Skylanders Spyro's Adventure Message Board

There's a big craze these days with independent developers, though the idea isn't all that crazy. Developers, as it turns out, like to own the stuff they create - Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games is no different. And here's something you might not know about Insomniac: the studio owns virtually none of the iconic characters or worlds it's created. Not Ratchet, not Clank, not the world of Spyro the Dragon. That last one cuts especially deep considering the vast riches Activision's reaped from its Spyro-based Skylanders game. The former two are Sony-owned.

With Fuse (which we think used to be Overstrike) and Outernauts, Insomniac is pushing in a new direction. "For us, we're at the point in our growth as a company where we can own our intellectual property," Insomniac president and CEO Ted Price told us in an interview last week. "That's been gratifying for us because, as creators, controlling your own destiny - controlling the IP that you build - is important." Beyond its financial importance, owning IP also means unfortunate spin-offs of properties you created can't be farmed out to other studios (see: Resistance: Burning Skies).

It's important to note what Price says about his studio not being able to own its previous projects. When Insomniac started in 1994, it produced only franchises owned by its publishers. Quite literally everything the company created up until Outernauts and Overstrike/Fuse was owned by outside forces. That's why you will assuredly see more Resistance games, despite Insomniac outright stating it won't work on any more (at least any time soon) - Sony owns the IP rights to the Resistance franchise and can do with them as it pleases.

We had a quick chat with Mike Graham, a design producer at Activision, about Toys for Bob's extremely popular Skylanders franchise, and the second release in the series, Skylanders Giants. Graham kindly let us in on the reasoning behind the new game and bigger toys, and what other possibilities might be in store for Skylanders.

We also hear a little bit about where Spyro now fits in the Skylanders universe (That purple dragon that the whole series is based on? Remember him?) Turns out he's still in there, even if his name has been taken off the title for now.

The Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure roster has been expanded, with Warnado, Camo and Wham-Shell available for purchase right now. Hit up the gallery below for some screens or get over to your local brick-and-mortar if you're looking to bolster your ranks.

GameStops are about to be overrun with toys in an epidemic the likes of which we haven't seen since the late-90s Pokémon figure thing. Pixelitis published what appears to be an internal GameStop document detailing a nascent Skylanders figurine trade-in program being tested at some stores.

Surprisingly, they seem priced by rarity, with harder-to-find figurines reselling for up to $20. Trade-in values range from around $2 to $8. There's currently no information on which stores are participating in the offer, but given the popularity of the game it'll be everywhere soon enough.

#skylanders All good and terrifically frustrating things must come to an end, and for countless parents, children, and collectors the release of the final three Skylanders figures marks the end of an era, to be followed later this year by the beginning of another. More »

Spyro's universe is expanding -- much like ours, but without the physical, philosophical or scientific implications -- with three new characters. Lightning Rod, Zook and Sunburn, the last of which comes to Skylanders in the Dragon's Peak Adventure Pack, are all available now. Lightning Rod and Zook are $7.99 each, and the pack including Sunburn runs $19.99.

Lightning Rod, who we're convinced is modeled after Aladdin's Genie and Robin Williams' beardiness, is an air character whose attacks involve electro-bolts; Sunburn is part dragon, part phoenix, breathes fire and can teleport; and Zook, a life character, carries a bamboo bazooka and is adorable.

Lightning Rod shows off his moves in the video above, and Sunburn and Zook take over the two after the break. As usual, individual Skylanders characters cost $7.99 while full "Adventure Packs" run for $19.99.

#skylanders The hunt begins anew as three more Skylanders figures make their way to retail shelves, filling out the Fire element and adding one each to Life and Air. The checklist nears completion! More »

The world hasn't converted entirely to a Kickstarter-based economy yet -- Activision's fiscal 2011 earnings are up again, with net revenues at $4.76 billion dollars (vs. 2010's $4.45 billion), exceeding its most recent outlook. Activision claimed the number one console and handheld publishing spot in both its fiscal Q4 (ending December 31) and the year of 2011.

What drove this success? Like you don't know, but: Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game in terms of dollars, and Black Ops was #5. Skylanders also contributed, as it was the #8 best-selling game in the fourth quarter, and best-selling kids' game of 2011.

Digital revenue broke records again, with over 34 percent of that $4.76 billion net coming from "digital channels." No, you aren't forgetting some breakout XBLA hit from Activision -- those digital channels are COD map packs and WoW.

Both hardware and software video game sales were down by a great deal in January, according to the latest report from NPD. Both categories dropped 38% year over year in the US, and video games sales in total dropped from $1.14 billion in January of 2011 to $750 million this past month. NPD's Liam Callahan attributes the drops to a lack of new launches: Last January, Microsoft's Kinect propped up hardware sales, and Dead Space 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, and DC Universe Online did the same for software, but there weren't equivalent launches in the market this year.

The full list of the top ten titles is after the break. Just Dance 3 held down the number two spot, again landing in front of the very popular Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Zumba Fitness 2 also made it into the top ten, but Activision's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is likely the most important game for January.

