Skylanders: Swap Force is a game in the popular Skylanders series which I played through with my son recently. Skylanders is a series of action games which has the unique hook that you need to have action figures of the characters in real life in order to use those characters in the game. Each game ships out with two Skylanders to encourage cooperative play and to start your collection, and the games are definitely beatable with only those two characters. However, along the way, you will find certain areas with secrets barred to you that necessitate having a wide range of Skylanders, encouraging you to buy more of the figures to be able to explore more of the worlds.
The use of the figures in the game is both clever and rather diabolical. Once one of your characters is dead, you can't use that character again for the remainder of the mission. While the game isn't hard, it's definitely oriented towards kids, and kids suck at video games. As such, having a big collection can be critical for a kid being able to clear some of the more difficult levels, and collecting the figures can be fun and addicting on its own! Each character has its own level and abilities, and the characters improve in the game by using them more, helping you to feel like you're making good progress by using your favorites. Each character has their own feel to them that makes it feel rewarding to collect new Skylanders, so you're not just buying extra lives by purchasing the figures.
I love that you can use older Skylanders in each newer game, as you don't need to buy all new Skylanders to have a chance to beat the games. However, each new generation gets new abilities that unlock fun new parts of the game, so it definitely becomes a money pit if you're interested in trying to complete the games entirely. For example, Skylanders: Swap Force introduces the idea that you can now separate each character into a top and bottom half, and mix and match those characters to create your own unique characters. So you can have the bomb throwing fire guy up top, enabling you to wreak havok with your bombs, while having the octopus leg guy on bottom, enabling you to squirt ink all over the place.
The gameplay is pretty fun and simple. Each character has a few basic attacks that are easy to execute, and breaking objects and killing enemies yields money you can use to upgrade your characters, experience, and various secrets that improve your Skylanders at large, give extra equipment for them, or unlock new special moves for each individual Skylander. You navigate across the level, jumping across platforms, solving simple puzzles, and crushing your foes, who have a simple pattern of battle that makes the game good for playing with kids.
The story is silly kids fare, but they have legitimate voice actors that bring some goofy humor that will be appealing to both kids and adults.
The music is fine, but the sound effects are actually very good, with plenty of explosions, chimes, and sounds to communicate clearly what's going on on screen.
The controls are generally good, with the Skylanders doing what you ask them to.
The most frustrating thing about the game, by far, is the fact that you're tethered together with your coop partner, which makes it extremely difficult to navigate some of the platforming elements. This is similar to my main complaint about the otherwise brilliant Lego Batman, which takes what should be an enjoyable coop experience and will frequently degrade it to a shouting match while you and your son/daughter/fellow human are running opposite directions, getting nowhere, and begging the other person to come your way.
The game is definitely also geared towards kids with addictive personalities, so be forewarned. Collecting all of the Skylanders, particularly while they're new, is a prohibitively expensive experience. I'd estimate that gearing out to complete a new Skylanders game to 100% would probably cost north of $250, and that may be conservative. We restrict my son to spending his money only on older titles, and I'll frequently grab him big lots of Skylanders on craigslist, and this is definitely the way to go. We've spent less than $100 on three Skylanders games and more than 50 figures using this route, so don't get into chasing the newest Skylanders unless you have deep pockets, and even if you do, just realize that all the old stuff will be discounted at least 60% once the newest one has released, and that teaching your children patience is its own reward! I, for the record, would have been 100% in on Skylanders as a kid, but I'm grateful that I have a little bit of seasoned wisdom and budgeting experience to help guide my son down a path that won't bankrupt his poor parents or spend all of his birthday/Christmas money!
Anyway, I enjoyed Skylanders: Swap Force quite a bit, and definitely recommend it for parents with kids in the 5-12 range. Be smart about your money and this can be a fun collecting/gaming experience for the whole family! I'll give it an 8.6/10.
I've already teased two games that I haven't reviewed yet, so I'll hold off another teaser here. Check back next week for another few reviews!
-TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment