Howdy folks, EVA-Kirby here.
Today, I am going to go over a series that came out way back in
2011 and has continued to still be a smash hit today. That series I'm referring
to is none other than Skylanders, Activision's latest cash-cow franchise that
targets kids with the gimmick of mixing toys (...well, more like figurines)
with video games. The biggest surprise is that it isn't entirely a bad
experience.
Skylanders is a unique series where it offers the gimmick that
"Toys come to life". Indeed, this is true, as the figurines released
for this game have technology in them that allows them to be scanned into the
game via the series' "Portal of Power", a USB peripheral that scans
the figure and its characters' data and uploads it to the game. Any data that
your characters gather while in the game, such as upgrades and money, are saved
back into the figure so you could take that figure and plug it into your
friends' copy of the game without having to lug the game system itself with
you. It's a pretty neat idea, with the only flaw being that each figure costs
about $10, excluding special variant figures, but if you're used to getting
stuff like Lego's (Bionicle and Technic come to mind), this could be
overlooked. Each figure plays entirely different from each other, even if the
characters might be somewhat related. Take 3 dragons from this game: Drobot,
Sunburn, and Spyro, who happen to be an Iron-Man style dragon, a phoenix dragon
and... well, you should know who Spyro is by now. However, their gameplay is
entirely different: Drobot acts like a SHMUP ship complete with a hover mode
locking his shots in a direction, Sunburn focuses on flamethrowers and teleport
spamming, and Spyro shoots fireballs and headbutts folks into submission. Not
one character is ever the same gameplay wise, and allows for some nice variety.
The story for each of the games varies with each new release, but
the basic premise is that there exists an alternate world named Skylands, and
you the player have been chosen as a Portal Master to summon the Skylanders
back to their home (always due to some in-game dues ex machina sending them to
our world) and save the day from whatever evil the game throws at you. It's
your typical Saturday Morning Cartoon plot, if anything, but it somehow manages
to pull this off well enough so that you won't be groaning at how corny the
dialogue can be at times. It also helps that the makers of this series have put
a lot into fleshing out various background details of its main characters,
which are often supplemented via storybooks. But, since this is about the games
themselves, I won't be discussing those here.
So far, there have been 3 seasons of this game released, with a
4th one on its way this Fall as of this writing. The titles are Spyro's
Adventure, Giants, Swap Force, and the soon-to-be-released Trap Team. Each game
has offered a new gimmick in their figures to keep its players wanting more
from each new title: Spyro's Adventure introduces the concept and setting;
Giants adds in elite player characters known as Giants, who are used to unlock
new features in the game; Swap Force adds in player characters that can swap
the top and bottom halves of their figures for an insane variety of attack
patterns; lastly, Trap Team uses crystals to allow you to capture boss
characters and treat them as playable characters too. We're going to be looking
at the seasons currently released, their games, and the figures released with
them. Do note, I will not be covering the games not on the console and 3DS
versions, like the games for the iOS, since those don't really feel like proper
games to me and are more... mobile game-based.
Before we begin, Spyro's Adventure's conception is a bit odd, as
originally this was intended to be a Spyro the Dragon reboot, hence why he has
top billing in this title. However, due to the popularity of the other
Skylanders, Spyro himself (as well as Sparx and Cynder from the Legend of Spyro
series) has been reduced to a mix of a Guest Character/Canon Foreigner, not
unlike another character named Reiko Kirishima, the main character from the
Sega CD game Time Gal who would later appear in Castle of Shikinami 3 in a
similar manner like Spyro does here.
The first game, Spyro's Adventure, was released on all major
consoles and the 3DS at the time. It should be noted that the console versions
and the 3DS version differ entirely that the consoles play like the Gauntlet
games (think a beat-em-up) and the 3DS plays like a 3D platformer that each
have their own stories. I'll be covering the console versions from here on,
since I have yet to play the 3DS titles. The story for this game begins when
the previous Portal Master before you, an elderly wizard named Master Eon, is
utterly curbstomped by an evil little midget Portal Master named Kaos, who for
all intents and purposes, is effectively a more competent Invader Zim (even
right down to the same voice actor), and manages to fling the Skylanders to our
realm so he can run unopposed to take over Skylands. Naturally, you have to go
in and kick his butt.
Gameplay wise, this game displays elements of your average
beat-em-up title like Gauntlet Legends and Castle Crashers. You proceed through
each level defeating various baddies, solving puzzles along the way, and
leveling up your characters along the way in either single player or co-op gameplay.
Speaking of characters, this game introduces your basic characters that will be
prominent across all the games thus far. Each character has their own attack
style and stats, and by gathering experience points and money, you can upgrade
your total health and buy new moves for your character. Furthermore, each
character has 1 of 2 move branches, where a character can only choose 1 of
these movesets to further power up a particular attack, and once you choose a
branch, you cannot change it unless you reset the figure itself, so pick
carefully. Also included is a VS mode, though it’s at its bare minimum.
Considering this is the first title, I feel this could be forgiven.
Giants, the sequel to Spyro’s Adventure, picks up after the first
title by introducing a team of Skylanders known as the Giants, who were able to
quell an invasion of giant robots known as the Arkeyans 10,000 years ago, but
as a result, were sent to our world. Flash-forward to today, and Kaos has
returned from the last game to reboot the Arkeyans again to lead them to
conquest. Fortunately, the Giants have also arrived as well…
Gameplay-wise, this game is effectively Spyro’s Adventure 2.0,
offering a better framerate, longer levels, additional game modes, improved
multiplayer, a better range of popular voice actors, and a difficulty level.