In addition to landing on the list at 8th, Skylanders is seeing huge sales in the accessories category, making up 22% of total accessory sales overall. The game's single character pack was also the best selling accessory during the month of January, and these numbers should bode well for the series and its future iterations.

Finally, despite that big drop in hardware sales, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg points out that the Xbox 360 has remained the highest-selling console on the market, selling 270,000 units with a 49% market share.

AAAAGGGHHH THESE SKYLANDERS ARE SO GIAAAAAANT AAAAGGHHHHH!

The concept of a sequel to Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, Activision and developer Toys for Bob's obscenely popular action figure/video game combination aimed squarely at removing large quantities of cash from the wallets of parents caving in to their children's demands and also Jeff Gerstmann, seemed like more an inevitability than a possibility. This became especially true when new web domains for something called Skylanders Giants appeared, striking fear into the hearts of Skylanders owners the world over, as they suddenly mulled the possibility that their currently owned Skylanders would suddenly become inferior in the face of giant goddamn Skylanders.

Your fears were not entirely unfounded, as today Activision has announced plans to release Skylanders Giants, a full-on sequel to Spyro's Adventure that, yes, features all new Skylanders figures that are reportedly a good bit bigger than the original game's plastic creature things. There will be eight new characters in all.

The good news? All the Skylanders you already caved and bought for reasons you still can't quite come to terms with within your soul will actually work just fine with this new sequel. Moreover, all the stats you've earned in the original game will carry over into Skylanders Giants.

The world will apparently get its first look at Skylanders Giants at the American International Toy Fair toward the end of this month, and the game is currently targeted for release this fall. You can check out some new screenshots on the newly-created Skylanders Giants game page, including a few new figure shots to whet your appetite for buying plastic things you totally know you shouldn't but will do anyway because you have the non-willpower of a thousand heroin junkies combined.

New Skylanders toys are available at retail today, which roughly translates to new DLC for the video game. The "Empire of Ice" Adventure Pack includes a new ice-themed area, along with a new Water-element toy (and character), Slam Bam.

Additionally, new standalone figures are available of the undead dragon Cynder, who has a "difficult past," and Double Trouble, an inept wizard. What's that? You want to know more about Cynder? According to Activision, "Cynder is a dragon of the undead element. Dark powers flow through her due to her difficult past, but she's trying to make amends with the other Skylanders."

#skylanders Battling their way out of the post-holiday shortage, Activision and Toys for Bob have unleashed a trio of new Skylanders at retail, including one that should be familiar to hardcore Spyro fans, should such a thing exist. More »

Still looking for the best characters to tackle Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure with? While there may be a shortage of figurines, there's definitely no shortage of characters to choose from. Figure out who's best to tackle the tasks at hand below.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata oversees the company as it enters a huge transition period.

After announcing its first annual operating loss, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata met with analysts to discuss the future of the company, and the steps he'll take to address Nintendo’s issues.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit was word that Wii U’s tablet-sized controller would include near-field communication technology.

Iwata said it "will become possible to create cards and figurines that [it] can electronically read” and “will enable various other possibilities such as using it as a means of making micropayments.”

In other words, imagine if Nintendo decided to take Activision’s Skylanders concept and apply it to Pokemon.

Iwata confirmed Nintendo’s online service will now be called “Nintendo Network,” which coincides with 3DS’ native ability to sell downloadable content through eShop. Nintendo is also considering the ability to sell “packaged software” (read: retail games) through the Nintendo Network, but it hasn’t decided when to roll out such a feature.

“The decision must be made by taking into consideration such factors as the relationship with the wholesalers and retailers," he said, "and the best way to be embraced by consumers, as well as the environment surrounding the market and consumers, such as the required memory capacity on consumers’ SD memory cards.”

If Wii U comes with a decent amount of hard drive space, this could become an option. It should become an option.

There is other reasons to be optimistic about Wii U’s leveraging of Internet connectivity. Iwata said Nintendo would be introducing the ability to have multiple accounts per system, the machine will include a “variety of different services and content,” and also work to have online systems work across games.

“Whether it’s our first-party titles or third parties’ titles, for a number of games,” he said, “we will actively attempt to achieve compatibility so that our consumers can enjoy our online services that we will deploy under the name of the Nintendo Network.”

When it comes to games, Iwata mentioned a new 2D Mario game is in the works for 3DS but said little else.

“We are planning to release a totally new side-scrolling action Super Mario in 2D as a key title for the Nintendo 3DS in the next fiscal year,” said Iwata.

This mention came just after Iwata promised Nintendo’s next wave of games would be released “without any extreme interruptions.”

#skylanders Activision's action figure-driven Skylanders: Sypro's Adventure was a huge holiday hit last year, with parents buying up starter kits in droves. Now, with hundreds of thousands of children demanding additional figures, empty Skylanders displays have become an all-too-frequent frustration for haggard parents. More »

The land of Skylanders may be getting giant-sized in the coming months, as a smattering of domain registrations bearing the name "Skylanders Giants" recently popped up. A few of said domains even go as far as to call it a full on "game" rather than just an expansion to last October's magical character-swapping action game slash collectible addiction. Just imagine a giant Drobot! The possibilities!

