One of the exceedingly few annualized franchises that I always look forward to is Skylanders. With each successive year, the series expands upon previous iterations with tangible creativity. The most apparent form of this is the new toys. I received about a dozen of these for the purposes of this review, and they’re as colorful and detailed as ever. Several of these even have moving parts; the land vehicles can roll and the Reef Ripper sea vehicle has a tail that shifts back and forth. There are four Land vehicles, three Sky vehicles, and five Sea vehicles, as well as Dark variations for some of them. New to the series are a dozen Supercharger Skylanders that compliment the vehicles.
So who are the Superchargers? They’re a special kind of Skylander, expert pilots of land, sea, and air vehicles that have their own rift engines so that they can create their own portals. This is a small but essential part of the new story that is told in Adventure mode. The jist of the story is that Lord Kaos is back to cause more havoc and this time he intends to destroy the Skylands using a massive new doomsday machine. He takes control of all portals and has every major character — including Flynn, Master Eon, Cali, and Hugo — in prison. Things are more desperate than ever. The Superchargers burst onto the scene and the player takes their position as Portal Master, and the quest to save Skylands and repel Kaos once more begins in earnest.
Superchargers has a similar structure to previous Skylander games in that you have the Academy which acts as the main hub for all activities. From the Academy, you can proceed to the next story mission (usually by talking to Flynn), upgrade your vehicles or characters, view collectibles, equip hats (yep, these are back and many more new ones added), spend Wish Stones, take on element or vehicle specific challenges, talk with NPCs, view your toy collection, check on Friend/co-op requests, and jump into Races. The Races are managed by a new character known as Pandergast, who reminds me of a carnival ringleader. He welcomes you to take on races inspired by areas in the story which opens up an expansive gameplay mode unto itself.
Racing is a huge part of Superchargers that was in development along with the Adventure mode from the beginning. Race courses were designed side-by-side with the story levels. You can access Races directly from the first menu screen (in addition to continuing the Adventure, but I liked that you could also jump right into Racing). Races can be played online with up to seven others, or CPU characters can be used to fill up the remaining racer slots. In online play, the design lends itself to quick matches. At the host’s discretion, there is a thirty second window for players to alter their racing team (i.e. which vehicle and what Skylander will pilot said vehicle). Other than the vehicle needing to match the race type (land, sea, air), its entirely up to the player which vehicle and Skylander they choose to use. An icon next to each player’s name in the lobby shows what pairing each player is using, but, you cannot see what alterations to the vehicle a player might have made here. It’s important to note that vehicle upgrades or modifications have no bearing in multiplayer other than in-race appearance. Vehicle mods alter the appearance of core vehicles in significant ways (in some, but not all cases), but performance-wise the vehicle is the same as if no mods were installed. In speaking with Vicarious Visions, they decided to design the game this way to keep the playing field more even and purely based on skill. In other words, having different toys or being farther into the Adventure (and thus having found or bought more mods) does not automatically give you an advantage to someone who hasn’t played Adventure mode yet.
My experience with multiplayer matches is only about two hours at this point, but it was fun and worked perfectly fine. I experienced no technical issues and my play session was continuous, we went from race to race chatting amongst ourselves during and in between matches. Races last three laps and is currently not changeable, by the way. Another tidbit: only players in your Friends list can Game Chat with you. Each type of race has a ‘x-factor’ that gives it an extra bit of separation from the other modes. In sky or air racing for example, players can barrel roll to avoid obstructions in the race course or enemy fire. During Land racing, you can drift by holding L2, which not only looks cool, but it gives you some boost. In sea racing, vehicles can dive underwater and pop back up at will. The ability to go underwater is really cool; beneath the surface you will find what is essentially a whole separate race track, complete with power-ups and boost rings, giving you another appreciable layer of strategy to your sea races.
Skylander racing is more kart-racer than anything, so you’ll instantly recognize some similarities to Mario Kart and F-Zero. These similarities come in the form of lighthearted combat during racing, power-ups that can effect all players, and boost zones that if you drive through will give you an appreciable boost to your current speeds. Each vehicle has a couple of ways to attack, and ammo — which is unlimited in single player — is kept in check during multiplayer by the way of a cooldown meter. This blue meter is in the lower left of the HUD and it fills up automatically, but not quickly enough allow you to constantly spam even the weaker of the two attacks. Many blue bottles around the race track can be picked up to help you refill ammo supplies quickly, though, but the inability to attack constantly is a good design decision that promotes strategy and timing for players as opposed to just firing constantly.
