Skylanders: An Ex-Portal Master's Retrospective
Skylanders is a video game series that I was previously very passionate about. I played the absolute hell out of all of the main series games, wrote numerous fanfics based on the series and had quite a few of the figurines. Not all of them, mind you - not even close to all of them - but enough to say that my army of Skylanders was indeed an army, one big enough that I had a dedicated storage space for them in my home. Alas, all of that is a relatively distant memory. I no longer have any of the games, having long since traded them away in favour of new gaming experiences, all of my Skylanders fanfics have long-since been deleted, no longer available on the internet (at least not through legit means), and the only figures I have left are a few Creation Crystals, a (regrettably) pre-owned figure of my personal favourite Skylander Roller Brawl, and of course, Crash Bandicoot and Dr. Neo Cortex. My interest in the Skylanders franchise tapered off after the Switch port of Imaginators came and went, thanks in no small part to the lack of activity the franchise had going on, with the mobile game Ring Of Heroes being something of a last hurrah before all become quiet on the Skylanders front. And now I want to talk about my Skylanders experience as a whole because… well, because I feel like it, honestly. I should clarify that this retrospective is NOT an attempt on my part to convince the old-school Spyro fans that there’s more to Skylanders than just the admittedly odd redesign of Spyro himself. It’s been over a decade since the release of Spyro’s Adventure; if those old-school Spyro fans haven’t changed their biased stance on Skylanders by now, they’re not going to, and at the end of the day, it’s their loss, not mine. I should also clarify that this is not a review of the Skylanders games, but rather my general thoughts on each main game. I intend to cover all seven - yes, you heard me, seven, not six - main games, but I won’t be covering the mobile titles or the 3DS games… with one exception by way of technicality. More on that later. I also won’t be covering the Netflix series Skylanders Academy, though I may mention it if and when it is relevant to what I’m discussing. With all that said, let’s get this proverbial Portal powered up and dive into the world of Skylands.Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (2011) Whether you love, hate or feel indifferent about Spyro’s Adventure, it gives a certain impression in hindsight. What do I mean by that? Well, the phrase ‘humble beginnings’ comes to mind. It’s the first game in the Skylanders series and it certainly feels like it. The toys-to-life gimmick, for as revolutionary as it was in its own time, was really the only thing that this first entry had going for it in my opinion; Spyro’s Adventure hangs its hat on the novelty of how the player interacts with the game, and the gameplay reflects that. It’s a fairly basic beat-em-up where you just move round, solve (mostly) basic puzzles, attack enemies and hope that your opponent’s HP bar empties before your character’s does. You cannot jump, instead relying on dedicated jump pads placed in specific spots to get up to higher areas as needed. Your default movement speed is slow, with the only reliable way to increase it being the hats that you can find in the levels and then equip to your characters, and even then, the stat boost is incremental at best. It’s certainly not a bad game, but it is a very basic and often very slow-paced one. That said, it’s not without its merits. The standard Starter Pack comes with three characters: Spyro of the Magic Element, Gill Grunt of the Water Element and Trigger Happy of the Tech Element. All three of them have projectile based attacks, meaning that they’re probably the most optimal starting line-up of characters the game could’ve gone with, given that getting hit by enemies as little as possible is crucial to making it through the game, especially if the starting characters are all you have access to. I was fortunate enough to have already played the 3DS version of Spyro’s Adventure prior to the home console version, meaning that I had an extra three characters to work with on my first play-through: Dark Spyro of the Magic Element (who plays exactly the same as regular Spyro on console, but has a unique move-set on 3DS), Stealth Elf of the Life Element and Ignitor of the Fire Element. Ignitor and Stealth Elf were better suited for close quarters combat, with Stealth Elf’s daggers absolutely shredding through most enemies when fully upgraded; it’s not hard to see why she became the fan favourite. I believe I also had Ghost Roaster of the Undead Element and the accompanying Adventure Pack, which was essentially a DLC expansion in the form of a physical toy that unlocked an additional in-game level. So yeah, seven Skylanders to get me started, and by the endgame, I had to utilise them carefully, not least because the final boss of this first game is infamously unbalanced; Activision clearly wanted players to go out and buy more figures and line their pockets with your cash, and with the eight different elemental classes, there was, admittedly, some incentive to get at least one figure of every class… but outside of that final boss, the only real benefit to having at least one Skylander of every Element was to be able to access all of the secret areas and nab all of the collectibles, and as far as the value of those collectibles goes, well… your mileage may vary. The aforementioned hats can raise the stats of the Skylander they’re equipped to, Soul Gems unlock a specific attack or ability for each Skylander (which you still have to then purchase with in-game currency), Story Scrolls that detail the lore of the Skylanders universe, though most of that ‘lore’ is really just flavour text. I mean, it’s not bad lore, strictly speaking, but it’s nothing that’ll blow your mind. There are a couple of details that might get a chuckle out of you, though, and there’s even one particular Story Scroll that outright foreshadows the events of the next game. …Yeah, Activision was already thinking about how they were going to bleed you dry in the long-term. Cynicism aside, I mentioned before that this game is not without its merits, and it is fun at a base level - I certainly enjoyed it back when it was new. Hell, a lot of the shortcomings I’ve pointed out thus far didn’t even occur to me back then. I think that the real strength of Spyro’s Adventure, however, was its world and atmosphere. I’ve talked before about how the world of Crash Bandicoot utterly fascinates me and captures my imagination, and the same can be said for Skylanders. The environments, while basic in terms of level design, each feel like they stretch off far into the distance, as though there’s more to each location than just what we’re allowed to explore. At their best, they remind me (albeit retroactively) of the levels in Crash 4, and any favourable comparison to Crash is high praise coming from me. The music also plays a big part in completing each level’s atmosphere; Hans Zimmer really gave it his all here. …I say that like I had any idea who Hans Zimmer was before playing this game. Seriously, I still listen to the soundtracks of the Skylanders games to this day - they really are something special. Hardly any of these tunes are ‘ear worms’, but most, if not all of them are really dynamic and establish a mood appropriate for each level. …Look, I’m not an expert on music, so you’ll have to