Skylanders Trap Team is the best “toys to life” game, ever. I’m confident in saying that. It hits all the notes of a great game in the genre, featuring great interaction and terrific figurines and gameplay that is easy to dive into. As an adult I’ve enjoyed the series, and can safely say that this latest version scratches that obsessive collector’s itch I’ve developed over the years.
But this time, I noticed something else.
As great as Skylanders is for me, the one who’s spending hundreds of dollars on it, it’s also one of the best games in recent years for parents and kids to play together. Skylanders Trap Team doesn’t just provide a platform for familial interaction, it enhances it through smart design choices and charming technological touches.
There’s always a gimmick with Skylanders games aimed at selling more figurines. Each iteration of the game brings with it some new shtick that prevents us from exploring every nook and cranny until we invest in more new toys. And for the most part, I’ve been more than happy to throw money into the wind and purchase them. This year’s gimmick aims to break the fourth wall, giving the player the ability to trap enemies and lightly interact with them outside of the game.
It’s the most Pokemon that Skylanders has been so far, and it works well, if not for a few minor issues. In fact it’s not nearly as collectible a system as in past games, but there’s a bigger takeaway.
When certain bosses are defeated we’re given the option to capture them in “Traps” — little plastic crystals that we place in a slot in the new portal. The characters are “absorbed” into the traps, and can be switched over to at the press of a button. They provide little in the way of usability, really, feeling more like a timed powerup than anything else. They can be leveled up in some subquests, oftentimes by doing nothing more than just talking to a quest-giver.
The traps themselves are small enough to get lost easily, and lead to as much pain as a LEGO when stepped on. Trying to remember what enemies are in what trap is a chore too, as they’re not labeled (and don’t provide a place for writing). Thankfully the game lets us switch the trapped enemies fairly easily.
For all of the fuss about capturing enemies, they provide a minimal in-game return.
That means little to me whenever my five year old daughter sits next to me as I play. As enemies are captured, they flash on the TV screen and are sucked into the trap in the portal, triggering lights and audio that mimic an animated vortex leaving the screen and entering the device. It’s a neat effect, and one that instantly causes my daughter to giggle, and shout “ooooh!” and “awesome!”. Captured enemies “speak” out of the new portal’s built-in speaker. Depending on what’s happening on the screen, or what mood they’re in, or if they’re bored for not having been asked to join a battle, the characters will say any number of funny things.
Meanwhile, my daughter shouts back to them, yanking the trap out and replacing it with another just to see and hear the animation again. “Eliana, put Broccoli Guy in the trap!” I shout, and she happily does. “Put the ninja on the portal!” and she happily complies. “Pick up the controller and play with Spyro!” she claps and grabs the other PS4 controller and joins me.
That’s the magic of this year’s Skylanders. Perhaps my daughter is finally at an age when she understands the game a bit better, or she can comprehend the game modes and actions. But I lean towards the interactive aspect that she’s experiencing; she feels like she wields some great power to not only bring toys to life, but to make cartoons real. She loves it, and asks to play with me often, just to play with the toys while I play the main game.
Loot-hunting and mini-games are everywhere, making this a sort of mish-mash of everything we’ve ever played before, but none of it ever comes off as tired. There are enough changes in each level to keep things fresh during play, and the visuals and audio are at the best they’ve been in the entire series. The controls are tight, and the world puzzles are enjoyable. I never feel like this is a game specifically for kids, just one accessible to them.
There are a myriad of new modes, too. Kaos Doom Challenge is a horde mini-game that requires tower defense tactics while we blast away at oncoming enemies. A card battle game is easy to digest but can get as enthralling as many we find on iOS. Battle arenas let us take each other on in one-on-one fights. The game world’s hub is larger, too, expanding and growing to include shops and secrets that keep us poking around.
There are easily dozens of hours’, if not more, worth of content in the game. It will be something we continue to come back to throughout the year, potentially more so than ever before.
Skylanders prides itself on its figurines, and that doesn’t change this year. The toys are more complex than ever, more detailed than ever, and more robust than ever. They’re composed of more of the harder plastic than past versions, making them less flexible where needed. Past toys can be bent and take a set, while this year they come off as determined to stay fixed in their poses through any childpocalypse.
There are now more sizes and types of figures that Toys For Bob and Activision are pushing out to get us to throw money into. Sure, all of the old figurines work, but they don’t reveal anything new in this game; all of the world unlocks are specifically tied to the new figures. I’ve leveled up the included Snap Shot character, as well as a few from previous games, and have been able to progress through the game at ease. With a few character-specific unlocks and achievements requiring specific levels, I was less interested in switching figures and kept to just a handful. It’s causing me to actually be less interested in buying more figures for myself.
For myself.
My daughter, on the other hand, is having a blast with the characters and traps. “Daddy, we need to buy another Earth trap,” she tells me, wanting to make sure that we don’t lose the villain we’ve already trapped so that she can drop them in and out at her amusement. So we’ve bought another Earth trap, and then another Fire trap, Water trap and so on. Skylanders Trap Team may be a really fun action adventure game in its own right, but its gimmick is perhaps the best in the series yet. At least, any five year old will tell you so.
This review was based on a retail copy of the game for Playstation 4 sent by the publisher to SideQuesting. Figures from past Skylanders games were used in addition to those from Trap Team.
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