The registrations are still fairly recent according to Fusible, only dating back to January 19, and none are tied directly to Activision. That said, it's common for publishers to register domains for unannounced projects via proxy, which is exactly how these were handled. We've reached out to Activision for comment, as well as Drobot, but don't expect to hear much from either.

It may be too early for Activision to say anything, but a Skylanders follow-up seems assured.

An obsession from certain individuals seems proof enough Activision is onto something with this whole Skylanders business.

So when domain watching website Fusible notices that Activision has grabbed a bunch of skylandersgiants.com and assorted domains here and internationally, it’s probably worth noting.

Activision is not listed in the registration data, but Mark Monitor is the credited registrant, and Activision has used Mark Monitor many times in the past, including skylandersgame.com.

You can poke around Activision's registration activities here.

Toy Fair kicks off on February 12 in New York, where Skylanders has been featured in the past. Not all toys for the game’s initial release have hit store shelves yet, so an announcement at Toy Fair next month might be premature.

Additionally, there’s a Twitter account called @skylandersgiant that’s retweeting stories about the domain name registration. It’s unclear if it’s an official Activision teaser or someone just fanning the flames, however.

I’ve contacted Activision about this Skylanders Giants business, but haven’t heard back.

When I looked to my right, Jeff Gerstmann could not be found, either. Must be coincidental.

Coming from the official Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure Facebook page...

As everyone is noticing, Skylanders is very popular at the moment. We know many of our fans are having a difficult time finding the Skylanders they want at their local stores. The team at Activision is doing everything we can to keep them in stock. We appreciate your support and patience. We hope the following helps to answer your questions.

Q: When are Cynder and Whirlwind being released?
A: Starting in mid-January, new Skylanders are being released across the world, including Cynder and Whirlwind.

Q: When will the Skylanders I want be available in my country?/Where can I buy hard to find Skylanders?
A: More Skylanders will be making their way to retailer shelves across the world. With that said, not all Skylanders are available yet. Keep checking in with your local retailers to find the latest Skylanders.

Q: Are some characters only available at specific stores?
A: Yes, some Skylanders are only available at specific retail chains.

Q: Will there be a Skylanders sequel?
A: Activision has not yet announced plans to release a sequel.

Hlth Spd Arm Ht Mgc Total

Stump Smash 340 43 30 20 25 458
Camo 300 50 34 30 25 439
Dino-rang 300 43 30 30 25 428
Legendary Chop Chop 300 50 30 20 25 425
Wham Shell 300 50 18 30 25 423
Legendary Spyro 280 50 18 50 25 423
Terrafin 310 35 18 30 25 418
Legendary Bash 310 35 24 20 25 414
Whirlwind 270 50 18 50 25 413

The very first time we saw Activision's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure figures at a pre-E3 event earlier this year, it seemed only a matter of time before some enterprising enthusiast cracked open both the toy figures and the "portal" base unit, and figured out how they wirelessly connected. Sure enough, a tinkerer named Brandon Wilson recently did just that, and posted his results on his personal website. In return, he got an official cease-and-desist letter from Activision a few days later, telling him to take the findings down immediately.

Wilson wrote a response to point out that most of Activision's accusations against him are inaccurate: He was not intending to share his findings with others (only saved them in a .zip file for his own personal use), and has no intention to circumvent the game at all, either by using the Skylanders hardware with an iOS device (since the technology is based on RFID), or by "tricking" the portal into thinking he owns a Skylanders figure when he doesn't.

Despite all of that, however, Wilson has agreed to follow the cease-and-desist order. It seems a shame -- some of the most fun hacks have come out of toys both old and new, and if Wilson wants to dissect toys he's purchased for his own enjoyment, that seems reasonable. We've contacted Activision to try and get an official position; it's likely we haven't heard the last of this just yet.

Spyro is taking on the entire known universe with the beta launch of Skylanders: Spyro's Universe, a new MMO designed for youngsters (and the truly young at heart). Spyro's Universe includes customizable Skylands, mini-games that resemble other popular bird- and sheep-based titles, and a way to bring physical toys to life, in a virtual, not-really-alive-at-all sense.

The above video explains it all, and those interested can sign up their children, little sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews or cousins on the Spyro's Universe beta page.

Black Friday may be long gone, but that's not stopping Toys R Us from offering some last minute Christmas doorbuster deals this weekend. This Friday through Sunday, customers will receive a $60 gift card with the purchase of an Xbox 360 Kinect console bundle. You can also snag a $35 gift card with the purchase of any two video games priced $29.99 or higher.

Next week, from December 20 through 10pm on Christmas Eve (sorry Toys R Us employees!), the retailer will also offer a pair of deals on Skylanders and the 3DS.

First up, those who purchase a 3DS (in-store only) will snag a $35 gift card. Second, purchasing the Skylanders starter pack will net customers a free 3DS game worth up to $39.99. It's worth noting that the offer is valid only for "select" 3DS titles, though the press release makes no mention of which titles are exempted. Regardless, there's potential for some serious holiday savings if either of these things are on your list.

Just remember, once you buy Skylanders, you will keep buying Skylanders.

4 out of 5

Though you can get by with just the three starter Skylanders included with the game, you'll have to make additional purchases if you want to see everything.