bear with me here, but the point I’m trying to make is that Skylanders has some really good music. At its best, I’d say its on par with the music of the old-school Spyro games. Yes, really. The supporting cast of NPCs is good… up to a point. I said before that this really does feel like the first game in the series, and that includes the unskippable dialogue that talks down to the player. I know that these games were made for kids first and foremost, but COME ON. If your target audience is (for as much as I hate using this stereotype when describing kids) the Fortnite/smartphone demographic - that is to say, kids with the attention span and patience of a jittery squirrel on crack - you can’t have drawn out, patronising dialogue in your fantasy action adventure game about dragons, elves and magic robots that shoot lasers and fireballs at bad guys, especially not as scrolling text that can’t even be sped up, let alone skipped! Ahem. That aside, I do like at least some of the NPCs that inhabit the hub world. Flynn, while not as good as he would be in later games, is still fairly charming even here in his debut appearance. Cali, while a bit generically stoic, is likeable enough, or at least memorable, given that she’s the one you go to see to play special Skylander-specific ‘Heroic Challenges’ that permanently upgrade their base stats. Hugo is… a little annoying, honestly. His big thing is that he’s irrationally afraid of sheep… and that’s the only running gag the writers do with him. He’s supposed to be the knowledgeable right hand man of Master Eon, the person who was previously in charge before everything went to sh*t prior to the game’s events, but he just comes across as a scaredy-cat who needs to be babysat by the other NPCs, if not the Skylanders themselves. Other NPCs like Gurglefin and Arbo are unbearable in my opinion, not least because of their voices. Diggs and T-Bone are okay, if a bit forgettable. Yeah, I think I’m starting to see why only three of these NPCs became major recurring characters in the games that followed… and why Hugo was eventually pushed out of the limelight in favour of Tessa. More on that later. So overall, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, while being a humble outing (especially in hindsight), is a solid foundation that the games that followed would build upon in effective and… mostly excellent ways. My favourite Skylanders from this first entry include the aforementioned Stealth Elf and Ignitor, with their respective daggers and fire sword being good ways to mow through crowds of enemies, as well as Chop Chop and Flameslinger, with the former’s blade being terrifyingly powerful when fully upgraded and the latter’s fire arrows and fire boots proving to be a red hot combination. Heh. Also, gotta give props to a guy who wears a blindfold just to give his enemies a fighting chance.Skylanders: Giants (2012) You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘bigger equals better’ once or twice in your life, and that notion seems to be what Skylanders: Giants is built around, and not just because we’re now working with characters that are literally bigger. The titular Giants are certainly impressive; they light up when placed on the Portal, they’re a lot stronger than the Core (regular) Skylanders, they can interact with the environment in ways that the Core Skylanders can’t… It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that they steal the show.That’s not to say that the Core Skylanders are without merit all of a sudden; they’re all still playable, with their stats and such being transferrable from the previous game, and there’s even a few new faces to share the spotlight with their Giant brethren. The standard Starter Pack again comes with three figures: Tree Rex, a Giant of the Life Element, and Cynder and Jet-Vac, Core Skylanders of the Undead and Air elements respectively. Longtime Spyro fans will recognise Cynder from the Legend Of Spyro trilogy, though her Skylanders counterpart is an alternate take on the character, trading in her black dragon scales for a dark, velvety purple and switching out her Poison, Fear, Wind and Shadow breath attacks in favour of lightning breath and the ability to phase into shadow like Giratina from Pokémon. Jet-Vac is evidently another fan favourite, given his prominence in later Skylanders media. Tree Rex is just an all-around powerhouse, making up for his slow movement speed with devastating attacks that can send the smaller enemies flying. I’ll cut to the chase this time in regards to my favourites of the new Skylanders. Crusher is a Giant of the Earth Element who wields a mighty sledgehammer - a hammer that tends to completely miss the smaller enemies most of the time in my experience. Yeah, I like him more for his design than his move-set; the green crystals on his body that light up on the Portal were always particularly striking to me. As for the Core Skylanders, Sprocket is a bit of an underrated character in my opinion, or at least, she was prior to her appearance in Skylanders Academy, at which point everyone started calling her a MILF. Yes, really. (Don’t you just love internet fandom?) She’s a Tech Element character who fights with a wrench in melee combat and drops proximity mines. I can’t remember if this was introduced in Giants or in a later game, but she can eventually summon a solid gold tank to blast enemies with. Chill is a new Water Skylander who throws ice javelins and conjures blocks of ice to send sliding into enemies. Pop Fizz is a character that I went out of my way to get, given how much his gimmick reminded me of N. Brio from Crash Bandicoot; potion projectiles with varying effects, and a beast transformation to round out his move-set. How could I not love this blue blighter? After all, he… was in… the second… GAAAAME! Ahem. Sorry about that. Couldn’t help myself with that reference. The levels in Giants are bigger, more tightly designed, and you only need one of the titular Giants to access all of the Giant-related content. Yeah, their ‘Feats of Strength’ are very gimmicky, acting as glorified locks that the Giants serve as keys to bypass. Still, it’s fun playing as the Giants, and they were always my go-to in boss battles. The new hub world is more concise, taking place entirely on a small airship rather than a big, empty field. Each room of the ship provides easy access to shops, mini-games and so on; a place for everything, and everything in its place. The ship also has customisable parts that can be obtained in the main levels, one of which opens the path to a secret shop below deck, which is a neat reward for those with an observant eye. There are battle challenges, new Heroic Challenges, and all of the Adventure Pack levels from the previous game can be unlocked in Giants with the appropriate figures. In short, there’s a lot more content here. Lest we forget Skystones, the deck-building mini-game that would be prominent throughout the series going forward. It’s… alright. Skystones is alright. Has a good theme tune, I’ll give it that. Yeah, the music in this game is even better than it was in Spyro’s Adventure; the title theme of Giants in particular is an absolute banger - so bombastic and exciting and adventurous and I love it! Easily the best main theme in the series. So yeah, as a sequel, Skylanders: Giants definitely delivers on being a bigger and better experience, and one that’s surprisingly easy on the wallet, especially if you held on to all your figures from the previous game. As I said, one