This is the leader of the Skylanders Trap Team, his name is Snap Shot (he has a bow and ice arrow thing) and is apparently a “crocagator”. He comes with the new Skylander game, you have to buy his buddies separately.
Genre: Toy-activated action-adventure platformer.
What it's about: A bunch of toy characters called the Skylanders protect the cartoonish Skylands from the evil wizard Kaos.
Why we should care: Because the Skylander toys are like crack for children, which means you'll be shelling out big bucks to acquire all of them. This one is different from previous instalments because villain characters, once "trapped" in a toy crystal, become playable.
What happens in the first hour: The very first thing that might happen if you're an adult is that you'll have to accept the fact that you're playing a kids game. This requires getting into a certain mindset. Try surrounding yourself with comic books, Pokemon cards and then down a bowl of sugary cereal. There, now you're set.
Off the top, we're introduced to a plot that has obviously been contrived to sell lots and lots of toys. As such things go, it's not a bad one.
A long time ago, a bunch of bad guys called the Doom Raiders got up to some nefarious things in the old Skylands.
The Trap Team, an elite gang of Skylanders (which are all colourful monsters/toys, most of which sell separately but are necessary to play the game), was dispatched to capture them. Capture them they did and they were taken to – I'm sure I'm mishearing this – Cloud Cracka prison. Then, the evil Kaos eventually freed the Doom Raiders and blew up the prison, after which the Trap Team was shrunk down and immobilized into their current toy forms.
It's the player's job, as the Portal Master, to bring these long-lost Skylanders – because every new line in this franchise is long lost – back to life and then use the crystal shards to recapture all the villains.
So, in a nutshell, there are going to be lots of new Trap Team Skylanders at $11 to $17 each – plus $8 plastic traps – to buy. Got it.
In the first mission where we confront two villains, a sheep with missile launchers and a Jabba-the-Hutt-like slug who likes to drink soda. Defeating them is easy, at which point a vortex appears in the sky. It sucks them in and beams them to the plastic portal next to your game console, which now has a speaker.
And they talk! The sheep brays and the slug tells us he wants soda. This is actually really cool. It's impressive enough for an adult, but kids will absolutely freak out. Why couldn't we have this kind of technology when we were young?
Here's the catch: the plastic traps only hold one villain at a time. Translation: get ready to buy a lot of those $8 crystals, which will confirm for you the insidiousness of this whole Skylanders craze.
That's on top of the already dollars-demanding gameplay system, which requires buying new characters to unlock additional sections. I counted two in the first level alone.
Highlights: The technology behind the zapping of the villains into the portal's speaker works perfectly, and the quips they emit while in there are generally funny. The toys, as always, are colourful and detailed.
Lowlights: The system itself, while ingenious, locks off big portions of the game and you essentially have to keep spending to get into them. Someone should invent a Pirate Skylander: one character who can hack his way into every section.
Time-suck factor: Skylanders games are generally pretty long, and with a whole host of new toys to buy to unlock new areas, it's another one the kids will be glued to for the foreseeable future.
Worth more than an hour? For kids, it's a no-brainer "yes." Adults who like innovative games, plus some light-hearted humour, will like it too. Prepare your wallet for the hit.