The story of Trap Team starts by Kaos unleashing horrible villains from the confines of Cloudcracker Prison. The Skylanders, with the help of Trap Masters, must hunt down each villain, capture them with a trap and bring them to justice.
The gameplay in Skylanders Trap Team is simple in nature, and doesn’t stray too far away from the formula that you’re used to seeing. You go through simplistic levels, even on difficult, that are linear and do certain tasks to trap the antagonist you’re after. For example, the real first villain (outside of the tutorial’s villain) you run across in the game is a soda consuming slug named Gulper. He resides in Soda Springs and is consuming all the soda in the town. Stopping him is pretty easy, as you need only to destroy all the soda barrels in town and switch the last one out with nasty soda, which shrinks him down to size. The time it took to do all of this was about 15-20 minutes (the entire level, not just the fight with Gulper). Granted, the time it takes to explore the entire level with other Skylanders, because you still have parts of the level that is only accessible with the right type of character is a lot longer than what I just told you. My point, though, is that the levels were built for a younger crowd and will probably take them a bit longer to get through. While they probably aren’t meant for an older crowd, there is still fun to be found in them for everyone. They’re easy levels to get through, but the exploration and the world that was built for Trap Team is incredibly easy to get sucked into — regardless of its linear nature.
Pretty much all the levels in Skylanders Trap Team have that linear feel to them, though the younger crowd will more than likely spend quite a bit of time exploring restricted areas and bugging their parents to go get more Skylanders to use with this game. Of course, that’s really the joy of the game itself, is that kids get a different adventure with different characters. This Minecraft generation that just likes exploring, even if it’s the same area over and over again, will just absolutely eat this game up. My son has been bugging the holy hell out of me for the last week to let him play this game as I’ve been reviewing it. He is just six years old and I’ve been fighting him off every step of the way. He is even content to play with the characters without the game, which speaks volumes about how well the characters were created and what kids can do with them other than play them on the television. It’s a double-whammy that really does compliment the efforts of the development team and toy designers. The game helps to firmly establish the world of the Skylanders, while the toys visibly backs that up. It’s a great combination for kids.
Anyway, if you’ve played Skylanders in the past then you understand the construct of the levels and what to expect out of them. This isn’t to say that the levels are the same as Swap Force or Giants, but the way the levels act and feel are pretty much on par with the previous versions of the game. Does that mean there is less fun in the tank with this one? Not at all. First, you should know that your entire library of characters from the past can work in this game. I had a series 2 Skylander working last night with the iOS version of this game. Think about that for a second, the second series of Skylanders working with Trap Team on an iOS version of this game. That means all those Skylanders you collected from the previous series are usable. This includes upgrading the Skylanders in Trap Team’s game and carrying over all the wonderful powers you have come to love. Toys for Bob and Activision could have said screw it and made the consumers purchase specific toys for the specific releases, but they chose not to go that route. They would have made a financial killing, but it’s nice to see that the previous Skylander generations have found a home across Trap Team.
Characters aside, what about these ‘trap’ things? Well, the traps in Trap Team are better than I expected them to be. It honestly was going to take a huge idea to out perform the idea behind Swap Force. That idea alone was so ingenious that I never could have thought that something beyond that would be interesting, or even on par with swapping. That really is a tough hill to conquer. Well, I would say that the trap idea was at the very least on par with the swap, as trapping, containing and using villains from the traps is quite brilliant. Here is how it works, when you defeat a villain in the game, you’re given the option to pull out a specific trap (earth, tech, water, etc.) that fits the needs of trapping the baddie. Once trapped, you can keep the trap intact physically on the portal and click ‘L1’ anytime during your adventure to switch between the villain you captured and your Skylander. You can use both characters without the need of a specific character from the store. That is impressive. The traps are cheaper than the characters (you can purchase three traps for $15.99 MSRP) and they offer up the same accessibility abilities as the Skylanders. So, for example, if you run into a water gate in a specific level, then you can open that gate with your trapped villain (if he/she/it are of the water type). Pretty easy stuff. You can use the same trap with multiple villains in the game, as they’re stored in a town square cage as you capture them, and switch the villains out as need be. This takes away the cost parents might feel with this game, as well as putting more quickly accessible adventures in the hands of the gamers.
I like that idea, especially since I have five kids and a small budget.
On the fun side of things, when you have the traps in the portal, you constantly get dialogue from the trapped villain. That dialogue is coming through a speaker in the trap, which creates a nice separate illusion for a younger audience that an actual villain is physically trapped in that specific trap. It sounds ridiculous, but you’re dealing with a very young gaming audience that enjoys those extra things us adults take for granted — like imagination. I will say that the dialogue spouting out from the traps is pretty hilarious most of the time. Whoever did the dialogue for this game deserves a freaking raise.
Outside the traps, characters and main quest, there is a new addition to the game called the Kaos Doom Challenge. This is literally probably the toughest part of the game. You are given a series of ‘enemy waves’ (like what you would find in Plants vs. Zombies) where you must ward off enemies from unleashing a terrible villain trapped in a chained up box located in the back of a tight, constrained level. You have help in your plight, though, as Trap Team goes RTS on you by allowing your Skylander to build turrets to help repel the bad guys. For every successful wave you complete with the turrets, they get upgraded. The thing about the challenges is that they are more about strategy than firepower. If you can catch and divide up the correct enemies and get them going the appropriate direction, then this mode is a piece of cake. However, the mode throws so many different enemies that have different patterns of attack, that it makes it difficult to assess and figure out how to best handle things. That is what makes it tough. Should the enemies get through to unleash the giant titan from its box, you have a boss battle on your hands. This mode is a bit repetitive, and it feels long because of the 9-10 constant waves each level, but it becomes a true challenge halfway through. The rewards are also quite nice, as leveling up and gaining money to upgrade your characters is easier through this mode.
There are a few mini-games included in this as well, one in particular is called Skystone Smash. It’s a card game that works like a simplified version of Magic the Gathering. You gather cards from defeating enemies in the main story, which add to your collection in your deck. Each card has a heart on it with a specific number (how many times you can get hit before you die) and each card has a sword icon on it with a specific number (how many hearts you can take away from your opponent). It’s a simple and addictive game that pops up in the main story here and there.
Shifting gears a bit, the presentation side of Trap Team is improved on the PlayStation 3 when compared to Swap Force. The textures, backgrounds, details and character animation has improved immensely. When you get to the first real boss, Gulper, you’ll see it in his face, hands and movements. I would assume the PlayStation 4 version of this is a bit sharper, as you can see some quality drop in the compression a bit (especially the cutscenes where the framerate is definitely down), but for a system that is now seven years old, this ain’t bad. The environments are still huge and active, the characters are colorful and fun to watch in action (the trolls are hilarious) and it still very much feels like a Skylander game.
The real gem in the presentation side of Trap Team is the audio. The dialogue for this, and past games in the series, has and is witty and beautifully written. It may not win Academy Awards for best script, but it is most certainly going to bring a chuckle out of adults and kids. It’s well done, especially the dialogue coming out of the trap.
So, is this game fun? It’s fun. It brings the same level of enjoyment that Swap Force and Giants brought. It has a wide range of fun characters to play with in the game, an intriguing storyline that is laid out pretty well, and a bunch of side quests and mini-games to keep the title going after you’ve been through the main story (20-30 hours of gameplay). There’s a lot here packaged into one game that maintains the level of quality we’re used to seeing out of the Skylander series.