Skylanders: Imaginators is the newest in the Activision/Toys for Bob yearly release and it’s safe to say that the developers and toy makers haven’t pumped the breaks on their ideas just yet. The concept behind the latest Skylanders game is pretty simple, so much in fact that it seems like a natural progression to the series. Here’s how it goes. You can create your own Skylanders inside the game and store them in these crystal-filled containers called Creation Crystals, which you place on the Skylanders portal, thus creating your own Skylander to play over and over again. Again, a simple concept, sans the Creation Crystal. The motivation to keep going in the game is fed by the need to unlock parts of characters (heads, feet, arms, etc.) you obtain during the story mode, then proceed to mix and match the parts to create a custom character to your liking. And trust me, folks, there are a lot of choices once you get halfway through the story adventure.
The customization of the characters is deep and involved piece of art. It’s not simply popping a head on a body with arms, feet and a proper weapon, rather it’s things like adjusting the size of the Skylander, unlocking a specific power move for the character, changing color schemes (of everything – head, eyes, armor, etc.) and even changing the voice/battle cry the Skylander makes during the game, which also includes adding a filter to make it more cute, weird or menacing. There are quite a few choices to choose from when you’re creating a character that fits your own personality or liking. Let me just note, that I’m not a huge fan of customizing, not nearly as much as the younger generation below me, but I felt some amusement and understanding on why kids are going to eat this the heck up when they start in on it. I can see my kids diving into this portion of the game and spending an insane amount of time on it. I better warn my wife. *makes note*
Anyway, what came out of my efforts during the creation part of this game was a menacing, black tiki god with a rainbow tail and red demon-like eyes. Why did I create this thing? Because I did. You can stop judging me now.
Beyond the imagination portion of the game, there lies a story. Kaos is back again with his band of bad henchmen. His intent is to destroy the world of the Skylanders and to cause as much havoc as possible. The typical storyline for Kaos and his cronies. The story provides a healthy amount of humor that is always seen in Skylanders games, as well as a good amount of challenges that Kaos throws at you, which also compliments the gameplay design pretty well.
Like stated above, the main crux of the design is built around unlocking/acquiring portions of other Skylanders, so that you can build a customized version of one that fits your fancy. The levels thrown at you by the game build up an additional layer of interest that sits on top of that motivation. In the past, you would get mostly a 3D adventure with a few unique gameplay design experiences thrown in. This time around, the folks at Toys for Bob put together bevy of genre types to keep you interested. For example, while playing as Crash Bandicoot (a reason for most 90s children to pick this title up — he is brilliant, by the way, and he’ll dig up some nostalgia and untamed urge in wanting to see him in a stand alone game — one can dream, right?), I came across this one element of the game where I entered through a door and suddenly the game shifted to a platformer that would do any Mario fan justice. As soon as the level was up, it switched back to the 3D adventure. The neat thing about moments like this in Skylanders: Imaginators is that the shift is seamless, it makes sense and most importantly is fun. The brief switch between genres flowed with the gameplay instead of sticking out and feeling forced. It kept the gameplay fresh and fun. You get quite a few of these moments in the game.
One thing that I think the game upped itself from previous versions are the boss and enemy battles. While there is always going to be a pattern to these things, mainly because it’s a kid’s game, so you don’t want to frustrate your main audience too much, the game has definitely turned up the challenge to 11, especially during boss battles. The boss battles go like this, you are put into an area surrounded by damaging forcefields, the boss comes out and begins the match with a certain patterned attack. When you get one-fourth of their energy down, Kaos shows up and adds an additional power to the boss, which switches up their pattern of attack. Kaos shows up at the halfway mark of the boss’ energy, as well the last fourth of the energy. No two bosses are alike, so you get a lot of variety with the enemies, but the patterns of upgrades and switches in attacks are consistent throughout the game. There are some really creative enemies and bosses in this game to keep the fights interesting.
In addition to the boss battles and enemies, you also have things lying around called Gong Battles. These battles are put into place for the player to acquire chests, as well as good rewards called imaginites (the rewards vary from common to rare to epic — each providing parts and such for creating characters). The Gong Battles start off with the player hitting a Gong (duh), which initiates a forcefield around the player’s current location, as well sending a large amount of enemies into the ring at once. When I say a large amount, I mean A LARGE AMOUNT. The short space and large group of baddies makes for an additional challenge, but the game does a great job with rewarding the player for their efforts. Again, these are challenging, maybe the biggest challenge in the game, but definitely rewarding. If a player fails the Gong Battle, a new character can be switched out on the portal and a new Gong Battle can begin.
Outside of battling, you also get a healthy dose of puzzles. There are several moments in the game where to unlock a gate you have to move three gems together, then move a Skylander into place to unlock the gate. The game shifts to a top-down puzzle game, which starts off simple enough for even younger kids to grasp it, but soon shifts to a complicated true puzzle that takes some real thinking to achieve. It’s nuts the variety of difficulty the game arcs to in its design, but it makes sense. It’s gradual and it works for this type of title. It will certainly challenge both adults and kids.
One mini-game that is prevalent throughout Skylanders: Imaginators is a ‘card’ game called Creation Clash. Using blocks called Skystones, you methodically place them onto a tic-tac-toe divided board, in hopes of taking over your opponents Skystone by out numbering the amount of spikes they have on each side of their Skystone. For example, a Skystone might have three spikes on one side of its square, four on another and four on the remaining sides. If you place a four spike side against an opponent’s three spike side, you outnumber their spikes, thus you take their block. The player with the most blocks at the end of the game wins the match. If you win a match, you get a chest, which equals out to another imaginite.
Other points of interest in the gameplay include an egg game where you have to save eggs from nasty little Kaos monsters. The egg game, which is literally a game where you try to grasp eggs with a crane, is simple and it equals out to more rewards. You destroy electronic forcefields and Kaos baddies, while moving your left thumbstick to position over the eggs to extract them before damage is done. If you rescue enough eggs, then you get rewarded with a chest, which equals out to some sort of Skylander piece/part/whatnot for customization uses.
If eggs weren’t enough for you, how about customized selfies in the game? There are selfie stations in the game that allow you to take selfies of your Skylanders and get rewards for it. You can take these selfies and hang them in a selfie hall. Each type of Skylander gets their own portrait, so you have plenty of good selfie opportunities, as well as a nice place to display them.
Another side step from the usual gameplay is the inclusion of finding missing library books. There is an ongoing quest in the game to find missing library books which were stolen from the Skylanders library. You can find these books everywhere. While I haven’t obtained them all, I suspect that a great reward will come out of it. That is probably going to be personal homework for me come December, ya know, once all this reviewing calms the hell down.
On the presentation side of the tracks Skylanders: Imaginators has upped the visual value of the engine it was built on. Gone are the cartoony textures and vibrant colors that remind us of the last generation. Those are replaced by textures that replicate the beings that live in the Skylanders world. The textures have a shine to them that also connects back to the plastic figures you put on the portal, almost providing a 1:1 visual representation of the store bought toy. The rendering, the lighting, shading and shadows are very well done and use the PlayStation 4’s power appropriately.
To compliment this, the environments are absolutely huge and span out far into the background. This provides some great depth, as the background always has something going on during the adventure. For example, during a fight with guacamole monsters (yep, you read the right), you have a lot of action going on in the background as you’re firing cannons from a ship at the monsters destroying the Skylander city. Moving backgrounds provides some good life to the game and it provides some visual value that can’t be understated (although I just understated it).
So with all this said, is the game fun? Quite fun. Skylanders: Imaginators is impressive. The main story is deep and involving, while the side quests are good bursts of dumb fun. All of this is wrapped up with a beautiful graphics package that is a nice upgrade from the last release. For adults, this might not be a game that you would sit down and play over the likes of a Call of Duty or Final Fantasy, but if you have kids this would be a great game to play with them. For kids, this is going to be a playground for them to enjoy for months and months to come. Being the father of five children, I can see some real value and good mileage from the latest Skylanders title. I can also see my wallet getting lighter with the amount of purchases I’ll probably have to make at the local toy store to keep the characters fresh and delightful.
Anyway, let’s wrap this thing up.
