Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure Starter Pack

All the advertising I have seen for this game stresses that the target market is for 7-12 year olds. Despite this, I decided to buy it anyway, and I'm so glad I did! I'm 27!)

Getting this for kids is a no brainer, they'll love it. For adults? If you grew up playing video games in the 80s and 90s you'll love this. It has old school gamer appeal...collecting coins, platform style levels (but in 3d obviously), levelling up your characters etc etc, but with all the next gen benefits, pretty HD graphics (in cartoon style, don't expect battlefield 3 realism here!!), excellent voice acting, and the tech aspect of being able to swap your skylanders in and out within seconds. Also, for those worrying about the game difficulty, sure the earlier chapters are pretty simple, but the difficulty does begin to ramp up, and don't even get me started on the heroic challenges for each skylander, those things are ROCK HARD!! I've only managed to complete one so far!! If you enjoyed the original Spyro on PS1 and similar games, you'll enjoy this :)

Additionally, I feel that this game is a very polished product. A lot of detail, care and attention has gone into its production. Particularly regarding the individual skylanders. Each figure has their own attacks and personality, and of course their own levelling up tree which will appeal to more traditional gamers in particular.

The vibrant colours, entertaining dialog, well thought out level design and plot development mean this game is a joy to play.

The only negative to this game is obviously the cost. However, not all the skylander figures are required to complete this game - though one from every element (of which there are 8) will be required to get into all the locked "secret" areas of the game. But you can certainly add to your collection over time, and you can progress quite happily with the three that come with the starter pack.

That pretty much sums up the single player. As for multiplayer...the game is playable in local co-op mode, and there are also separate battle modes (similar to those in mario kart etc) where you battle your friends. The great thing about these modes is that experience and gems/coins are saved on your skylander too and carry over into the main story mode.

One thing I've just discovered is that swapping "ownership" of a particular skylander is easily done in game. So now my bf has his own skylander figures. And in swapping ownership you don't lose experience or gold (though you can of course reset the figure) which is a bonus. You can still use these skylanders in your own game, but they count as visiting skylanders. I imagine this feature would be quite handy with siblings, as each child would feel they have "their" skylanders but they can all be used whether your child is playing alone, or with their siblings/parents/friends, each collecting experience along the way.

All I can say in closing is that as a seasoned gamer across all game types rpg/fps/rts/mmo etc I still think this game has its place for adults as well as children, and I can't wait for them to start rolling out the currently unavailable skylanders!!

I bought this for my 11 year old son and was pleased with the price, am glad i didn't pay anymore for it though. He went mad for it at first but then started to get bored as he needed new characters all the time - good sales technique! So have been buying the different characters from the different elements so he can reach higher levels and do different battles. He says it is hard at the moment and has given up playing it, i think he just wants MORE characters to be honest and i have ordered him some for Christmas, but i will not be getting all of them for him - over 30 i think there are! Feel sure there will be loads on ebay after Christmas when everyone gets fed up of it!
My son is more into driving games anyway to be honest and has gone back to his Forza4 and loves this so i feel this was a better buy.
Not sure Skylanders is for everyone, but the figures are quite well made and are fun to play with just on their own, and the portal looks pretty when lit up! :-)

We (8-year old boy and his mum) bought Skylanders for the xbox just over two weeks agao and have so far had an amazing amount of fun playing the game.

The story (very briefly to avoid spoilers):
The Skylands have been taken over by the evil Kaos and the Core of Light destroyed. The Skylanders were blasted into space and shrunk and landed on Earth, becoming the little figures and they now rely on the player (the Portal Master apprentice) to bring them to Skyland via the Portal so they can reassemble the Core of Light and free Skyland from Kaos and his darkness.

The Skylander figures/characters:
The game comes with three starter figures: Spyro (of the Magic element), Gill Grunt (a Water type) and Trigger Happy (of the Tech type) and the Portal to bring these into the game. We are both playing the game on separate save files with the same characters, which are registered to my son's account and in my game they are visitors, with experience learn and upgrades acquired saved with the character itself and can be brought across from game to game (even regardless of console). This works extremely well, my son is of the 'charging through the game at full speed' type and often struggles to get his characters levelled up enough to succeeed at the later levels, whereas I usually play to completion, finding all the hidden items and secret areas, and as a result get his Skylanders all levelled up for him as I play the game. The three starter figures can get you through the main story line of the game, but we quickly expanded to include one of each of the 8 elements (the others are: Fire, Air, Earth, Life and Undead) so we could complete all parts of each chapter of the game. While this increased the overall cost significantly, I think it was worth it for the increase in fun and scope. There is so much more to do when you have all the elements. The different character figures are really well made, amazing amount of detail. In the game they are just as visually impressive and have different personalities and different stats (attack, defence, speed and luck for example Stealth Elf of the life element is fast but lower in defence compared to Stump Smash (also life) is slow but inflicts a huge amount of damage, and Trigger Happy is a bit crazy and hugely lucky) so you can chose characters to suit your playing style or a mix to be able to cover all types of challenge in the game.

The game play:
The game is a really well designed platformer, both in terms of gameplay and visual impact. There's puzzles to complete, treasure to find and collect, experience to earn to level up, weapons upgrades to acquire, etc. As the game is clearly designed with children in mind the levels are not too difficult, but fun even for an adult. As you progress in the game the difficulty does ramp up and there are times when my son need help. At which point I just jump in with a second xbox controller and another Skylander and we play together to complete the bit he struggles with. This multiplayer bit works very nicely, the two Skylanders are connected by a faint line when they get further apart to keep them in the same area and you cannot stray beyond a certain distance from the other (avoiding the multiplayer difficulty of Mario games where one life is lost when the other player charges ahead). In each level there are areas where Skylanders of a certain element are stronger, but any can be played through these. Then there are elemental gates, which does require a Skylander of the correct element to unlock. These are little extra areas within a chapter and the game can be completed without exploring each of these. The Skylanders can be switched in and out of the game by simply taking one off the portal and replacing with another. The game autosaves fairly frequently (for example when a certain task in a chapter is completed) which is great in a game for kids, no progress is lost. There are 22 chapters of the main story plus the final boss battle with Kaos (which is quite hard). In addition there are elemental challenges to play inbetween chapters, to increase Skylander stats. One challenge is unlocked with each Skylander, but any Skylander can complete an unlocked challenge. These are quite difficult and does require the Skylanders to be reasonably levelled up within the main story to be able to complete.

Online:
Each Skylander comes with a little code card which can be used on the Skylanders website to play there too. I have not tried this myself so I cannot comment, but my son thinks it's fun. I believe this element of the game is still expanding.

Overall:
We both absolutely love the game, it really is great fun. There is a decent amount of game to play with the starter pack, but to unlock the full potential additional characters are required. They're cute and fun and sufficiently different in style and playing characteristics for it to feel as if each addition adds value to the game. This probably isn't a game for the serious platformer, but it has huge appeal for kids and I think lots of parents will have fun playing the game with their kids. Or by themselves. Brilliant.