As for power-ups, the “!” boxes scattered around have several surprises, including an hour glass pickup that slows everyone down for a few seconds, this is intended to help the player in last place have an inkling of a chance to catchup. What power-up you get depends on your position in the race, too. If you’re in last place, you might get a somewhat rare (in my experience) “ram” power up that temporarily turns your vehicle into a massive, fast “tank” that can ram through other players. The Tiki Mask causes damage to all racers, and sometimes it’s just enough to deplete the remainder of their HP bar to zero, and this causes a ‘spin out’ which stops that player from moving for several seconds. Double Damage and Shields are some of the other pickups you’ll encounter.
Online racing is but one of several racing modes. Single Races, Time Trials, Boss Pursuits, the Supervillain Cup, and Mirror Cup are also available, with some conditions. Single Races are your point of entry, and I believe you have to play these to unlock the Time Trials unlocked. Boss Pursuits and the Supervillain Cup are only accessible if you have the special element Trophy — you have to put the Trophy on the Portal to unlock these, but once you do, if you complete the Boss Pursuit you can add that boss (and their unique, non-purchaseable vehicle!) to your team. Interestingly, you have to put the Trophy back on the Portal to complete the acquisition of the boss, I suppose as a way to keep a single Trophy from being too convenient to share amongst multiple people.
On a more general note, the tracks I have played are all very nicely designed and I liked that in at least most of them the race course changed, even if just slightly, from one lap to another. Colorful, spacious, and with ample opportunities for big air and ‘wow!’ moments, the courses are a strong point. Skylander veterans will recognize some locations and designs from previous Skylander adventures, too.
Speaking of previous Skylanders, Superchargers does fully support your older Skylanders. I tried a variety of Series 1, SWAP Force, Trap Team Trapmasters, and Giants, and had no issues. All of these characters will “fit” into the vehicle of your choice. That’s one of those things you might have expected, but its nonetheless nice to know that it works and works as smoothly as I’ve come to expect from the franchise.
So I’ve got a lot of other notes with my time with Superchargers that I’ll begin to insert at this point. This are a bit random, but I feel are nonetheless — well, noteworthy ha. First, when you start Adventure more, there are four “play styles” — Beginner/Adventurer/Expert and Nightmare, with ten, twenty and thirty percent boosts in award bonuses given for the higher difficulty settings. I played on Expert, and at times the game is somewhat difficult. During the Count Moneybones boss fight for example, I probably lost eight or nine Skylanders. I should point out that the vehicles do not need “rest” — whenever the HP meter is empty, it’s the Skylander that needs Rest, not the vehicle.
I loved how the vehicles were introduced when you first put them on the Portal, too. From the flashy animation of the vehicle to the dramatic and cool voiceover that you hear as the vehicle’s name is announced and its default parts shown. The “cracked core fenders” for Burn Cycle just sounds badass, and looks the part, too. Finding vehicle mods is always exciting, and you can Preview vehicles you may or may not own as you pick up mods. These mods effect vehicle stats — for example the Double Fin Divers got me a little more Acceleration, but had no change to my Armor, Top Speed, Handling, or Weight. Earning Stardust by completing vehicle side missions nets you Portal Master upgrades at a comfortable pace, and these upgrades give you choices for new abilities. These abilities are passive, such as earning more Gold (to spend with Persephone to give your Skylanders more abilities), or Gear Bits (to spend on Vehicle upgrades), or doing more damage to certain kinds of enemies. Also, there are still a lot of collectibles to discover during Adventure mode, but now you just have to find the Epic Chests to find all of these instead of finding individual items scattered about.
A few more notes — I found the driving controls troublesome to start, but it’s just a matter of getting used to them. During races, including those race sequences found within nearly every chapter, you press R2 to accelerate. Other driving/flying/diving sequences during the Adventure, like bossfights, allow you to press R2 or use the left stick to both control acceleration and direction. I found using the left stick method to be more intuitive, otherwise, controlling the left/right direction of the vehicle was a little confusing to where I would start to turn right instead of left on accident, and vice versa. Flynn’s voice-acting is hit and miss as far as, at times, his humor and sound of his voice are can get kind of grating, but other times what he says will put a smile on your face. Finally, the level design — it’s still pretty straight-forward, maybe still a little bit too much on the simplistic side (this game is primarily aimed at kids afterall), but I am impressed with the creativity here that took a nice step up from Trap Team. In addition to the vehicle sequences, other neat ideas like anti-grav wall walking and cloud-filled levels (that you clear up by blowing horns), add some nice variety.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
