Skylanders

It's already on my son's xmas list (even though he doesn't know it yet).

As a co-op with your kids game, I'd highly recommend this. My son just turned 6 on Saturday, and we got him the starter set. On Sunday he took his birthday money to Toys R Us (I know....one day after their buy 2 get 1 free sale ended, grrrr!) and picked up 4 more figures for himself.

It's definitely a webkinz type of deal, but the difference is that this is actually a pretty good game! It's definitely made for kids, but it plays like a Dark Alliance/X-men Legends/MUA brawler style game. The toys are really well made, and the characters in the game all have pretty interesting abilities. Gameplay is mostly brawling with some light tactics and simple puzzles. It's also got a battle arena mode that is pretty fun.

All in all its a great, if expensive, concept that is fun to play with kids. It fills that Lego games niche for our family, without being the same game rehashed with a new skin. Yes, they really try and sell the buy more toys concept but honestly, he'd be getting little plastic toys that did nothing for the same price as these...and they're new characters to play in a video game! A worthy cause in my opinion.

Thanks for the awesome opinion piece.
I'm looking forward to playing along with my son.

I assume it can be 2 player? Can you do more than 2?

Edit: nevermind, i see it is 1 or 2.

Yes, this is a definite buy for my 9 y/o. Though that brings up a good question...what is age range does this fall under (overgrown man-boys exempted, of course)?

Nevin73 wrote:

Yes, this is a definite buy for my 9 y/o. Though that brings up a good question...what is age range does this fall under (overgrown man-boys exempted, of course)?

FWIW my son and his friends fall in the 7-10 yr old range and love it to pieces.

I don't have any kids but I picked up the box the other day at Target trying to figure out what this was and why I hadn't seen any commercials for it.

Definitely looks interesting. Nice to see there's a solid brawler game behind it. That was my biggest worry, that it would just be selling toys and a crappy game.

Hm...

LarryC wrote:

I just saw this at the FLGS. I don't know about the rest you guys, but I am getting this for ME. The girls can buy their own darn Skylander figures.

I just joined you in the "picked this up for myself" club. I'll report back later.

Okay, first impressions.

#1 - It's basically a light loot / dungeon crawler along the lines of MUA or something like that. For some reason it's more fun, though. And it's not the "Portal of Power". It's just well made and the button-mashy combat is more satisfying than in other games of this sort. Maybe in part because I use Trigger Happy a lot and he seems kind of maniacal for a kids game.

#2 - There are multiple sexual innuendos, etc. in the game. So it falls squarely in that area of being built for kids, but trying to entertain the adults as well. Not saying it succeeds, but that it tries in sometimes uncomfortable ways.

I am so trying to keep this under wraps from my kids, so I can surprise them with it for Christmas. But unfortunately I saw it on Xbox live and my son did to and tried to click to watch the clip, luckily I got to the controller and made some lame as excuse of looking who was logged on under my profile. That was a close one.

I don't have any kids, so I can't get this "for my son".

My dad, however, is apparently getting this for his son for Christmas! Glad my dad knows that at even at 25, I'm still basically a man-child.

Redwing wrote:

I don't have any kids, so I can't get this "for my son".

My dad, however, is apparently getting this for his son for Christmas! Glad my dad knows that at even at 25, I'm still basically a man-child. :D

Yeah. My brother gave me a hard time as I walked out of Toys R Us with the adventure pack that gave me Terrafin. I said "look, it says for ages 6+. Now, I know I'm 30 years over that, but it still works."

Honestly it's a good game. If you like Pokemon (which I do), like random action figures (check) and enjoy mindless dungeon crawlers then this is a no-brainer. I'm having more fun with this than Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Torchlight or other games with a similar feel.

I think the Giant Bomb guys said it best when they said it looked like a game Rare would make. So there's that too. It's very charming.

A guy was giving a demo at Toys R Us. It looked really cool. My question was whether they will come out with new games that the figures could work with. The guy had no idea.

I can imagine that while new figures will make replays a little more interesting, doing the same game over and over could get boring.

Nevin73 wrote:

A guy was giving a demo at Toys R Us. It looked really cool. My question was whether they will come out with new games that the figures could work with. The guy had no idea.

I can imagine that while new figures will make replays a little more interesting, doing the same game over and over could get boring.

Now that this is looking successful, I can guarantee you that Toys for Bob has plenty of content ready to go. They have been working hard.

More content = more sales, after all...especially with this model. Do you think Activision won't exploit a successful product for every dollar? (Or, that they won't totally castrate it at some point eventually?)

I'm really happy this game is getting good real world GWJ reviews. I trust you all to death so this is comforting.

FYI Toys R Us is having a sale, if you purchase a Skylanders Starter for Xbox or PS3, you get an additional Legendary 3 Character Pack and there's a deal that if you purchase any PS3/Xbox game you get a $15 gift card. If you also sign up or have a Rewards R Us card you get 10% of that back after Christmas as a gift card. So for 69.99 you get the starter, a 3 character pack and $22 in gift cards.

EvilMonkeyFG wrote:

FYI Toys R Us is having a sale, if you purchase a Skylanders Starter for Xbox or PS3, you get an additional Legendary 3 Character Pack and there's a deal that if you purchase any PS3/Xbox game you get a $15 gift card. If you also sign up or have a Rewards R Us card you get 10% of that back after Christmas as a gift card. So for 69.99 you get the starter, a 3 character pack and $22 in gift cards.

No love for the Wii though?

Played the "Battle Mode" arena with my 4 year old son today on Xbox 360. It was awesome! It is one of the few games he can control (it's just LS and the A or X buttons). Loved it! I am going to buy the "Volcanic Vault" on ebay, which was a Best Buy exclusive and then sell it off. Once you place it on the PORTAL OF POWER, it unlocks the bonus arena and you never have to use it again.

Picked this up over the weekend for xmas. it's so hard to not open it up, install it and test it to make sure it works...

Any decent Skylander deals out there? looking for some 3-packs of figures.

I was able to get it for $50...it appears that they reduced the price across most vendors.

The character and extra setting packs seem slightly cheaper at Toys R Us than Amazon.

I thought Best Buy had the "complete pack" for $79 today, normally $110 or so?

EDIT for price fix.

Stele wrote:

I thought Best Buy had the "complete pack" for $70 today, normally $110 or so? :?

Oooo! Thanks! They do, it's the Mega Pack for $79.

I've seen the base set for $50 all week, and individual packs for $5.

Yeah? I'm only seeing the Wii set for $50.

All of it might have been superseded by the Black Friday sales, but I picked up 6 figures at the $5 price.

Doh! Missed it!

DSGamer wrote:

Honestly it's a good game. If you like Pokemon (which I do), like random action figures (check) and enjoy mindless dungeon crawlers then this is a no-brainer. I'm having more fun with this than Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Torchlight or other games with a similar feel.

I think the Giant Bomb guys said it best when they said it looked like a game Rare would make. So there's that too. It's very charming.

Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have clicked on this thread. Curses!

I'm...I mean the kids...are up to 13 Skylanders, and I have seven more hidden away as Christmas presents. Yeah, this is a fun game.

Nice!
I was going to buy one of the 3-packs on the weekend but sol I could find were the character/world/item packs. I hope I can find some

Couple more sales this week. I think KMart is $10 off the starter pack. And Target had "buy the starter pack, get any character free."