Activision’s go to Spider-Man game developer, Beenox, was tapped for the development of the latest Skylanders 3DS adventure. The story is different from the console version, as is much of the gameplay. The story has Hugo, one of Eon’s helpers, accidentally opening a portal to the Realm of Dreams from which the Dream Sheep, Sleep Dragon, their army, and a bunch of Nightmare Villains (fourteen, exclusive to the 3DS) enter the world of Skylands. Every non-Skylander creature suddenly falls asleep, leaving the Skylands vulnerable. Or at least that’s what Dream Sheep was hoping for. Fortunately, the Skylanders are immune to this spell and it’s up to you, as Portal Master, and the new Trap Masters which you control, to fight back Dream Sheep’s army. In the process you must find and ring three magical bells which will break the spell cast upon Skylands.
So the Starter Pack includes the game, Trap Master Gusto (Air), Mini Skylander Barkley (Life), and the new Portal of Power. Similar to last year’s SWAP Force 3DS release, the Portal of Power connects to the 3DS via IR. At the outset of your adventure, you meet up with the witty Flynn who immediately takes you to an area where you can load up your game with any and all Skylanders toys you have, or any of the 50+ new ones released just for Trap Team. Interestingly, I found “scanning in” my Trap Team figures was a lot faster than the SWAP Force ones. The Trap Team figures I received in the Starter Pack and a few extras that were included in the review kit scanned instantly. The SWAP Force figures took several seconds more, and in some cases several additional attempts to get the Portal to read the characters. During these attempts, the game would play the ‘lightning’ sound indicating a new Skylander was detected, and there would be a flash of light, but then a message would pop up saying to place a toy on the Portal. Anyway, once you have your SWAP Team added, when you go to use them you are given a scrollable menu system from which you choose the top and bottom halves of the character you want to summon. That said, while I wish I had the 175 or so total Skylander toys on the market today, I only had about a dozen or so to “scan in” to the game so this didn’t take but a few minutes. And, just as with SWAP Force, once you have your toys imported to the 3DS, you no longer need to worry about bringing your Portal of Power and the toys with you, which is easily one of the best features the 3DS offers.
With my characters ready to go and available to me at anytime simply by tapping their Element icon in the lower screen, I was ready to get after Dream Sheep and his minions. Gameplay is instantly familiar to anyone who has played Skylanders before, and well, even if you haven’t. Controls couldn’t be much simpler: the circle pad is used to move about, X and Y are your primary and secondary attacks, you can sprint by holding down A and pushing in a direction, and B jumps. At times you will need to press R to interact with an object, and several mini-games require tapping the lower screen or drawing some straight lines with the stylus. Furthermore, once you start to trap those Nightmare Villains, you can interact with them in some lighthearted and goofy ways such as poking them by tapping the screen, swiping to make them spin around, tickling by moving the stylus or your finger back and forth, or send a gust of wind at them by blowing into the mic. To use the power of your trapped Nightmare Villain, you can tap a persistent button or swipe upwards. The 3DS’ accelerometer is also used in some gameplay mechanics such as rolling a large snowball around in the Cloudburst Keys chapter.
For the most part the controls are great — they’re intuitive, accessible, you’re good to go right away. However, I couldn’t help but notice some, like, ‘dead zone’ areas of the d-pad though that cropped up at times, either during platforming or when trying to sprint in diagonal directions. It’s not a constant enough issue for me to be able to get much more exact than that, and while I noticed it from time to time, it didn’t detract much from my experience. This could be due to the game’s forgiving nature in general; playing on Normal is likely going to be too easy for an average gamer, but it might suit a younger audience just fine. Speaking of difficulty, Trap Masters feel too powerful; don’t get me wrong they’re cool characters and fun to use, but an upgraded one has some hellacious attacks, not to mention the Trap Attacks that only they can perform. See, anytime you switch to a Trap Master, a new meter appears in the lower right of the HUD. You fill this meter up with Trap Shards that you pick up from beating up enemies and I believe also from breaking the destructible props found throughout the missions. Once you have this meter full, simply press L for a major attack. The attack is demonstrated in a few-second cutscene. These are cool to see, but the Trap Masters might be a little too powerful for the good of the game on the whole. Suffice it to say when it came boss time, I was going to switch to one of my Trap Masters (Gusto or Jaw Breaker in my case).
Control and difficulty concerns aside, another so-so aspect of Trap Team on the 3DS is the level design. Similar to the difficulty, it’s probably best to imagine a 7-12 year old playing this game I suppose, and in that respect the level design might be just fine. For more seasoned platformer gamers, it’s on the tepid side. There are some neat variations on the elevation, jump pads, traps, but there are just as many dead ends and ‘flat’ platforming that’s mediocre. With twenty-seven missions in all that have to be accessible to over 250 Skylander toys, level design on the 3DS is probably harder than I’m giving it credit for, though.