As a parent of zero, I try to stay out of the whole "is this game good for kids?" discussion... because I have no idea. I can sit here and theorize and posit, but beyond thinking that kids are constantly getting sold short by parents who think their children aren't with it enough to handle "real" games and marketers who often try to push some sort of half-assed "edutainment" agenda when promoting youth-oriented games, I don't really have a dog in this hunt. But I will say I wasn't really expecting much from the game part of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. Actually, the part where Skylanders is a game is sort of the least interesting thing about it, even though it's more than competent, especially when taken against the somewhat low standards we usually see in the "for kids" area. The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

OK, let's break down the tech side of Skylanders. With the game you get a "magic" Portal of Power, which connects to your game-playing machine via USB. It's full of lights that can make it glow and pulsate with a lot of different colors. It also has a sensor in it that reads some sort of RFID-like datastore that lives in each one of the figurines. The idea is simple: you take a character, drop it on the portal, and bang, that character appears in your game. Take the figurine off and the action stops, letting you switch out to new characters on-the-fly or, if you like, jump a second player in or out at any time. As you play the game, you'll earn experience points, find hats, and accrue currency on a per-character basis. That information, along with the upgrades you choose to buy for your character with said currency, are stored in the figurines themselves. This then allows you to treat each one as a little save game storage device and also allows you to move your Skylanders from one game to another--in case you're heading over to a friend's house to skyland it up or something--while maintaining the progress you've made. You can also use those same figurines in the 3DS version of the game, which is a completely different beast, or, if you want to connect your portal to a PC or Mac, you can take your figures into an online collection of occasionally crummy Flash minigames and online chat. The portability of the Skylanders toy line and the way they all work with any and all of the Skylanders video games is pretty awesome. The portal itself rings up your characters extremely quickly, which is absolutely key to making it feel... well... magical.

With the starter kit you'll get three Skylanders characters of different types, giving you some decent coverage to get going with. The game itself doesn't directly trade off of the elemental abilities in a "water beats fire" sort of way, though. Instead, the game sort of arbitrarily assigns bonuses to specific types of characters in different areas. It'll also lock you out of certain areas unless you're using a character of the appropriate type. So if you encounter a gate that can only be opened by an Undead-type Skylander, you're going to need to yank your fire guy off of the portal and replace him with Ghost Roaster or Chop Chop or something if you want to get into that area. With one Skylander of each type, you'll be able to see just about everything there is to see in Skylanders, but if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, you can still finish the game and see the vast majority of the content with the starter pack alone. But then... if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, Skylanders might not be for you at all. If you start going deep down the Skylanders hole, just know that you can easily spend hundreds of dollars collecting the 32 core characters (more if you want the variants!) multiple level add-ons, and bonus items. And some of the characters haven't even hit stores yet. It's not a great deal, when you start to break it down, but the figurines look pretty nice and translate well into in-game characters, with a lot of good variety that makes most characters feel pretty different from each other.

Though Spyro's name is on the box, Skylanders feels like an all-new thing, not another attempt to drag the dragon back into the spotlight.

All of these characters are jammed into a story where the Skylanders must rebuild a mystical machine to save the world from an evil little goofball named Kaos. You're dropped into a hub world and run through a collection of top-down levels that have you bashing monsters and solving light puzzles. The elemental gates provide some optional areas, though some hidden objects don't require a separate purchase to access. Man, that sentence makes this whole thing sound kind of horrible, doesn't it? The bonus items are hats that enhance your stats, but none of them are especially crucial, and as you approach level 10--the cap--your Skylanders will be dominating the vast majority of the enemies you face.

The characters, again, help make the combat interesting as they let you tailor the game to our own style. Gill Grunt, to name one of the Skylanders you'll get in the starter package, is projectile-based, with a speargun that fires slowly but does good damage and a water hose attack that hits at a steady rate. You'll need to upgrade your water tank if you want to fire that one forever, though. If you're interested in an up-close attack, characters like Chop Chop are more melee-focused. Armed with a sword and shield, Chop Chop has a basic multi-hit sword combo and his shield is one of the few abilities in the game that, you know, blocks damage. He's also a rad-looking skeletal warrior, which is pretty cool. Then there's Prism Break, who does a bit of both and offers some more complex upgrade options. Prism Break, by default, has a small area of effect attack that pushes nearby enemies back with a decent amount of damage and a laser beam that doesn't go too far or last very long. Through upgrades you can unlock the ability to drop crystals into the level that refract your laser attack, letting you cover more territory with your beams. Then you can buy an upgrade that turns defeated enemies into crystals, which lets you sort of fill the screen with hot laser death. Not every Skylander is terrific--Eruptor just seems kind of sluggish and ineffective, at least at lower levels--but there are so many out there that trying them out in different scenarios ends up being half the fun. Again, that's sort of all dependent on the whole "I'm willing to buy all this stuff" clause.

Trigger Happy's guns fire gold coins. Seems pricey.