Giant is all you need to access all of the Giant-related stuff, so if you still have a Skylander of each Element after playing Spyro’s Adventure, then you’re all set to 100% Giants, at least in terms of collectibles. I’ve heard many a Skylanders fan argue that Giants is the best game in the series just for how concise and accessible it is, and I agree with that sentiment up to a point. What is that point, you may not be asking? Well…Skylanders: Swap Force (2013) How are they going to top Giants? That was the question on my mind as I sat down to watch the teaser trailer for Swap Force back in the day. How will this series go bigger after having already gone bigger in the most literal sense? I watched the new octopus pirate character, who I would later learn was called Wash Buckler, walk onto the screen, set down the miniature stereo system he was carrying, hit the ‘play’ button on it with one of his tentacles and start casually grooving to the tune of Weapon Of Choice. I didn’t know where the powers-that-be were going with this. A fiery knight with rocket thrusters in his feet (Blast Zone) then came hovering over to join in on the dancing fun… and I officially decided at that point that I was not impressed. They were just dancing; how did that make them more special than previous Skylanders characters? And then, just as the music started to really get going, Wash Buckler and Blast Zone suddenly swapped the lower halves of their bodies between themselves and… Well, I think my reaction can be accurately summed up by this meme quote from SpongeBob: “What? It’s just an ordinary— OH, MY GOODNESS! SQUIDWARD!!!” Yeah, I was NOT ready for that. I was already a young adult when I first saw this trailer, and that moment absolutely floored me. Not sure what that says about me maturity-wise, but I digress. The implications were mind blowing, because even from the instant I saw that swapping gimmick in an animated format, I knew that it was going to apply to the toys, too. This new game wasn’t going bigger - it was going wilder. More advanced toys that were customisable out in the real world as well as in-game? The sheer potential of that kind of technology had my mind absolutely racing. Ironically, the ‘Swap Force’ characters wouldn’t even end up being my favourite of the new Skylanders, because a couple months later, I watched a live presentation of the game on YouTube, and what I saw changed everything for me personally. Okay, so the bloke managing the presentation took the audience through a Wild West themed desert level, showing off Swap Force’s graphics, which were enhanced compared to the previous games thanks to the new game engine and the newer console generation at the time (remember, this was when the PS4 was still new), demonstrating how the titular Swap Force characters worked, and then… “Now, in addition to our sixteen new Swap Force characters, we’re also introducing sixteen new Core characters, so we’re gonna show you a couple of those right now, starting with our new Undead character, who we call Roller Brawl.” It is said in Roller Brawl’s official bio that the series’ main antagonist Kaos took one look at her and fell head-over-heels in love with her… and I can relate! Let me be clear: I did NOT have a crush on her or anything like that; I already went through a phase to that effect with a certain other fictional character when I was younger… but I took one look at Roller Brawl’s roller derby aesthetic, her glowing eyes, her bubblegum pink hair and… well, another infamous SpongeBob quote comes to mind: “I NEEEEEEED IIIIIIIIT!!!” Yeah, I made dead sure - heh, you get it? Because she’s Undead? - to get Roller Brawl day one alongside my Starter Pack. …How did I end up with a pre-owned figure of her in the long term, you may ask? Roxas: “Shut up!” Yeah, what he said. Anyway, it was indeed love at first sight for me where Roller Brawl was concerned. She is, far and away, my favourite Skylander out of the entire series even now. Everything about her - her looks, her move-set, her one-liners, the fact that she would later get a car made out of monster bones - just clicked with me so damn hard. The reveal of Roller Brawl in that presentation was the moment when I started to become truly passionate about Skylanders as a franchise. The Starter Pack for Swap Force once again featured three characters: The aforementioned Wash Buckler and Blast Zone, as well as a new variant of Stealth Elf that bore a black ninja uniform… that you needed to work to unlock in the game. Seems a bit weird to put the new aspect of a returning character on their figurine, but then lock it away in-game, but whatever. This is also where the series started bringing in ‘Dark Edition’ Starter Packs, which featured dark variants of particular Skylanders, and often in greater numbers than the game’s standard release. Swap Force’s Dark Edition featured dark variants of the aforementioned trio, as well as dark versions of Spyro and newcomer Slobber Tooth - a big Stegosaurus kind of guy. I went standard on the Wii U (yeah, remember that thing?) and was fine with my choice; those Dark Editions were just a ploy to make people spend more money on this franchise than was necessary. …Yep. I totally didn’t go back later and grab the Dark Edition while I still could. Not me. I’m no sucker. Just ask all those mediocre-at-best Pokémon games that I purchased at full price on day one, they’ll tell you. (Oy…) As established, the power of next-gen hardware brought a new sheen to the world of Skylands, and with that new look came updated mechanics. Characters could now jump with the press of a button (finally), and the Swap Force Skylanders brought their own unique flair to combat; the ability to swap their top and bottom halves allowed players to combine a hard hitting weapon with swift moving legs or other such appendages. There were also dedicated ‘Swap Zones’, which were little challenge areas fenced off from the main part of each level, and each one required a different ability that was tied to the lower halves of the Swap Force characters; some could climb vertical walls, some could fly, some could drill through the ground… This does mean that if you wanted to see everything that the game had to offer, you'd need to get yourself at least one Swap Force Skylander of every ability class - eight of the sixteen swappers, in other words, and these ability classes were independent of Element classes, so… yeah. Trying to optimise your army of Skylanders to get the most out of this game would set you back a pretty penny. My advice: Just get the bare minimum and have fun with the game; don’t worry about going for full completion. Those who do intend to go for full completion, however, will find that there is an absolute plethora of content even outside of the Swap Zones and Elemental Gates (the latter of which I forgot to mention before now). There are bonus missions, arena and survival challenges galore, as well as various optional goals to complete in each level, a Portal Master ranking system that unlocks more rewards and bonuses for the player the further their overall rank is raised, and I haven’t even mentioned the new Adventure Pack levels! You may have to spend a lot of bucks to get the 'full' Swap Force experience, but you will most certainly get plenty of bang for that buck. We’ve got some new NPCs in a new hub world known as Woodburrow, a small forest village located in a region of Skylands called the Cloudbreak Islands, which is said to be where the source of all magic in