Skylanders isn't just a game. Skylanders is everything adults remember from their childhoods. It's collecting your favourite figurines. It's taking them round a mate's house to show off. It's swapping with your friends. It's discussing characters in the playground. Skylanders isn't just a game, it's a kid's craze; a craze that can be shared with adults.
As a parent, gaming with the kids can often become troublesome. I want to play Gears of War; my kids can't. My kids want to play Ben 10; I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a fork. We live in a world where if a game isn't shipped with the prefix 'LEGO', then chances are, co-op gaming between parent and child goes straight out the window.
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure solved this issue. I want to play Diablo; my kids want to play Spyro ? So let's do both at once!
One year on, we learn that Skylanders is back with Skylanders: Giants; a sequel to one of the greatest kid's games ever conceived. Is it a cash-in? Is it an excuse to ship more plastic into the homes of gamers? Can a full-sequel be made within such a short period of time?
To save you having to scroll down to the bottom, let's get this cleared up. Skylanders: Giants is ten times that game Spyro's Adventure was, and showcases the level of skill, dedication, and straight-up creativity that Toys for Bob house.
At its heart, Skylanders: Giants is a dungeon crawler for kids. It's a top-down isometric game with colourful characters and blinding tech to match. My first memory forged in Giants, and one that still stays with me a week later, is of the giant included in the starter pack, Tree-rex on the Poertal of Power. Upon connecting the new portal (a usb portal that Skylanders are placed on), I sit my new giant on top, ready to boot the game for the first time. When Tree-rex comes into to contact with the PoP, his eyes, plant-gun-hand, and base all illuminate like star in the night sky.
To the sceptics, this isn't anything special. To a parent, this is the moment you begin to anticipate how your kid is going to flip their lid when they get home form school.
The tech behind Skylanders: Giants still, even now, holds an element of magic ? or witchcraft, if I'm being honest. As kids, we took toys and brought them to life ourselves. We invent funny stories in our head. We take them on adventures. But at the end of the day, they're just lifeless plastic that our imagination brings to life. In Skylanders, you take the toy, place it on the portal of power, and it comes to life before your very eyes via the TV, ready for portal-masters to pick up a controller and take them out on a mission to save the world.
Being able to play with a toy outside the game and also inside the game, is why Skylanders was one of the largest grossing kid's toy-ranges of 2011.
There's an obvious similarity between Skylanders and Pokemon. Pokemon allows players to catch their favourite little monsters, raise them and care for them. For Pokemon though, you only had Pikachu in-game. To take Pikachu on an adventure in the real world, you'd need to shell-out for the plushie. In Skylanders however, the toy you buy from the toyshop is both.
That's where the real magic lies. Kids aren't playing as an avatar, as is the case for most other videogames. The hook here, is that they're portal masters. The toys they get, are theirs to control. They are armed with the portal of power and their Skylander toys, and it's up to them to save the world of Skylands form the evil Kaos. They bring them to life, and they use them to save a virtual world.
If that's not the staple of immersion, then I don't know what is.
One of the big questions raised when discussing Skylanders, when you remove all outside factors like immersion or the tech or the marketing, has to be: Is the game any good? If the game falls short, then no amount of outside factors could possibly compensate.
Once again, Skylanders has surprised me. This iteration improves and evolves the formula we saw a year ago in Spyro's Adventure.
Returning is the basic premise: Take a Skylander, level it up, buy upgrades, before choosing a specific path to take with regard to its attacks. This, like everything, has had a huge makeover. The new user interface is easier to understand and much more visually appealing. The little touches like extra flicks of light in graphics, or the stunningly-dynamic new portal transport movie takes Skylanders: Giants from being 'just another kids game' to a triple A videogame.
The most obvious new addition to the series comes in the form of Giants; over-sized Skylanders that only recently came back to life. Tree-rex specifically, leaves you with a godly-feeling; a feeling that you truly are a giant. His attacks are split in three: A charge attack, a ground-pound, and a laser barrage. He's slow, he's clunky, but his strength is unmeasurable. Interestingly, Tree-rex is exactly how I'd imagine playing as a Ent form Lord of the Rings would be.
Giants are super-powered. But despite this, they are indeed balanced. Yes, my Ent will destroy anything that gets in his way. Yes, instead of killing smaller enemies, he'll just punt or stamp on them. But he's slow, if he misses his move, he's open to mob attacks, and if you're playing on the newly-introduced 'nightmare mode', you're going to need to start thinking smart instead of Hulk-smashing everything in sight.
Joining the fray this time round, is a host of new features; my favourite of which being Skystones. The world is littered with folks looking to throw down some rocks in the name of victory. This mini-game works by each player taking it in turns to place down a stone on a six-by-six board. Each stone has between zero and four spikes on each of its four sides. The goal is to place a stone with spikes facing the opponent's stone. If you have more spikes that your opponent's stone, you take their stone. Those with the most stones when the board is full, wins.
It's simple. It's very straight-forwards. But once you start gaining new stones, it becomes more poker than snap. Just yesterday I was perusing the Skylanders in-game shop (located in the hub), when suddenly spot a stone with four spikes on ALL FOUR SIDES! Of course I do what any portal master should; I convince me eldest to buy it for me with no intention of paying him back...
One of the other new features that really exemplifies the brilliance of Giants is the arena 'Horde' mode. One of my biggest gripes with Spyro's Adventure is that there was more talking than action. To play a mission, you had to sit through cut-scene, upon cut-scene, upon cut-scene. It became tiresome real fast. This time round there's still lots of talking, but it's skipable and those of us who want to blast and smash everything to pieces, can. The arenas are a fun little sideshow where you can just aimlessly beat things to a pulp. Best of all, of course, is that the payout for completing said arenas, is massive.
Instead of having to spam that one level, or farm that one area for cash; arenas offer vast money for just beating-down wave after wave of enemies.
Sometimes when you're a giant, you just want to cause mass destruction and wreck stuff, and make money in the process. Whether it's measly chompers or boss fights, wrecking stuff (and hurtling boulders) never gets old.
Another area Toys for Bob have greatly improved is in the boss encounters. Remember those boring fights where something slides down the screen at you and you dodge it? They're still here, but not all the often. Instead, Toys for Bob have opted for unique boss battles, some of which leave you in tears of laughter. Most noticeably, one battle sees a boss rapping karaoke-style to one of the Spyro's Adventure theme tunes. It's even complete with a bit of dub-step thrown in for good measure.
What could be better than a dub-step/karaoke/rap robot?
In Closing
Skylanders: Giants is how it's done. Sequels should improve and never stagnate. Giants moves the series forwards while taking it to new heights. Toys for Bob demonstrate an understanding of what kids want and what adults with kids want. We don't want something with a name slapped on it, churned out in a few months. Why is it okay for some to lower standards when designing a game for children? Kid games deserve the same quality seen in adult titles. Toys for Bob 'get it'. Give kids and adults a great game, with cool characters, and futuristic tech, and you're on to a winner.
It's vivid, it's fun, and it doesn't even have LEGO in the title.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Position:?Editor-in-chief
Born in Cyrodiil but raised in Ferelden, more commonly know as England. Wesley Copeland is a passionate writer with more opinions than an ostrich.
Source: http://www.videogamesinteractive.com/2012/11/review-skylanders-giants.html
No comments:
Post a Comment