It's not a difficult game, but there's more to Skylanders than you might think. Or, at least, you're probably not going to waltz through the entire game in a day, giving you plenty of time to sit and obsess over the Skylanders you don't currently own and which upgrade path you want to take when you level your next character up. Once you start to pick it all apart, it's easy to see its devious brilliance--it's essentially an example of "on-disc DLC" taken to horrifying extremes, except you need to go out and buy a physical thing to unlock that content in the game. Oh, and by the way, those physical things seem to be going in and out of stock at some retailers with the sort of alarming frequency that lets you know that it's probably going to do pretty well around Christmas time, which can add a horrifying new layer to all of this if you're, for example, desperately seeking Drobot. But when you put aside the crass consumerism that drives every decent children's toy/movie/cartoon/game brand, Skylanders managed to be just engaging enough to make all my ridiculous collector's tendencies pay off.

The portal is fun to use, and exploring the powers and abilities of the different Skylanders is at least as engaging as the good variety of levels you'll see as you work your way through the adventure. Sure, I can't sit here and say for certain if kids will love it or not, but I will say that if I were to suddenly find myself in charge of of a kid's well-being, I'd be OK with playing through Skylanders alongside said kid... unless the kid wanted to actually touch my Skylanders or remove them from the special shelf where I sort them all by their elemental affinity for easy access. Buy your own, ya little jerk.

4 out of 5

Though you can get by with just the three starter Skylanders included with the game, you'll have to make additional purchases if you want to see everything.

As a parent of zero, I try to stay out of the whole "is this game good for kids?" discussion... because I have no idea. I can sit here and theorize and posit, but beyond thinking that kids are constantly getting sold short by parents who think their children aren't with it enough to handle "real" games and marketers who often try to push some sort of half-assed "edutainment" agenda when promoting youth-oriented games, I don't really have a dog in this hunt. But I will say I wasn't really expecting much from the game part of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. Actually, the part where Skylanders is a game is sort of the least interesting thing about it, even though it's more than competent, especially when taken against the somewhat low standards we usually see in the "for kids" area. The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

OK, let's break down the tech side of Skylanders. With the game you get a "magic" Portal of Power, which connects to your game-playing machine via USB. It's full of lights that can make it glow and pulsate with a lot of different colors. It also has a sensor in it that reads some sort of RFID-like datastore that lives in each one of the figurines. The idea is simple: you take a character, drop it on the portal, and bang, that character appears in your game. Take the figurine off and the action stops, letting you switch out to new characters on-the-fly or, if you like, jump a second player in or out at any time. As you play the game, you'll earn experience points, find hats, and accrue currency on a per-character basis. That information, along with the upgrades you choose to buy for your character with said currency, are stored in the figurines themselves. This then allows you to treat each one as a little save game storage device and also allows you to move your Skylanders from one game to another--in case you're heading over to a friend's house to skyland it up or something--while maintaining the progress you've made. You can also use those same figurines in the 3DS version of the game, which is a completely different beast, or, if you want to connect your portal to a PC or Mac, you can take your figures into an online collection of occasionally crummy Flash minigames and online chat. The portability of the Skylanders toy line and the way they all work with any and all of the Skylanders video games is pretty awesome. The portal itself rings up your characters extremely quickly, which is absolutely key to making it feel... well... magical.

With the starter kit you'll get three Skylanders characters of different types, giving you some decent coverage to get going with. The game itself doesn't directly trade off of the elemental abilities in a "water beats fire" sort of way, though. Instead, the game sort of arbitrarily assigns bonuses to specific types of characters in different areas. It'll also lock you out of certain areas unless you're using a character of the appropriate type. So if you encounter a gate that can only be opened by an Undead-type Skylander, you're going to need to yank your fire guy off of the portal and replace him with Ghost Roaster or Chop Chop or something if you want to get into that area. With one Skylander of each type, you'll be able to see just about everything there is to see in Skylanders, but if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, you can still finish the game and see the vast majority of the content with the starter pack alone. But then... if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, Skylanders might not be for you at all. If you start going deep down the Skylanders hole, just know that you can easily spend hundreds of dollars collecting the 32 core characters (more if you want the variants!) multiple level add-ons, and bonus items. And some of the characters haven't even hit stores yet. It's not a great deal, when you start to break it down, but the figurines look pretty nice and translate well into in-game characters, with a lot of good variety that makes most characters feel pretty different from each other.

Though Spyro's name is on the box, Skylanders feels like an all-new thing, not another attempt to drag the dragon back into the spotlight.

All of these characters are jammed into a story where the Skylanders must rebuild a mystical machine to save the world from an evil little goofball named Kaos. You're dropped into a hub world and run through a collection of top-down levels that have you bashing monsters and solving light puzzles. The elemental gates provide some optional areas, though some hidden objects don't require a separate purchase to access. Man, that sentence makes this whole thing sound kind of horrible, doesn't it? The bonus items are hats that enhance your stats, but none of them are especially crucial, and as you approach level 10--the cap--your Skylanders will be dominating the vast majority of the enemies you face.