this fantasy world is located. The most notable NPC is, of course, Tessa, a fox girl who is next in line to become chief of Woodburrow, and who gets around on the back of a giant bird named Whiskers. She’s pretty cool. Seems like she should be the one out there fighting the good fight rather than the Skylanders; she seems pretty capable and independent. Also, am I the only one who thinks she looks more like a lioness or a leopard than a fox? She even has spots on her shoulders and arms; when’s the last time you saw a spotted fox? Ahem. Moving on, my pick for the most underrated NPC in the entire series is Avril, captain of the Frost Elf guard. Her sassy banter coupled with her Scottish accent make her a treat to listen to, at least for me. I kept expecting her to belt out a swear word after every other sentence, but this is a kids’ game, so that’s obviously not happening. Would’ve been funny, though. Let’s talk favourites. As established, I like Roller Brawl way too much, but I also think Wash Buckler is pretty cool. Magna Charge is a robot who figuratively and literally has a magnetic personality. Night Shift is a vampire boxer who can resurrect after death (undeath?), albeit with dangerously low health. Rattle Shake is a blatant Clint Eastwood parody in the form of an anthropomorphic snake who shoots smaller snakes from his guns. Punk Shock is a character I never owned myself, but she intrigues me; I can’t think of another instance of an anthropomorphic electric eel in any licensed work of fiction, let alone one with a crossbow that fires bolts of lightning. Also, I just got that. Bolts of lightning. See, they’re crossbow bolts imbued with electricity, but the term ‘lightning bolt’ can also refer to surges of electricity generated during a thunderstorm and… Yeah, you get the picture. Overall, Skylanders: Swap Force is contender for my favourite game in the series alongside Giants and SuperChargers. Its biggest and I’d argue only flaw is the sheer amount of figures you have to put down the dollars for to get the quote unquote ‘full’ experience. But it’s not the worst offender in that regard when it comes to this series… Skylanders: Trap Team (2014) (exhales deeply) I’ll start off with a positive: The teaser trailer for Skylanders: Trap Team is one that, much like Swap Force before it, made my jaw hit the floor. Wolfgang: “Oi! How’d I get in here?! Boom me back in! I’ll be good, I swear!” When I first saw that crystal Trap pull Wolfgang from the game world into the real world, I actually said out loud, “Holy sh*t.” Of course, I knew it hadn’t actually plucked a sapient guitarist werewolf from another dimension into the confines of a plastic infrared scanning device, but the concept was just so awesome. That speaker built into the new ‘Traptanium’ Portal would actually increase my immersion when I played Trap Team; I’d expected it to just annoy me to the point where I’d look for a way to turn it off after the first half hour, but I loved that stupid noisemaker and the one-liners it kept spouting out into my dedicated gaming space. The gimmick of trapping villains and making them fight for you was one that I could easily get behind; I love playing as villain characters in video games, and Trap Team offered a grand total of FORTY of them. I was onboard. I was hooked. I was sold. I was… …Not prepared for the plethora of problems Trap Team would bring to the table. Okay, first problem: The game had increased the base eight Element classes (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Life, Undead, Magic, Tech) to ten with the addition of Light and Dark - secret Elements that you can’t even access in any regard without certain figures, none of which were available for purchase at Trap Team’s launch! This meant that not only did you have to buy more crap than ever to get the ‘full’ experience - and that’s before we take the changes made to the Elemental Gates into consideration - but you couldn’t even obtain all of that crap until you’d already been playing the game for about six months! Second Problem: The aforementioned Elemental Gates. In the previous games, there were special gateways that locked off optional side areas that could be opened with a Skylander of the correct Element.. and they were fine. What’s NOT fine is the way they’re handled in Trap Team. The game introduces another new class of Skylander: The Trap Masters. They have more powerful weapons than the average Skylander, which is explained away in-universe by the fact that these weapons are made of Traptanium, a fictional mineral designed to wear down the health of trappable villains faster and ultimately contain them. The problem is that because the narrative of Trap Team revolves ENTIRELY around Traptanium and the usage thereof, the Elemental Gates can now only be opened by a Trap Master of the correct Element type. A Core Skylander ain’t gonna cut it; you need Trap Masters to get into these places. This might be justified in-universe, but in the real world, this was a blatant means of making us spend more money than we otherwise would have on the newer figures, as opposed to just using the old ones like we could in the previous two games. Activision was determined to make up for any diminishing returns they might’ve had with Giants and Swap Force due to people using older figures rather than buying a plethora of new ones with each new game, and in the end, both Trap Team and its players suffered for it. THIRD problem - oh, yes, there’s more problems - is that in addition to the Element class count going up from eight to ten, there was still an eleventh Element to be dealt with: The Kaos Element. More specifically, the Kaos Trap. Kaos had become the flagship villain of Skylanders at this point, so much so that he had more right to be featured by name on the box than Spyro ever had… but to play as this now iconic villain in Trap Team, you needed to buy a very specific villain Trap for him. All those other ten Elements of Traps? Forget ‘em! Because in order to play as the one villain you’d actually want to play as in a Skylanders game, you need to shop around for the very specific thing you need to make him accessible! Argh! FORTUNATELY… I got lucky in regards to the Kaos Trap. I was able to bag one just a month out from the game’s launch, give or take, but the point stands. Yes, Trap Team had a lot going against it both at launch and long after launch, but was it a fun game despite all of that? …Pretty much, yeah. I mean, it was still Skylanders. It retained most, if not all of the improvements from Swap Force… minus the meaty amount of side content. The only thing that really comes to mind was the ‘Mystery Box of Doom’ challenge, which was just a slightly different take on the arena challenges of games past. There’s a new variation of Skystones, but it’s nothing special. It’s less about card placement and more about card numbers. As in, the numbers written on the cards. I did like the game’s finale, though, where Kaos would talk to the player through the speaker in the Portal, taunting them, challenging them, saying that he was gonna come after the player and put them in a Trap to see how much they like it… Ah, I love fourth wall breaking moments in games like this. It’s like Psycho Mantis for a new generation. Of the forty trappable villains, only about ten of them, including Kaos, were actually unique characters. The rest were just generic enemy grunts that felt like they were only trappable for the sake of justifying the gimmick. I mean, does anybody