There's something truly crafty about how Skylanders Giants works. On the surface, it’s a fairly straightforward but incredibly well-made action-platformer where you guide a cutesy creature through 16 stages of collecting, upgrading, monster-bashing, and exploring. But beneath that is a big world of physical DLC — instead of downloading maps or characters, you buy additional Skylanders figurines so you can explore everything the game has to offer. Sure, you can complete Giants with your initial starter pack of three Skylanders (two standard characters and one Giant) plus a Portal of Power (the peripheral on which you place a figure so its virtual likeness enters the game world), but only certain characters can access some secrets and optional paths.
So it’s to Giants’ highly polished credit that you never feel duped into purchasing any of its dozens of well-crafted figurines. (And your Skylanders from the first game cross over to your new adventure with their levels and stats in tow.) Each densely designed stage plays well to all the different Skylanders elements. For instance, in areas of a level’s critical path, you’ll be encouraged to swap between characters to spotlight their varying strengths, but it feels more like a challenge than a requirement.
Earth elemental Crusher may be slow, but his hammer packs a punch.Leveling up your Skylanders unlocks new character-specific abilities, which in turn gives you different ways to weather the tougher objectives and mini-games — and adds plenty of replayability. The new, lumbering Giants also introduce a layer of charm and variety, and their size-specific skillsets make stumbling upon secrets, purchasing stat-boosting goofy hats, and tussling with NPCs in Skystones card games a silly pleasure.
There’s a gentle magic in Giants’ cunning formula, but it’s a spell that collectible-minded gamers of all ages will find incredibly hard to resist.
Chill’s ranged attack keeps enemies at a distance.PUBLISHER: Activision • DEVELOPER: Toys for Bob • ESRB: Everyone 10+ • MULTIPLAYER: 2 locally (versus) • ACHIEVEMENTS: Thorough • COST: $60 (for Starter Pack with three Skylanders fi gures, the game, and Portal of Power) • RELEASE DATE: October 21, 2012
+ Long adventure with lots of cool, collection-based objectives.
+ New Skylanders = well-made figures + charming game heroes.
– You need many figures to unlock everything in the game; characters’ overlapping skillsets
? More Patrick Warburton, please?