The characters, again, help make the combat interesting as they let you tailor the game to our own style. Gill Grunt, to name one of the Skylanders you'll get in the starter package, is projectile-based, with a speargun that fires slowly but does good damage and a water hose attack that hits at a steady rate. You'll need to upgrade your water tank if you want to fire that one forever, though. If you're interested in an up-close attack, characters like Chop Chop are more melee-focused. Armed with a sword and shield, Chop Chop has a basic multi-hit sword combo and his shield is one of the few abilities in the game that, you know, blocks damage. He's also a rad-looking skeletal warrior, which is pretty cool. Then there's Prism Break, who does a bit of both and offers some more complex upgrade options. Prism Break, by default, has a small area of effect attack that pushes nearby enemies back with a decent amount of damage and a laser beam that doesn't go too far or last very long. Through upgrades you can unlock the ability to drop crystals into the level that refract your laser attack, letting you cover more territory with your beams. Then you can buy an upgrade that turns defeated enemies into crystals, which lets you sort of fill the screen with hot laser death. Not every Skylander is terrific--Eruptor just seems kind of sluggish and ineffective, at least at lower levels--but there are so many out there that trying them out in different scenarios ends up being half the fun. Again, that's sort of all dependent on the whole "I'm willing to buy all this stuff" clause.

Trigger Happy's guns fire gold coins. Seems pricey.

It's not a difficult game, but there's more to Skylanders than you might think. Or, at least, you're probably not going to waltz through the entire game in a day, giving you plenty of time to sit and obsess over the Skylanders you don't currently own and which upgrade path you want to take when you level your next character up. Once you start to pick it all apart, it's easy to see its devious brilliance--it's essentially an example of "on-disc DLC" taken to horrifying extremes, except you need to go out and buy a physical thing to unlock that content in the game. Oh, and by the way, those physical things seem to be going in and out of stock at some retailers with the sort of alarming frequency that lets you know that it's probably going to do pretty well around Christmas time, which can add a horrifying new layer to all of this if you're, for example, desperately seeking Drobot. But when you put aside the crass consumerism that drives every decent children's toy/movie/cartoon/game brand, Skylanders managed to be just engaging enough to make all my ridiculous collector's tendencies pay off.

The portal is fun to use, and exploring the powers and abilities of the different Skylanders is at least as engaging as the good variety of levels you'll see as you work your way through the adventure. Sure, I can't sit here and say for certain if kids will love it or not, but I will say that if I were to suddenly find myself in charge of of a kid's well-being, I'd be OK with playing through Skylanders alongside said kid... unless the kid wanted to actually touch my Skylanders or remove them from the special shelf where I sort them all by their elemental affinity for easy access. Buy your own, ya little jerk.

4 out of 5

Though you can get by with just the three starter Skylanders included with the game, you'll have to make additional purchases if you want to see everything.

As a parent of zero, I try to stay out of the whole "is this game good for kids?" discussion... because I have no idea. I can sit here and theorize and posit, but beyond thinking that kids are constantly getting sold short by parents who think their children aren't with it enough to handle "real" games and marketers who often try to push some sort of half-assed "edutainment" agenda when promoting youth-oriented games, I don't really have a dog in this hunt. But I will say I wasn't really expecting much from the game part of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. Actually, the part where Skylanders is a game is sort of the least interesting thing about it, even though it's more than competent, especially when taken against the somewhat low standards we usually see in the "for kids" area. The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

OK, let's break down the tech side of Skylanders. With the game you get a "magic" Portal of Power, which connects to your game-playing machine via USB. It's full of lights that can make it glow and pulsate with a lot of different colors. It also has a sensor in it that reads some sort of RFID-like datastore that lives in each one of the figurines. The idea is simple: you take a character, drop it on the portal, and bang, that character appears in your game. Take the figurine off and the action stops, letting you switch out to new characters on-the-fly or, if you like, jump a second player in or out at any time. As you play the game, you'll earn experience points, find hats, and accrue currency on a per-character basis. That information, along with the upgrades you choose to buy for your character with said currency, are stored in the figurines themselves. This then allows you to treat each one as a little save game storage device and also allows you to move your Skylanders from one game to another--in case you're heading over to a friend's house to skyland it up or something--while maintaining the progress you've made. You can also use those same figurines in the 3DS version of the game, which is a completely different beast, or, if you want to connect your portal to a PC or Mac, you can take your figures into an online collection of occasionally crummy Flash minigames and online chat. The portability of the Skylanders toy line and the way they all work with any and all of the Skylanders video games is pretty awesome. The portal itself rings up your characters extremely quickly, which is absolutely key to making it feel... well... magical.

With the starter kit you'll get three Skylanders characters of different types, giving you some decent coverage to get going with. The game itself doesn't directly trade off of the elemental abilities in a "water beats fire" sort of way, though. Instead, the game sort of arbitrarily assigns bonuses to specific types of characters in different areas. It'll also lock you out of certain areas unless you're using a character of the appropriate type. So if you encounter a gate that can only be opened by an Undead-type Skylander, you're going to need to yank your fire guy off of the portal and replace him with Ghost Roaster or Chop Chop or something if you want to get into that area. With one Skylander of each type, you'll be able to see just about everything there is to see in Skylanders, but if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, you can still finish the game and see the vast majority of the content with the starter pack alone. But then... if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, Skylanders might not be for you at all. If you start going deep down the Skylanders hole, just know that you can easily spend hundreds of dollars collecting the 32 core characters (more if you want the variants!) multiple level add-ons, and bonus items. And some of the characters haven't even hit stores yet. It's not a great deal, when you start to break it down, but the figurines look pretty nice and translate well into in-game characters, with a lot of good variety that makes most characters feel pretty different from each other.