Accessing these levels, or missions, is done in linear fashion: to get to mission three, you need to have completed two. Each mission has Level Missions, Level Challenges, and Bonus Missions. The Level Missions are the main goals, the Challenges are things like beating the mission within x minutes or not falling off of a ledge or what not, and Bonus Missions are for finding all of the hidden chests and Hats and things. To find everything, you will need toys from each of the Elements as there are Elemental Gates that only allow Skylanders from a specific element to pass. Furthermore, new to Trap Team, there are easily identifiable, destroyable objects that require you summon a Trap Master to break, and you’ll find more hidden items here, too. The more of these items you find, the more marks you earn at the end of the mission, and thus the more Challenge Stars you earn. There are 81 Challenge Stars in this version. You can check your progress in terms of total number of Skylanders summoned (up to 254), Challenge Stars unlocked, Hats found (245), and levels completed from the save game screen at boot up.
There are several locations within Trap Team that segment missions into certain environments. I was happy to get out of the first block of missions in part because the constant use of yellow and red colors was becoming a nuisance, not to mention all of the Villains that were some type of bird. Anyway, clearing missions pits you against a Nightmare Villain, essentially the boss for that mission. You encounter them throughout the missions briefly, but at the end is when you get to square off with them. Actually getting back to difficulty for a moment, while the Villains are pretty easy, it’s ok if you run out of HP and your Skylander falls; as long as you have another one that still has health, you can switch to them and continue the assault on the Villain. Soon enough, the Villain’s HP falls and it’s time to trap them, only with the 3DS version you do not use physical trap toys, you simply use the stylus to make a rapid circle motion, which is meant to be a spinning vortex. After this, the Villain is yours to use, although unlike the console version, you have to go to the Traptanium Vault inside of the lobby/mission hub known as the Eternal Archives to switch between them. You can return to the Eternal Archives any time from the Pause menu. Within the Traptanium Vault, you can view all of your new “allies”, read their Nightmare Pages (collectibles found within the mission, these are just short, often funny bios about the Villain), play a round of Skystones against them, or replay their Villain Bootcamp mission.
The Villain Bootcamp missions are pretty cool; these are 2-4 minute mini-missions that occur immediately following the acquisition of a new Villain. What’s interesting about them is that you get to experience some mini-game elements not seen in the standard missions. As far as the story goes, these are also designed to get you these special Gems, which are used to open up new paths (i.e., sets of missions) within the Eternal Archives. Each Bootcamp mission begins with a humorous rant from Dream Sheep who, in speaking to your freshly trapped Villain, doesn’t even realize that they’re no longer working for him (and he doesn’t know the significance of the Gems, either). He lays out the mission goals and off you go, with Bonus Challenges available for extra Challenge Star points, too. The types of mini-games include rapidly and accurately shooting multiple targets, sneaking around a few rooms using small trees and chirpy birds as cover, navigating semi-tricky platforming puzzles, and so on. These are a decent change of pace from the main missions.
Skystones is another mini-game that pops up during the main missions. Sometimes you have to play a resident of the Skylands in Skystones to get them to give you a key. Skystones is pretty simple in concept, but can eventually get pretty interesting for some folks I imagine (although I started to skip the optional Skystones mini-games after a while). To play, a 3×3 grid is shown, and each player gets 5 or 6 tiles with a character’s avatar on them. On the edges of these tiles are a certain number of arrows. The goal is to place the tiles in such a way that any enemy tile that touches yours has less arrows on that edge, and thus your tile ‘wins’ the battle. You can actually play this online too although I did not test this.
Oh, to wrap up the Villain gameplay element, I should add that the selected Villain can be called upon regardless of what Skylander you currently have active. The Villain’s power can be used with the press of the touchscreen button or by swiping up. This unleashes a potentially powerful attack, but, it’s quite possible that you call on the Villain and they completely whiff the enemy. After use, you have to wait thirty seconds to use them again, too.
Speaking of your active Skylander, one small feature I would have liked to have seen is when you Pause and go to Upgrades, it would be cool to be able to scroll through the Upgrades and Levels of all of the Skylanders you have added to the game, instead of only the one Skylander you have active. Also of note, all of the Crystals you pick up during the mission, which are points that count directly towards that Skylanders’ XP, are given in full to the active Skylander at the end of the mission. This is a fairly important point because you can have a Skylander that you wish to upgrade miss out on a ton of points if you happen to have lost them or switched away from them during the boss fight.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…