Toy-wise, the game introduces several new types of figures, including the
Giants, Lightcores, and Series 2 figures. Giants are the main feature of this
game, as they’re effectively MUCH beefier player characters with better
defenses and HP for starters, and they can access many of the hidden areas of
levels through varying methods, such as being able to punch down walls, drop
through floors, and even pull in islands and ships via their chains through sheer
brute strength, and in one case, through sheer mental power. In addition to all
that, they also have hardware that illuminates various parts of their body when
put on the Portal. Lightcore figures also have this same feature, but instead
they are reprints of the smaller figures who give off a smart-bomb effect when
first placed on the Portal for any level. Speaking of reprints, the Series 2
figures are reprints of characters from the first game, who not only gain a new
power in addition to their normal moves, but they can also swap moveset
branches at various points in the game, making them a much more worthwhile
investment than their Series 1 version. As one last highlight, all the
Skylanders had gained new voice actors, even for ones that hadn't gotten any
new figures in this game, and range from popular VAs like Tara Strong, Yuri
Lowenthal, and many, many others.
In 2013, Swap Force was released, providing yet another entry into
the series. In this game, the Swap Force Skylanders had defended the Cloudbreak Islands, a source of vast magic power
used to replenish Skylands’ magic, from the darkness 100 years ago, but upon
staving it off, they too were sent to our world, but not before gaining the
ability to mix and match bodies due to the Islands’
magical energies. As they finally emerge and head back to Skylands, Kaos
returns again, and now it seems he has a new ally to assist him…
This game had made the biggest changes to the game’s formula
compared to the last two titles, and to put it simply, it’s glorious. For
starters, you can now jump much like in the 3DS games, which allows a lot of
stuff to happen due to just one action being allowed, from integrating it into
puzzles and platforming, to dodging stuff in combat. When you play Co-op with a
friend, both players get the gold and experience points one player gets, so
that it doesn’t become a mad dash to get more stuff than your bud. In addition,
the graphics had gotten a complete overhaul so that the game’s cutscenes can
flow seamlessly into gameplay, and they look as good as many recent CG movies
released these days. In addition, the graphics now have a more cartoonier feel
to them; for instance, the series’ “Goomba”, the Chompy, looks less like a ball
with antennae and teeth as it did in the past and became more goofier, with the
teeth losing that ferocious edge on them and the antennae becoming more like
those eyes you’d see on Courage the Cowardly Dog’s weirder characters.
Altogether, the additions have only made the series look more impressive overall.
Of course, nothing in life is ever perfect, and that even applies
to Skylanders. Each game has had numerous flaws in them that must warrant
looking into, aside from the huge price tag of the games and the figures. For
the first game, SA lacks any real difficulty during the various stages, save
for the bosses, which display some shocking surprise difficulty by featuring
attack patterns you would expect in the Touhou games: the final boss is
especially egregious on that matter. There’s also a lack of replayability once
you 100% the levels due to lack of multiplayer modes outside co-op and the
limited vs. modes. Also, the Wii version has fewer issues than the other
console versions since it was supposed to be the intended version, so there are
quite some numerous bugs present in the X360 and PS3 versions, such as some
things not loading properly. The only reason you might want to consider this
game is if you’re just curious to see how the series started.
Giants seemed to have worked out the difficulty problems and lack
of multiplayer modes, but it in turn seems to have generated issues of its own.
The main complaint is that it feels heavily like an expansion game rather than
a full-blown game, where several levels don’t even have that much impact on the
plot, such as when you’re attacked out of the blue by ghost pirates for no
reason, merely to pad out the game. There’s also a complaint that some
Skylanders got a nerf when making it to this game, mainly due to some figures
not getting repose, but also because the developers forgot to try and improve
their damage rating from the last game.
And lastly, since Swap Force presented the greatest amount of
changes, so too did it open up its own flaws. One of the biggest faults with
this game was the inclusion of the Swap Force areas: while they were fun little
diversions from the main game, the fact that these were treated much like
elemental zones and not optional if you wanted to get 100% in the game was
rather annoying, considering you had to buy an entire new set of figures in
addition to at least 1 figure from each of the 8 elements if you had played the
earlier games. …sure, the idea of buying new stuff for a game is marketing
reasons, but it still hurts. Also, unlike the last games, where it introduced
only so many side characters but at least saw them make some character
development to like them better (as much as you can have for a lil’ kid series
like this, anyways), characters are introduced almost with each stage, but
forget to actually give them some development, making many of them unmemorable
in the long run. Another thing that got hit was the Vs. mode, where we went
down from having at least 5 modes with at least 6 stages for each mode… to only
3 Vs. variations with about 3 stages at best. After forcing us to get more
characters, you skimp out on the Vs. modes? The heck, Activision, I might want
to beat up my friends w/ these new guys, and you only give us 3 stages to work
with? Lame, mates.
Skylanders is a fun lil’ series that folks of all ages could
enjoy, despite the flaws each game has had. There is a good variety of
characters to play as, solid gameplay, and humorous lore to keep folks
entertained for a good while. The price tag might seem expensive, but with a
series like this, you should worry more about getting figures you happen to
like: it’s best to enjoy a game with gameplay that suits you to a T. Of course,
my only concern for this series is if Activision doesn’t keep things fresh in a
good way; Trap Team’s starting to push it by making items that seem to be
required for its gameplay… but it’s too soon to be making accusations. We’ll
just wait and see how this will go.
Until next time, See ya!
-EVA Kirby