Though Spyro's name is on the box, Skylanders feels like an all-new thing, not another attempt to drag the dragon back into the spotlight.

All of these characters are jammed into a story where the Skylanders must rebuild a mystical machine to save the world from an evil little goofball named Kaos. You're dropped into a hub world and run through a collection of top-down levels that have you bashing monsters and solving light puzzles. The elemental gates provide some optional areas, though some hidden objects don't require a separate purchase to access. Man, that sentence makes this whole thing sound kind of horrible, doesn't it? The bonus items are hats that enhance your stats, but none of them are especially crucial, and as you approach level 10--the cap--your Skylanders will be dominating the vast majority of the enemies you face.

The characters, again, help make the combat interesting as they let you tailor the game to our own style. Gill Grunt, to name one of the Skylanders you'll get in the starter package, is projectile-based, with a speargun that fires slowly but does good damage and a water hose attack that hits at a steady rate. You'll need to upgrade your water tank if you want to fire that one forever, though. If you're interested in an up-close attack, characters like Chop Chop are more melee-focused. Armed with a sword and shield, Chop Chop has a basic multi-hit sword combo and his shield is one of the few abilities in the game that, you know, blocks damage. He's also a rad-looking skeletal warrior, which is pretty cool. Then there's Prism Break, who does a bit of both and offers some more complex upgrade options. Prism Break, by default, has a small area of effect attack that pushes nearby enemies back with a decent amount of damage and a laser beam that doesn't go too far or last very long. Through upgrades you can unlock the ability to drop crystals into the level that refract your laser attack, letting you cover more territory with your beams. Then you can buy an upgrade that turns defeated enemies into crystals, which lets you sort of fill the screen with hot laser death. Not every Skylander is terrific--Eruptor just seems kind of sluggish and ineffective, at least at lower levels--but there are so many out there that trying them out in different scenarios ends up being half the fun. Again, that's sort of all dependent on the whole "I'm willing to buy all this stuff" clause.

Trigger Happy's guns fire gold coins. Seems pricey.

It's not a difficult game, but there's more to Skylanders than you might think. Or, at least, you're probably not going to waltz through the entire game in a day, giving you plenty of time to sit and obsess over the Skylanders you don't currently own and which upgrade path you want to take when you level your next character up. Once you start to pick it all apart, it's easy to see its devious brilliance--it's essentially an example of "on-disc DLC" taken to horrifying extremes, except you need to go out and buy a physical thing to unlock that content in the game. Oh, and by the way, those physical things seem to be going in and out of stock at some retailers with the sort of alarming frequency that lets you know that it's probably going to do pretty well around Christmas time, which can add a horrifying new layer to all of this if you're, for example, desperately seeking Drobot. But when you put aside the crass consumerism that drives every decent children's toy/movie/cartoon/game brand, Skylanders managed to be just engaging enough to make all my ridiculous collector's tendencies pay off.

The portal is fun to use, and exploring the powers and abilities of the different Skylanders is at least as engaging as the good variety of levels you'll see as you work your way through the adventure. Sure, I can't sit here and say for certain if kids will love it or not, but I will say that if I were to suddenly find myself in charge of of a kid's well-being, I'd be OK with playing through Skylanders alongside said kid... unless the kid wanted to actually touch my Skylanders or remove them from the special shelf where I sort them all by their elemental affinity for easy access. Buy your own, ya little jerk.

4 out of 5

Though you can get by with just the three starter Skylanders included with the game, you'll have to make additional purchases if you want to see everything.

As a parent of zero, I try to stay out of the whole "is this game good for kids?" discussion... because I have no idea. I can sit here and theorize and posit, but beyond thinking that kids are constantly getting sold short by parents who think their children aren't with it enough to handle "real" games and marketers who often try to push some sort of half-assed "edutainment" agenda when promoting youth-oriented games, I don't really have a dog in this hunt. But I will say I wasn't really expecting much from the game part of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. Actually, the part where Skylanders is a game is sort of the least interesting thing about it, even though it's more than competent, especially when taken against the somewhat low standards we usually see in the "for kids" area. The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

OK, let's break down the tech side of Skylanders. With the game you get a "magic" Portal of Power, which connects to your game-playing machine via USB. It's full of lights that can make it glow and pulsate with a lot of different colors. It also has a sensor in it that reads some sort of RFID-like datastore that lives in each one of the figurines. The idea is simple: you take a character, drop it on the portal, and bang, that character appears in your game. Take the figurine off and the action stops, letting you switch out to new characters on-the-fly or, if you like, jump a second player in or out at any time. As you play the game, you'll earn experience points, find hats, and accrue currency on a per-character basis. That information, along with the upgrades you choose to buy for your character with said currency, are stored in the figurines themselves. This then allows you to treat each one as a little save game storage device and also allows you to move your Skylanders from one game to another--in case you're heading over to a friend's house to skyland it up or something--while maintaining the progress you've made. You can also use those same figurines in the 3DS version of the game, which is a completely different beast, or, if you want to connect your portal to a PC or Mac, you can take your figures into an online collection of occasionally crummy Flash minigames and online chat. The portability of the Skylanders toy line and the way they all work with any and all of the Skylanders video games is pretty awesome. The portal itself rings up your characters extremely quickly, which is absolutely key to making it feel... well... magical.

