To me this game was very Super Mario Galaxy meets Pokemon. It's a great kids game, though I am 25 and my husband and I play it together. You travel to different little worlds and each world/area has multiple levels. At the end of each level there is a checklist of things you have accomplished in the level (i.e. found all area, found all treasure chests, beat the level in a certain amount of time, etc). You don't have to get all of them in one try, you can play a level multiple times and keep trying to get the things you missed. You use the Skylanders characters (plastic figurines) to play the game, and there are tons of them, so it would be a fun collection for little kids. You can level up your characters (highest level is 10) and you can upgrade their fighting abilities with the "money" you collect in the game from finding treasures and breaking open crates/jars. You can play at least 2 players, not sure if you can play more than that at once. You place your Skylander on the Portal of Power (platform that comes with the game) and whichever one you choose is the one you play as in the game. You can take off your character at any time and switch to another one that you have.
CONS:
First of all, right now the Skylanders individual characters are pretty difficult to find. Nearly every time I go to Best Buy/Target/GameStop/Toys r US, the shelves are completely empty. Also, people are selling the characters on Amazon for way more than they are worth-- sorry, I would never even pay $20 for a character that would cost me $8 in the stores. You just have to keep calling the stores and just randomly check them. However, we have heard that come July 2012 (I know, so far away) that the company is going to start mass producing more of them (I don't think they anticipated these to be so popular, but after Christmas you couldn't find them anywhere). To go hand in hand with the unavailability, there are a lot of parts of the game (within-level areas) that you cannot get to unless you have at least 1 character from each element (fire, earth, tech, air, life, undead, magic, water). For example, in a level there might be an area that you cannot get to unless you have a Skylander from the Life element. Once they are easier to find, it won't be so bad and this will no longer be a con.
Another CON is that in the end if you want to be able to do everything you possibly can in this game, you are probably spending well over $100 for it, though it can increase the longevity of being able to play the game. It is fun to level up new characters and see their abilities, though, so it is sort of worth it (in the stores, the individual characters are between $7.99 and $9.99-- Target and Best Buy are $7.99).
A third CON is that a couple of the characters we have have issues communicating with the Portal of Power. It doesn't happen with all of them, but one or two of them have trouble. When we place the character on the portal, it will act like it is getting ready to let you play as the character, then it will say "please put a skylander on the portal of power" even though it is already on there. Sometimes we have to try several times or hold the character hovering above the portal until it actually puts that character in the game, and then set it down. I'm guessing there is some kind of issue with the character itself (maybe something happened to the chip inside it) where it isn't connecting right.
PROS:
This game is a fun, kid-friendly game. It has a pretty good replay value (meaning you can beat the game, but still go back and replay to either complete each level 100% or use new characters you acquire over time to replay the game). It is also a great 2 player game.
Skylanders are "portable." What I mean is that if you level up your character and have all these abilities, you can take your Skylander to a friend's who has the game and play it on their console (no matter which console it is) and your stats will remain with that character. For example, if you have the game on Xbox and you are Spyro and you are level 6 and you have upgraded your fighting abilities, you can take your Spyro Skylander to a friend's house who plays it on the Wii and you can use your character with all stats remaining.
The Skylanders are fun to collect without being ridiculously overpriced. I think $8 is a fair price to pay for a new character.
Overall, I'd recommend this game. I think it's really fun and a break from the usual types of games I play.
Favorite Skylanders I have played with so far: Bash, Trigger Happy, and my husband got Drobot and likes him a lot.
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I got this for my kids and they loved it even their friends had it so every second ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2015
I got this for my kids and they loved it even their friends had it so every second they could would be a giant attempt to defeate kaos no complaints except one thing I didn't get a turn.
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2015
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 1, 2012
Platform For Display: Xbox 360Verified Purchase
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Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 21, 2015Platform For Display: Xbox 360Verified Purchase