actually care about Sheep Creep or Maskermind or Broccoli Guy when characters like Kaos, Wolfgang and the Golden Queen are on the table? As in, literally on your table, waiting for you to insert the Traps you caught them in into the Portal so they can go for a run and wreak some controlled havoc? At its best, Trap Team is a mixed bag. Its highs were higher than anything else in the series up to that point, but that just brought it crashing down harder in terms of faults and shortcomings. Oh, well. At least it gave us Mags, who is easily the best of the friendly NPCs in the entire series. Hot buttered toast indeed. She really should’ve been in Skylanders Academy. Oh, and my favourite of the new Skylanders is Torch. Blacksmith with a flamethrower. Works for me. Anyone else get Sonic And The Black Knight vibes from her? Skylanders: SuperChargers (2015) I’m just gonna say it: Skylanders: SuperChargers should’ve been the last game in the series… …Because then, the series would’ve gone out on one hell of a high note, baby! Aw, yeah! Once again, we have a very bombastic title theme, easily on par with Giants, and that’s not the only favourable comparison to Giants, because much like that game, SuperChargers is very concise in terms of how many figures you need to access all of its content. You only need four things to see everything SuperChargers has to offer: One on the new SuperCharger Skylanders, one Land class vehicle, one Sea class vehicle and one Sky class vehicle… and you get two of the four in the Starter Pack in the form of Spitfire and the Hot Streak, as well as another new variant of Stealth Elf, who has traded in her iconic daggers for a splinter cannon. Yeah, some of the returning characters have new move-sets as well as new outfits, not to mention their own vehicles. I mentioned in the Swap Force section of this retrospective that Roller Brawl would eventually get her own car made out of monster bones, and as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, the Tomb Buggy is easily my favourite of the vehicles. In fact, you know what? Let’s jump right into my favourite of the new Skylanders and their vehicles: Bone Bash Roller Brawl is a new take on my favourite derby vampire that sees her swapping out her metal claw weapons in favour of wrist scythes that glow pink with vampiric 'love' energy, and her black derby gear has been replaced by an armoured suit made of bones to compliment her Tomb Buggy, which, when powered up by Roller Brawl's influence, turns from ivory white to neon black with glowing pink cables that pump otherworldly energy throughout, its rocky wheels turning to giant saw blades. Very, very cool. Splat is a new Magic Skylander who wouldn’t look out of place in the world of Splatoon. She wields a magic paintbrush that she can use to smack enemies with and create blob minions out of paint. Her vehicle, a speedboat called the Splatter Splasher, is sleek in its design with a purple and gold paint job, and was often my go-to in the water races. Hammer Slam Bowser - yes, THAT Bowser - a character unique to the Wii U version of the game, marches into battle armed with a powerful hammer imbued with fire magic. He can also turn into a magma infused rock monster to wreak havoc and can create warp pipes to summon Koopa Troopas with. This was before his playable segment in Mario Odyssey, so this was the first time we got to play as Bowser in a 3D platformer. His Skylander figure also doubles as an amiibo, which is neat. His vehicle, a plane called the Clown Cruiser, looks a bit lame at first, but once Bowser powers it up, it takes on a look more reminiscent of his airships from Mario Galaxy. A stand-out addition to the Skylanders cast. …Feels weird that we didn’t get a SuperCharger variant of Spyro, though. The character that was once pushed as the mascot of this series really got sidelined in favour of characters like Stealth Elf and Kaos, didn’t he? Hell, Stealth Elf is positioned dead centre on the box art of the first game; makes me wonder if Activision originally planned to make her the series’ mascot before deciding on using Spyro for the sake of easy marketing. Oh, well. At least Spyro eventually got his own car in Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fuelled. I haven’t really talked about the story of these games up to now, have I? The basic premise of each Skylanders game is that the relevant group of Skylanders were banished from their world by a cataclysmic event, causing them to end up on modern day Earth in the form of plastic toys, and the player must act as a ‘Portal Master’ to send them home via the ‘Portal Of Power’ infrared device included with the game and guide them on their adventure to defend the realm of Skylands from the evil that tried to conquer it in their absence. In SuperChargers, the stakes are raised by way of the recurring villain Kaos having already won this time. You see, the Skylanders usually get back to their world with the help of us Portal Masters before the bad guys can truly take over, but this time, Kaos has managed to firmly establish and maintain his dominance over Skylands in the heroes’ absence prior to the events of the game, meaning that when we send in the Skylanders, they’re returning to a world where everything has already gone to sh*t. Most of the recurring friendly NPCs have been captured, with the rest having been forced to go into hiding, and Kaos has found a way to sabotage the Portal connectivity between Earth and Skylands… though that latter point doesn’t mean anything because it’s resolved immediately. The new vehicles can apparently stabilise the connection between the worlds due to being powered by magical gold ‘Rift Engines’ - a plot point that Skylanders Academy would later retcon just for the sake of a one-off joke. Jet-Vac: “All that trouble was caused by a tiny computer chip?” Sprocket: “You mean the engine?” Jet-Vac: “…That’s the engine?” Me: “No, it’s not! It’s supposed to be big and gold and crackling with energy and… Argh!” …Yeah, I became a bit of a Skylanders nerd overtime. They also got Roller Brawl’s personality completely wrong in Academy; she’s not supposed to be dark and brooding! She’s a fun-loving adrenaline junkie who doesn’t know when and where to draw the line in terms of risk-taking. At least that’s how I always interpreted her. I mean, how do you go from quotes like these: “You got rolled!” “AW, YEAH!” “Time for a jam session!” To quotes like this: “…One day, the sun’s gonna explode.” And I know everyone in the comments is gonna tell me that Academy is a different take on Skylanders and that it’s not canon to the games - and I know that - but still. It just feels like a betrayal of Roller Brawl’s character and— Oh, God. I’m starting to sound like those Crash Bandicoot fans who slag off every Crash game that wasn’t made by Naughty Dog and treat such as 'betrayals' of what the series is 'supposed' to be. Oy vey. Let’s get back on topic. The levels in SuperChargers are a lot more tightly designed, with everything tied to Sea and Sky vehicles being optional; only the Land vehicle segments are mandatory for progression. There’s still a decent serving of on-foot gameplay, though, so don’t worry; all those combat skills you spent gold to upgrade in the previous games won’t go to waste. The levels are also divided into areas marked with checkpoints that you can jump back to from the hub world, so if you need to head back to a particular spot to pick up a particular collectible or complete a particular optional