With the starter kit you'll get three Skylanders characters of different types, giving you some decent coverage to get going with. The game itself doesn't directly trade off of the elemental abilities in a "water beats fire" sort of way, though. Instead, the game sort of arbitrarily assigns bonuses to specific types of characters in different areas. It'll also lock you out of certain areas unless you're using a character of the appropriate type. So if you encounter a gate that can only be opened by an Undead-type Skylander, you're going to need to yank your fire guy off of the portal and replace him with Ghost Roaster or Chop Chop or something if you want to get into that area. With one Skylander of each type, you'll be able to see just about everything there is to see in Skylanders, but if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, you can still finish the game and see the vast majority of the content with the starter pack alone. But then... if you aren't into the whole "buying a bunch of toys" thing, Skylanders might not be for you at all. If you start going deep down the Skylanders hole, just know that you can easily spend hundreds of dollars collecting the 32 core characters (more if you want the variants!) multiple level add-ons, and bonus items. And some of the characters haven't even hit stores yet. It's not a great deal, when you start to break it down, but the figurines look pretty nice and translate well into in-game characters, with a lot of good variety that makes most characters feel pretty different from each other.

Though Spyro's name is on the box, Skylanders feels like an all-new thing, not another attempt to drag the dragon back into the spotlight.

All of these characters are jammed into a story where the Skylanders must rebuild a mystical machine to save the world from an evil little goofball named Kaos. You're dropped into a hub world and run through a collection of top-down levels that have you bashing monsters and solving light puzzles. The elemental gates provide some optional areas, though some hidden objects don't require a separate purchase to access. Man, that sentence makes this whole thing sound kind of horrible, doesn't it? The bonus items are hats that enhance your stats, but none of them are especially crucial, and as you approach level 10--the cap--your Skylanders will be dominating the vast majority of the enemies you face.

The characters, again, help make the combat interesting as they let you tailor the game to our own style. Gill Grunt, to name one of the Skylanders you'll get in the starter package, is projectile-based, with a speargun that fires slowly but does good damage and a water hose attack that hits at a steady rate. You'll need to upgrade your water tank if you want to fire that one forever, though. If you're interested in an up-close attack, characters like Chop Chop are more melee-focused. Armed with a sword and shield, Chop Chop has a basic multi-hit sword combo and his shield is one of the few abilities in the game that, you know, blocks damage. He's also a rad-looking skeletal warrior, which is pretty cool. Then there's Prism Break, who does a bit of both and offers some more complex upgrade options. Prism Break, by default, has a small area of effect attack that pushes nearby enemies back with a decent amount of damage and a laser beam that doesn't go too far or last very long. Through upgrades you can unlock the ability to drop crystals into the level that refract your laser attack, letting you cover more territory with your beams. Then you can buy an upgrade that turns defeated enemies into crystals, which lets you sort of fill the screen with hot laser death. Not every Skylander is terrific--Eruptor just seems kind of sluggish and ineffective, at least at lower levels--but there are so many out there that trying them out in different scenarios ends up being half the fun. Again, that's sort of all dependent on the whole "I'm willing to buy all this stuff" clause.

Trigger Happy's guns fire gold coins. Seems pricey.

It's not a difficult game, but there's more to Skylanders than you might think. Or, at least, you're probably not going to waltz through the entire game in a day, giving you plenty of time to sit and obsess over the Skylanders you don't currently own and which upgrade path you want to take when you level your next character up. Once you start to pick it all apart, it's easy to see its devious brilliance--it's essentially an example of "on-disc DLC" taken to horrifying extremes, except you need to go out and buy a physical thing to unlock that content in the game. Oh, and by the way, those physical things seem to be going in and out of stock at some retailers with the sort of alarming frequency that lets you know that it's probably going to do pretty well around Christmas time, which can add a horrifying new layer to all of this if you're, for example, desperately seeking Drobot. But when you put aside the crass consumerism that drives every decent children's toy/movie/cartoon/game brand, Skylanders managed to be just engaging enough to make all my ridiculous collector's tendencies pay off.

The portal is fun to use, and exploring the powers and abilities of the different Skylanders is at least as engaging as the good variety of levels you'll see as you work your way through the adventure. Sure, I can't sit here and say for certain if kids will love it or not, but I will say that if I were to suddenly find myself in charge of of a kid's well-being, I'd be OK with playing through Skylanders alongside said kid... unless the kid wanted to actually touch my Skylanders or remove them from the special shelf where I sort them all by their elemental affinity for easy access. Buy your own, ya little jerk.

Not exactly the best-looking figurine for Skylanders, but these are supposedly going to be rare finds.