Hi everyone,
An uncle of my kids has bought them Trap Team for Christmas along with some figures. I went to the store to pickup an extra one each to put into the kids stockings but there are no Trap Team skylanders now at all in the shops - only Superchargers. I couldn’t find an answer from The Googles and wondered can I use the non-vehicle supercharger skylanders in trap team?
I am guessing no but wanted to check.
Weird, we just got back from our Toy R Us (Washington state) and they still had trap team and even Giants skylanders for sale.
I live in AU things get cycled out quickly it seems.
This is the latest Skylanders, right?
Anyway, Skylanders was cited by Activision (along with Guitar Hero Live) as not hitting the performance goals last year. Translation: Disney Infinity has the marketing power of Marvel, Star Wars, and Frozen, and the new Lego game is killing it, and Skylanders is yesterday’s news.
There was a new version in 2015 called Superchargers. However, to your point, we eschewed the franchise after investing in the previous 3 iterations. My son opted for Lego Dimensions last holiday.
It can’t have helped that Superchargers wasn’t nearly as good as Trap Team. Which makes sense given that Superchargers was developed by Vicarious Visions and Trap Team was developed by Toys for Bob.
But, yeah, the writing was on the wall for Skylanders to sag at least a little with those monster IPs taking a piece of the same pie.
-Tom
That sucks. The Toys for Bob made Skylander games are all very good. They are like Diablo3-4-kids. Currently playing through trap team with my eldest (12). The non-Toys4Bob versions are not good IMO and leads to an inconsistency in the franchise as they ping-pong between developers.
My greatest hope would be that the series’ turning fortunes would lead Activision to finally lend TFB enough freedom to do something as interesting as Star Control again (maybe take Brad and Co. at Stardock up on the outstanding offer to do something in the original, canon universe). My reluctant prediction is that the studio is more likely to just get scuttled.
I have to hand it to Disney Infinity for offering a PC version of their game that requires no actual toy buying. If you want, you can just purchase DLC. Unfortunately, I think Disney Infinity is the worst of the three toy/game brands, but at least they offer an option that doesn’t require a bunch of toy collecting. Skylanders hasn’t offered a PC version since Spyro’s Adventure from what I can tell.
(I do find it amusing that most of the negative Steam user reviews are mad that the “free” game requires DLC purchases. Like Disney was going to give you the latest game for free!)
I’d love to play Skylanders on PC, but I’m not scouring through eBay for the old toys.
I like Vicarious Visions’ take on Skylanders more than Toys For Bob. TFB seems aimed much more at the kid side whereas VV is willing to aim more towards the middle as a game rather than a kid’s game. However, I really got the sense that there was an internal dispute at some higher level (between studios or studios and publisher perhaps) when visiting VV back when Swap Force was about to hit.
The buy in levels seem to have exploded and difficulty/ modes have shrunk in the last few releases. That and I think it’s very true that market saturation has occurred not only in competing products but customer apathy. I know some kids that used to be excited about these games, but now don’t care about it much at all. It is not even that they want Marvel or anything; I just think the toy to life video game thing sort of hit a Rock Band cliff. It doesn’t help that parents were quite on board with such a change in interests.
I have an almost complete second set (don’t ask) of the original (the available on PC one) game’s figures that I could part with… Heck, I may even still have a disc I could part with as well.
Yeah, in my household the sprog still asked for the latest Skylanders game (snubbing LEGO along the way) but got very little playtime. Now the LEGO is starting catch a little bit of interest.
Meanwhile, not having all the figures for the last few Skylanders is making my OCD start to tingle… I’m a sad, sad person :)
2016:
Skylanders: Trap Queen.
Get that Fetty Wap demo
I got a notification while playing trap team that I could purchase digital versions of the next games figures.
I have almost zero knowledge of the Skylanders franchise never having played any of them before. However some family members started getting my son Skylanders figures essentially as action figures (in fact I am not even sure if they knew they paired up with a videogame). He loves the figures and the characters (also has some Skylanders books, sticker books, etc.).
I thought about experimenting with getting a Skylanders game to test the water and see if he would be interested in playing with the figures that way. I would be getting a copy for my PS3 and there seem to be some starter packs with portals ranging from $15 to $35 (Swap Force to Super Chargers respectively). What would QT3ers recommend for a starter pack edition? If I get something like the 2013 Swap Force pack/portal will later models not work on the portal? Sorry for my naiveté here.
He did get excited about a similar concept with Lego’s Nexo Knights. With Nexo Knights they are bascially normal lego sets that you build in real life but they come with little shields that you can scan with the Nexo Knight game on the tablet to add “powers” to your character in-game. He thought it was really cool to take the pieces of the set we just built and scan them into a digital world.
He probably is on the younger end of the age spectrum just turning 5 and we have only shared a few videogame experiences like Farming Simulator and Wreckfest. He still struggles with controls so we either work together or trade controls back and forth depending on his frustration level.
I appreciate any guidance or thoughts here.
-Todd
Later Skylanders will not work in earlier games. Activision would have to go back and patch in assets for the new figures, and they’re not about to do that because they want you to buy the latest release. However, later games almost always* support older figures. So long as you find out which game your son’s favorite figures come from (this database lists the game name under each figure), you’ll be fine buying any Skylanders software from that iteration or later. And in case you don’t know, it goes, uh, 1) Spyro’s Adventures, 2) Giants, 3) Swap Force, 4) Trap Team, then 5) Supercharged.
And, yeah, you’re going to need a starter pack to get the Portal.
-Tom
Thanks that is really helpful! Will need to look through that database.
-Todd
I have all the games except Superchargers and have played all of them with my kids (though both myself and my kids gave up on swap force). I recommend Trap Team.
I gave my nephews a Wii and some skylanders for Christmas and my sister was saying that their local Gamestop is really aggressively pushing used Skylanders characters with buy 1 get 2 free type offers. Might be worth calling up a local store.
Thanks to all for the advice and suggestions. This helped a lot!
-Todd
Having gone through the entire collection and adding them to the Supercharged game (for the bonuses you get for multiples of same element), I can confidently say every figure from early games works in it. Including the treasures, sidekicks and traps - although those function differently in the current game vs. previous iterations.
And I think I may agree with solomani - Trap Team might be the best iteration of them all. There’s something that hasn’t quite gelled with Superchargers. But all of them are definitely fun.