goal, it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Outside of the main levels, there’s also the obligatory vehicle racing mode, which is surprisingly challenging. It’s managed by Pandergast the Magnificent, another underrated character in my opinion, and six of the twelve race tracks are available from the start. The rest need to be unlocked with Racing Packs, this game’s take on Adventure Packs, and these packs also unlock Grand Prix modes, boss races against villain characters, and other such optional challenges. It’s a decent time, but I feel like the weapon balance is a bit weird, mainly because the effects of items are so very, very fleeting, and the cannons on vehicles have a very short cooldown bar that takes roughly three times as long to refill as it does to empty. I said before that this mode is surprisingly challenging, but that mostly comes down to the weapon/item system rather than, say, hard AI opponents. It has the same problem as Crash Tag Team Racing; it’s easy to get destroyed by your opponents if you don’t exploit the weapons system… except there is no way to exploit it here. I dunno, maybe this is just a case of me being bad at this mode and seeing the mode itself as bad as a result. It’s not bad, though; I just think it needs a little fine-tuning. Getting back to the story, it features the most twists and turns out of any narrative in the series. The actions the characters take all have consequences that need to be accounted for, including a moment where one of the major recurring NPCs dies… only to be revealed to actually still be alive less than two minutes later, so what was even the point of that? …What’s that? Mags just got kidnapped by sky pirates who have hijacked a flying train?! Oh, It is ON. We’re getting our resident hot buttered toast fetishist back! Lol! Seriously, the story of this game is fantastic, and that’s no hyperbole on my part. There are just so many times when the way the narrative is progressing suddenly gets turned on its head, and Kaos in particular gets a remarkable amount of character development, to the point where he becomes something of an anti-hero. This is sadly retconned in the very next game for the sake of restoring the ‘Skylanders VS Kaos’ status quo, but still, it was awesome to see the series’ main villain have so many great moments. He’s so much more than just the annoying Invader Zim knock-off that old-school Spyro fans and onlookers in general see him as. The ending of the game, without spoiling anything, is great as well. It feels so climactic and has such a sense of finality to it. I get the sense that Toys For Bob wanted to end the series here… but were then obligated to make Imaginators just so Activision could milk one last round of cash out of this franchise. Like I said before, if this had been the last Skylanders game, the series would’ve gone out on a genuine high note in my opinion, both narratively and in terms of gameplay. Alas, 'twas not to be… but we’ll get to that. For now, we’re gonna take a look at the other Skylanders game with ‘SuperChargers’ in the title, because yes, there are two of them, believe it or not.Skylanders: SuperChargers Racing (2015) Mario: “Welcome to Mario Kart!” …That was obligatory. Nearly all of the Skylanders games up to this point had managed to have releases on both the Wii U and the original Wii… but it became clear during the development of SuperChargers that the little white wannabe exercise machine wouldn’t be powerful enough to run the quote unquote ‘true’ version of the game, and thus, we Portal Masters found ourselves in a Sonic Unleashed situation, with a watered down version of the game on weaker hardware to tie over those who couldn’t afford to buy a next-gen gaming system just to keep up with their favourite franchise. Incidentally, I played the 3DS version of SuperChargers Racing. Yeah, I know, I said I wasn’t gonna talk about the 3DS games, but this game is pretty much the exact same on both the Wii and 3DS. The only real difference between the two is that on the 3DS version, you don’t have to constantly keep the Portal active; you can just upload your characters and vehicles and then take your system on the go for some handheld Skylanders racing action. …It’s a pretty fun time, actually. I jokingly compared this game to Mario Kart before, but that comparison is actually fairly accurate; Skylanders: SuperChargers Racing is, for all intents and purposes, Mario Kart with Skylanders characters, and no, not just because it, much like the ‘main’ version of SuperChargers, features Donkey Kong and Bowser as guest characters. …Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention Donkey Kong before, didn't I? Yeah, he's cool. It's cool that he's here.DK: "Hahaha! ...Now you die." This game is all racing. There’s no platforming or exploration to be had; you pick a track or cup tournament and you race… or do time trials… or any of the other modes you’d expect of a typical kart racing game. There’s no battle arena, though. Not that I can recall, anyway. Weird. The gameplay is largely the same as the racing mode in SuperChargers… except is has the exact opposite problems of that mode. While the racing in SuperChargers featured underpowered items and weapons with overly aggressive AI, SuperChargers Racing has overpowered weapons and items with incredibly dumb AI… and I am okay with that. Mostly. Look, I hate it when I play a racing game and just get curb stomped by opponents who aren’t even being controlled by another human being. I mean, it just makes me feel like an idiot, knowing that I can’t even beat a computer. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a good challenge now and then; I’ve beaten Cuphead three times and done almost everything there is to do in Hollow Knight - games that are both notorious for their difficulty… but don’t bring that sh*t to the race track; I’m just here to have some fun. Seriously, SuperChargers Racing is almost laughably easy even on the highest difficulty setting, and if I had to guess, I’d say they dumbed down the difficulty because this game, like all Skylanders games, is made for kids first and foremost. I mean, that doesn’t explain why the racing in the ‘main’ version of SuperChargers was anything but easy, but I digress. I like to just kick back with a racing game, maybe get a little bit of a challenge towards the end of the game’s story mode, but that’s it. Racing games are basically my Animal Crossing; I play them to unwind, not to get worked up. Interestingly, if you lack any vehicle figures other then Sky class ones, SuperChargers Racing provides you to with rickety-looking, unappealing in-game Land and Sea vehicles with low stats, and I can’t help but wonder if the game is actually more challenging when using these. I mean, I never used them myself. Why would I? I had at least ten of the twenty vehicle figures and I intended to get my money’s worth out of all of them. The story of SuperChargers Racing, much like the story in most racing games, is superfluous at best, only existing as a framing device for the racing action - a framing device that many would argue isn’t even necessary; racing games are meant to be fun first and foremost, and you don’t need a ‘reason’ to have fun, right? For what it’s worth, the plot is that Pandergast the Magnificent is hosting a racing tournament because of course he is, and the ultimate prize is the Snowglobe of Destiny, a magical relic that may as well exist in name only, because it’s not actually an obtainable item in-game. No, its