to what the kids were doing. I had to smile quietly to myself when one particular dad leaned over and quietly gave Josh some advice on how to get past a particular section of the game he'd been stuck on. Not only did Spyro entertain many of the people waiting for tables that day, but it kept my two boys (ages 10 and 4) involved enough that they didn't even care when the food finally arrived. Any game that can keep a ten year old growing boy from eating has got to be a great game. And Spyro: Shadow Legacy, did just that.