It's a Toy! It's a Game! It's Skylanders! – Video Game Review

Skylanders Spyro's Adventure (for Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, 3DS, Mac, and PC)

It’s almost embarrassing how much I enjoy Skylanders. It fills me with a sort of nostalgic glee. Not way-back nostalgia like you get when you encounter pixely old Atari games like Frogger or Breakout; nostalgia for the dawn of 3D gaming and the colorful classics of the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation 1. The moment I started playing Skylanders, I realized how much I’d been missing a certain kind of game: Vibrant cartoony graphics, with loads of action and exploration, and whimsical characters adventuring across creatively magical landscapes. Skylanders made me think back to the fun I had playing Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and even the original Spyro the Dragon (the star of which is revived nicely here).

Of course, Skylanders has a gimmick: You place toy characters on a plastic “portal” (which is connected to your game console by USB port) and watch them magically appear in the game world for you to use. During a gaming session, all experience, powers, and money earned by your character are stored on a chip within the figure and will be at the ready next time you play. The game comes packaged with three Skylanders (including the titular Spyro) and you can swap characters in an out as often as you want. And while there’s nothing stopping you from completing the game with just those three heroes, there are twenty-nine others temptingly available for purchase at your local toy and video game stores.

Each Skylander has a completely unique set of moves and powers, upping the temptation factor. And to make matters worse, each character belongs to one of eight “element” groups (fire, water, air, earth, life, magic, tech, and undead [they sort of lose me on that last one]}, and each level of the game has bonus areas that can only be entered by members of certain element. So while you can reach the conclusion of the game with only three Skylanders, you’ll never be able to see all the secret areas. But that doesn’t mean you’d need to buy all 32 characters — as long as you have one of each element, you’re good. Still, at an average cost of $8 per figure, that means you’re paying an additional $40 over the typical $70 for the game starter pack.

Courtesy Activision

So is it worth it? I still say yes. Here’s one of the coolest things about these Skylanders figures and their power portal: They’re truly universal. If you use your characters to play the game on, say, an Xbox 360 and then take them to house of a friend who has the game on a Wii, you can bring your Xbox-primed characters into that Wii game complete with all their earned experience, powers, etc. Same goes for a PS3. You can even use them on the handheld Nintendo 3DS (which has a completely different version of the game, by the way). And whatever game system you have, you can use port your same toy figures into the Web MMORPG, Skylanders Universe (which works on both Mac and PC). This universality is a trend I’d love to see continue.

In addition, the story is fun, the writing can be very clever at times, there are a ton of awesome hidden treasures to find, and the co-op capability makes it a nice game for parents and kids to play together. To be honest, there’s no way I could not love a game in which the villain surprises you with a deathtrap called the Deadly Shark Bath of Doomsharks.

Best for: Gamers keen on early-90s nostalgia; avid collectors; parents looking for light-hearted action for their kids; people with the room to store 32 toy figurines

Sweet Victory: New App Game — Muffin Knight

Courtesy Angry Mob Games

Muffin Knight (for iPhone and iPad)

You’d be hard-pressed to find two words that sound more intriguing together than “muffin” and “knight.” But the new app game, Muffin Knight, has appeal beyond its spectacular title. The game’s wonderfully ridiculous background story surrounds a hungry young boy who tries to snatch a baked treat from the picnic basket of an indisposed fairy. The enchanted muffins end up scattered across the world and the repentant boy (i.e., you) is charged with the task of recovering them. But this is no task for an average little boy — there are all sorts of terrifying creatures between you and those cakey treasures, like sheep and turtles — so the fairy magically provides you with a host of battle-ready alter egos. Each time you collect a muffin, you randomly switch personalities. You may go from being a knight to a dragon, a wizard to a grizzly bear, a shotgun-toting gnome to a unicorn that poops explosive rainbows (Did I mention that some of the humor is pretty juvenile?). 

So much about Muffin Knight, from the squat Bubble Bobble-esque characters to the floating-platform level design, feels very old school. With all the on-your-toes quick turns you need to pull off, you almost wish you had a joystick in your hands. Anyone who’s ever stood in an arcade playing Joust or Dig-Dug is bound to get a blast of nostalgia from it. Especially when you enter the two-player dueling mode. You can compete with a friend via local WiFi, or get matched with a random, anonymous player online. Whoever grabs the most muffins wins.

There is a bit of a role-playing-game aspect to Muffin Knight — as you play, the points you collect will earn you more characters and the ability to upgrade the powers of those characters — but casual players shouldn’t let that scare them away. That whole feature is handled through an incredibly simple interface. And even if you were so addicted to the gameplay that you completely forgot about leveling up, it wouldn’t be much of a problem. Also, while this app (like oh-so many others) offers the opportunity to buy points via an in-app purchase, you don’t need to: Keep playing and you’ll earn enough points on your own to upgrade those characters nicely for nothing beyond the very reasonable 99¢ price tag.

Best for: App gamers who are not offended by manure bombs or acid-puking zombies; fans of SpongeBob or Ren & Stimpy; old mall arcade denizens who are now looking for a game they might be able to beat their kids at