only purpose is to be part of a throwaway joke in the game’s ending cutscene. Like I said, the story is superfluous; it’s the racing action that matters, and for what that’s worth… the racing is pretty fun. At least for me. THAT BEING SAID… I still prefer the likes of Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. They all do what SuperChargers Racing does, only much better, and without requiring physical toy add-ons that you have to pay extra money for to get the most out of the experience. SuperChargers Racing is fine for what it is, but it’s nothing you can’t get elsewhere in better quality at a lower price. But it’s still better than… Skylanders: Imaginators (2016) Ah, yes. Skylanders: Imaginators. The one featuring— King of Hyrule: “My boi.” —Crash Bandicoot. …Yeah, this is the worst game in the series, and that’s saying something. It’s not quite as bad as Trap Team in terms of how it exploits the toys-to-life system to force you to buy the newer stuff rather than using your old figures… but it’s not far off. Anything that isn’t one of the new Sensei Skylanders feels weak and brittle in combat, and the titular Imaginators are set up in such a way that you have to invest in a plethora of the new ‘Creation Crystals’ to get the most out of them. …That is, unless you know about the exploit to reset the crystals to their factory default settings using an older model of the Portal of Power, but I digress. So, how many of you have wanted to create your own playable Skylanders characters since the series’ inception? …Well, guess what? With the ‘power’ of the Creation Crystals, you can now create Skylanders of your own design in-game. Their Element is tied to the crystal they were birthed from, but the battle class you choose for them will determine their combat abilities. …Yeah, there are battle classes now. Ten of them, in fact. Ten battle classes, ten Elemental types, each crystal permanently locks in whatever class you initially choose (assuming you can’t or don’t want to use the aforementioned Portal exploit)… Do the math. That means that if you’re crazy and want to match every battle class to every element, you’ll need a minimum of one hundred Creation Crystals. …Seriously, I really hope there’s no one out there stupid enough to do that. There’s not even an in-game benefit to doing that, unlike Trap Team’s Elemental Gates debacle. This game’s story is, as they say in Star Wars, poodoo. It undoes a lot of the character development and world building from both Trap Team and SuperChargers, with Kaos being the main villain again just because, many of the villain characters being redeemed and now working officially as Skylanders (complete with their own figures) just because, Crash and Cortex are here just because… Everything about this game from a narrative perspective feels completely obligatory, like it’s just following a checklist and going through the motions. And before any of my fellow Crash Bandicoot fans bring it up, yeah, I know that the game says Crash and Cortex are here because of a spacial rift to the Wumpa Islands that opens in Skylands once every twenty years or whatever… but let’s not kid ourselves. Everything from Crash’s inclusion to the ‘rehabilitated’ villain characters to creating your own Skylanders is done in the name of fan service, and this isn’t the good kind of fan service, where it serves and enhances the narrative and overall experience. No, this is the bad kind of fan service - the kind where it’s just trying to sucker in old fans and get them to shell out money when it’s not even worth it. Imaginators is the Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl of Skylanders games and… And… …Oh, okay, fine, it’s not that bad, but it’s bad enough. Narratively, this game cannot justify its own existence, and the implementation of the toys-to-life gimmick is bordering on the most exploitative it’s ever been… but there’s still some fun to be had here. Kind of. The hub world, it must be said, is pitiful. Rather than the elaborate and intricately designed home bases of the Citadel Ruins, Flynn’s airship, Woodburrow or the Skylander Academy, the ‘Mysterious Ancient Place’ is just a glorified map screen, right down to its name being an anagram for the word ‘map’, and it’s a map screen that you have to navigate manually as the Skylander you’re playing as; you can’t just move a cursor over a destination and warp there, no - that would just be silly. That wouldn’t be special. That would make too much f*cking sense! And the optional challenges you can access from this (Mysterious Ancient) Place feel so uninspired; just generic obstacle courses and/or enemy gauntlets in environments themed around the different Elemental types - environments that often feel randomly generated, I might add. The main levels don’t fare much better. There’s only ten of them, the smallest amount of main levels out of the whole series, and they are all long, drawn out and have no checkpoints. No, we’re back to the first game’s way of doing things, where if you need to go back to an already completed level to pick up the one collectible you missed on your first time through, you have to play through the whole thing again from the beginning. There is one good level, however - an optional one. As in, you need a specific Adventure Pack to even access it, and you already know which one it is. A part of me wants to say that this one level is good enough to carry the entire game all by itself, such is my bias towards its subject matter. Yes, it’s time to talk about the Thumpin’ Wumpa Islands, the special Crash Bandicoot themed level that marked the triumphant return of my boy Crash in official media. This level is the one level in the game that is well-paced, has a good flow to it and feels like it was designed by somebody who actually cared, and that’s before taking the fact that it’s themed around Crash Bandicoot into consideration. I think Toys For Bob knew that this was the one highlight of Imaginators, too, because they even had a Starter Pack dedicated to it. The standard Imaginators Starter Pack comes with King Pen, a new Water Skylander of the Sensei class, the Golden Queen, an apparently reformed villain character who was introduced back in Trap Team and who now serves as a Sensei Skylander of the Earth Element, and a Fire Element Creation Crystal. The special ‘Crash Edition’ of the Starter Pack comes with all of that… and also the figures of Crash and Cortex, the latter two also being purchasable separately (but not at launch, because of course f*cking not). Placing either our bandicoot boy or our yellow-skinned scientist on the Portal will unlock Thumpin’ Wumpa Islands on the map screen. The opening portion of this level gives me major Twinsanity vibes, and given that Twinsanity is one of my favourite video games EVER, we’re off to a good start. As we move further inland, we start to see a lot of references to the first three Crash games, with statues of Tiny Tiger and Dingodile everywhere, and those stone pillar things that try to push you off the cliff from Sunset Vista in the first Crash game. Crash himself plays like a mix of his old-school self and his Titans counterpart, incorporating punches and kicks in tandem with spins, slides and body slams. He can also toss explosive crates everywhere, unleash a super attack with his yoyo, and even resurrect after death with low health a limited number of times, similar to the Swap Force character Night Shift. Cortex uses his tried and true ray gun to blast enemies, can summon a