I seriously think I am the only who did not drink the proverbial Kool-Aid with regards to Activision’s new Skylanders franchise. The game itself isn’t nearly as groundbreaking as it wants to be and the peripherals and “figures” are added costs with a disproportionate value.
For this sequel, I was hoping something new would have been done with the gameplay, and what we get is an small tweak with the competitive mode. Unfortunately this is a small factor in the game. Sure, it’s a little bigger now, but the core of the game remains, as it should, the single player game. Yes, co-op is retained, but it still only works for two players. The tether between the two players is painfully short, forcing on-screen characters to remain artificially close.
And why hasn’t this game been upgraded to allow 4 players? And why hasn’t online play been implemented? These were serious omissions in the previous game and even more glaring now.
Alright, so adding in some difficulty levels was good, but that’s an incremental improvement, a refinement of the gameplay rather than the evolutionary step forward I was hoping for. Some of the changes to multiplayer are cosmetic at best. Sure there are new arenas to do battle in, but since this is still a 2 player game no matter which way you play.
There is no jump, which is odd in a platformer game such as this.
My biggest problem, however, with Skylanders is the fact that this is a marketing driven game. Players need to buy extra figures in order to access all the areas of the game. Certain character types can unlock doors and gates that others can’t. This is fine, but buying an incomplete game and forcing the player to purchase extra characters in order to access content that is already in the game artificially increases the price beyond what is advertised. It’s a classic “bait and switch” gambit and it appears that nobody is calling Activision on this.
It would be different were players purchasing actual additional content to enhance the game. Buy a new character, get an extra level. This would be fine. Instead players have to make additional purchases in order to fully complete the game.
Those figures aren’t toys, no matter what the commercials may try to lead you to believe. They are not articulated, not poseable, and simply sit atop their base affixed and immobile. Sure, my 9 year old son like swapping the various characters in and out. Thing is, he does the same thing with the LEGO games (particularly LEGO Batman 2) without having to actually go to the store and purchase anything. Virtually every other game allows players to unlock extra characters and swap them in and out within the game. If the extra characters are purchased, they aren’t necessary for completing the game and instead an extra.
New Skylander figures are created with a number of new abilities. Skylander figures from the first game can also be used in this new title, which is nice. There’s a basic gameplay here of collecting and dispatching enemies which is pretty basic and hard to mess up. The thing is, it’s very basic with little innovation and nothing to stand out other than the gimmick of having to purchase the figures.
For a game that is rated E-10, there is an awful lot of non-kid friendly aspects to the game as far as pricing goes. You would expect a game that is meant for young kids (such as 7 year olds) they would work on developing the game so that it would generate an ESRB rating that would be appropriate. It’s rated E-10, meaning it’s for kids 10 and older, but clearly this is a game meant for kids younger than 10.
I don’t mean to be unduly harsh towards Skylanders: Giants. It’s not a bad game in and of itself. The trappings surround it, the required purchase of additional figures that don’t add value to the game but rather simply unlock what is already there is perhaps criminally negligent. And for a sequel to not actually improve on the gameplay in any significant manner reeks of a company that is only concerned with making money, not actually making games.