projection of Uka Uka as a shield, and can even unleash energy pulses from a technological staff that is implied to have ties to N. Tropy. This is the one part of the game where the fan service feels both well thought out and warranted.The level transitions from daytime to nighttime as it goes on, and I just realised that we rarely see Crash in his iconic beach/jungle setting at night. The only other time I can think of where we saw him anywhere near a beach at night was in Crash Of The Titans, where he… re-enacted a scene from Planet Of The Apes because out-of-place pop culture references are funny… I guess? Moving on, after much romping, fighting and smashing crates (thank God they included the latter) the level caps off with a boss fight atop the island against Fake Crash in a giant robot suit that sadly isn’t Mecha Bandicoot, but I’ll still take it. The cutscene that follows sees fireworks explode in the night sky in the shape of Crash’s head while my hero makes his exit in a goofy way befitting of him. Overall, a masterfully crafted and clearly lovingly made tribute to my favourite anthropomorphic protagonist, topped only by the N. Sane Trilogy a year later. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Imaginators. The Crash-related content is fantastic, but everything else is just… ugh. In a way, it feels like Skylanders died so that Crash Bandicoot could be reborn, and while I’m sure many of my fellow Crash fans would and indeed have celebrated that fact, I, personally, find the whole thing to be a tad bittersweet. Don’t get me wrong; if it comes down to either Spyro or Crash, I’m gonna choose Crash every single time, but even with the Reignited Trilogy giving Spyro - classic Spyro, no less - some well deserved time in the spotlight… I can’t help but feel that everyone’s favourite purple dragon got the short end of the stick. After Skylanders, Spyro got one compilation of three classic games remade while Crash got not only that, but also a remake of Crash Team Racing, a mobile game, an all-new console Crash adventure for a new generation, and an upcoming online multiplayer battle game. Spyro got one game (technically three) after Skylanders. Crash got five (technically seven), with more possibly coming in the future after Rumble. …Wow, I’m really ending this retrospective on a dour note, aren’t I? Let’s close it out with me listing my favourite newcomers to lighten the mood. Well, there’s Crash and Cortex, obviously. Yeah, that’s about it. Oh, I should probably talk about the Imaginators I made, shouldn’t I? Well, I made about five or six of the buggers in total, but my favourite by far was the Dark Elemental I created. She’s a Knight class humanoid elven warrior with snakes for hands, bat wings, murky green skin and hair that glowed blue with Super Sayan energy. I called her Hexcalibur and she wielded a jagged purple sword with devastating attack power. She was a real glass cannon, though; she could dish out the damage, but she couldn’t take it. I still have her Creation Crystal, actually.Conclusion And Final ThoughtsAnd that was my overall experience with the Skylanders franchise. It had some astounding highs, some abysmal lows and everything in-between. I just wish it could’ve ended on a better note, and I wouldn’t say no to seeing it come back, even if that means a total reboot that looks and feels completely different to any of the previous games. Speaking of which, there’s something I need to bring up despite me saying that I wouldn’t talk about the Skylanders mobile games. I honestly feel like I’d be doing my fellow Portal Masters and indeed the Skylanders series itself a disservice by not talking about this matter… and that ‘matter’ is the plot of Skylanders: Ring Of Heroes. This mobile game’s story is, in my opinion, what the plot of Imaginators should have been. It sees a group of teenage Portal Masters - that is to say, human kids - from Earth being dragged forcibly into Skylands by a magical anomaly to more directly command the Skylanders in the ever-ongoing battle against the forces of evil. Dare I say, it’s a Skylanders Isekai, and it feels like a far more logical conclusion to a series that, up to that point, had been all about us helping the Skylanders by commanding them from afar. I mean, what sounds cooler? Teaming up with Crash Bandicoot to stop a gigantic brain? Or journeying to a magical world to fight alongside dragons, elves and magic robots while clad in medieval gear and blasting magical energy from your fingertips? …Teaming up with Crash Bandicoot, of course. I mean, duh, that’s obvious. But seriously, how cool would it have been if in Imaginators, we didn’t create our own Skylanders, but rather our own Portal Master? What if we effectively put ourselves in the game to fight alongside all those characters we had grown up collecting as toys? Remember, the target audience for Imaginators was kids who had grown up playing Skylanders and were on the cusp of becoming teenagers, perhaps already being young teens, and giving them the chance to make their Skylanders experience just that little bit more personal would’ve been a magnificent send off for the series in terms of narrative; a literal 'coming of age' moment for the fans. “But why not just create an Imaginator and pretend that it is you in the game?” That’s what I imagine (heh) a lot of you are thinking right now, and not to sound like one of those fanboys - you know, the kind who take everything about their favourite franchises way too seriously - but to that notion, I can only say that IT’S NOT THE SAME, DAMN IT! Ahem. The other factor of Ring Of Heroes that I want to talk about is Nefarion. He’s a villain character who is never actually present in the game, but is mentioned in one of the slideshow style cutscenes. This character actually appeared prior in the Skylanders: Mask Of Power book series, but in that, he was really just a joke character meant to be a parallel to Kaos from ancient times. His appearance in Ring Of Heroes as a stylised still image, however, portrays him as this tall, menacing robed figure who gives off a genuine “I’m gonna kill you stone dead, drink your blood and then dance on your corpse” kind of vibe. The Skylanders fan Wiki describes his appearance in Ring Of Heroes as looking ‘inhuman’, and I’m inclined to agree. This guy apparently killed off countless Portal Masters over the centuries before he was finally sealed away by Master Eon. Just the way he stands there in his artwork makes him look genuinely unhinged and sadistic, and it makes me wonder: Was Ring Of Heroes testing the waters for a potential dark and gritty Skylanders reboot? One where Nefarion is the main villain rather than Kaos? …Maybe one where Coco Bandicoot is the new flagship character on the game box? Okay, I just threw in that last point to trigger my fellow Crash fans. Heh. But seriously, is Nefarion and his imposing presence the way forward for the Skylanders franchise? Are we about to see a reboot of Skylanders that’s less toys and more game? Are Portal Master characters like George and Eugenie from Ring Of Heroes going to become the series’ new main protagonists? Are we about to see a darker, more serious take on the Skylanders universe, one that’s geared towards a (somewhat) more mature target audience? …Or am I just desperately looking for signs of a Skylanders reboot where there are none? You tell me.Anyways, thank you all for reading and until next time... "That's right - BOOM!"
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