Yeah, slow news day, etc.

Activision sent a box of those Skylanders Giants Happy Meal toys over. Bereft of anything interesting to do, I decided to review them??. I didn't really review them, though. I just rambled sarcastically while playing with toys. 

Videogame journalism is real.

The post Reviewing Skylanders Happy Meal Toys appeared first on Destructoid.

At the Toys"R"Us in Times Square

If you find yourself in New York City on February 5, you can join in on a community event for Skylanders Giants, held at the Times Square Toys"R"Us.

Basically, you'll have a chance to get a free Ninjini figure before laun??ch, and nab a Starter Pack for $25, as well as take advantage of a buy two get one free sale. While the first two perks only sound reasonable for the biggest of fans, eBay sellers will ??probably be really interested in that last bit.

Evidently there's meet and greets too for kids. An Activision promotion and lots of kids packed into the same place -- sounds like a great day ?to head to Times?? Square, right?

WHEN: 

Tuesday, Feb??ruary 5. Activities and giveaways begin promptly 4pm. Toys"R"Us Times Square will be open during normal business hours (10am - 10pm)

WHERE: 

1514 Broadway at 44th StreetNew York, NY

The post Skylanders event being held in New York next week appeared first on Destructoid.

Thumpback and Eye-Brawl

It feels like we've been waiting forever for new Skylanders Giants characters. The titular "Giants," who are ??rather large and expensive toys, are getting a staggered relea??se schedule to increase demand.

Here, near the end of January, we're getting two new additions: Thumpback and Eye-Brawl. Thumpback is apparently a bit of a c?ad, seeing as how he was a former pirate gone good guy, while Eye-Brawl's backstory involves two seperate entities, a headless giant and a flaming eyeball teaming up to make the ultimate team.

Yep, sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon all right -- which is part of the reason why I enjoy Skylanders.

The post Two new Skylanders Giants enter the fray appeared first on Destructoid.

Just how are the toys made?

Who knew actual physical toys would propel a videogame to become the number one selling Activision title (so far) this year and generating over $200 million in sales? Developer Toys for Bob struck gold with its ingenious idea of merging the world of real toys and videogames together with the Skylanders series, and the momentum is still going strong leading up to the release of Skylanders Giants, the first sequel to last year's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.

I paid a visit to Toys for Bob's offices just north of San Francisco recently to speak with co-founder Paul Reiche, and I found out the rich history of the company, how the Skylanders toys are made, and why creating toys with high-quality care?? is more important than saving costs.

Paul Reiche's obsession with monsters

Paul Reiche believes that "in our ??DNA here at [Toys for Bob] is monsters, heroic adventure, and having fun with fantasy adventure." Given Paul's history with gaming, it makes sense, especially with the amount of games he's made with monsters in them.

Paul's first taste into the realm of gaming and monsters began with Dungeons & Dragons during high school. His early success with D&D would soon see him working for TSR (the former Dungeons & Dragons publisher), where he helped develop multiple Dungeons & Dragons and Gamma World games.

Paul's interest soon shifted to digital gaming, and growing up in Berkly gave him a chance to learn programming at the Lawrence Hall of Science. This proved most fortunate for him as he "happened to be in the right place, at the right time" for the dawn of videogames, making his first D&D-based videogame for the TRS 80 and Apple II. From there, he and Jon Freeman (co-founder of Epyx) formed Free Fall Associates, where they worked on some of the first games for Electronic Arts such as Archon and Mail Order Monsters, both which had you controlling monsters that f??ought each ot??her.

Paul eventually left Free Fall Associates to form his own company, Toys for Bob, with Fred Ford in 1989. It was just the two of them at the beginning, and the company's first title was Star Control. Paul focused on the design a??nd fiction, while Fred handled the progr?amming.

Star Control would later be ported from the PC to the Sega Genesis, but Toys for Bob had to work around Sega's restriction and create an unauthorized version for the system. "Back at this time we were trying to break first party," Paul told me. "It didn't work, so we worked with reversed engineered material to create Star Control. It was the biggest cartridge [on the Genesis??] at the time."

_{Picture via Ars Technica, which has more on the unauthorized Genesis dev kit}

They then made Star Control II, and according to Paul, "To this day, we still have a dedicated fan base who want us to abandon Skylanders and just go back to working on it (laughs)." In 1994, Toys for Bob worked with Crystal Dynamics to make Pandemonium, The Horde, and The Unholy War, the ?latter two both being monster-focused as well.

It was also at this time that they made Majokko Dai Sakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs, their weirdest game ever. Paul loved the SD Gundam series, so he went to Crystal Dynamic's head of studio at the time, Rob Dyer, in order to reach out to Bandai and get the rights. Somehow they ended up making the Little Witching Mischief instead, a game based on the Japanese anime fro??m the 1960s.

The game was only sold in Japan, and he's not sure how well the game did as their original contact at Bandai ended up quitting. He is looking for copies of the game still, as they only have one in their possession.  

Their last title with Crystal Dynamics was 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue, for which they serendipitously looked at the original Spyro as the basic?? model in order to make a good kids game.

Toys for Bob would go on to partner with Activision in the early 2000s and make Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure. The company was bought by Activision in 2005 and continued to make kid-focused titles such as Madagascar, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, and Madagascar 2.

How the idea of Skylanders was born

I??t was around 2008 when Paul noticed, "[T]he wo?rld started to change. The high-end licensed titles just weren't making enough money to really justify a great big studio in Northern California. So we ended up being asked come up with something new."

Specifically, Activision had sent out a company-wide email? asking if anyone had any good ideas that the they could patent. "I just kind of thought that was a funny email," Paul told me. "I said, 'Well, no one is going to answer this. Who would just send off t??heir ideas into the void?' So I said, 'I will! It's a challenge.'

"Whenever a studio is told that they know, 'okay, we better do this' (laughs). We want to remain in existence. So we sort of said, well, this is the first time in a long time ??we've been offered the opportunity to come up with our own game.

"So one of the ideas I had, althoug?h I didn't know the precise technology underlining it, was this wireless communication through this portal where you have a character, and you would put it on the portal and the game would interpret it and that you can freely move the characters around.

"And then they said, 'Oh, and by the way, would you like to work with the Spyro license?' We said, 'Yeah! That's a pretty cool license.'" Activision added that it can't just be a new Spyro game, though. It had to be a new kind of game, because for it to be successful in Activision's eyes, it not ?only has "to be the top kids game of the year, but?? it has to be in the top five games period of the year."

An extremely tall order, but the timing couldn't have worked out better, as Paul saw it as a chance to combine his portal idea with Spyro. Paul and I-Wei Huang, character and toy director at Toys for Bob, went to Activision with a couple of illustrations to show off their idea, where they would make toys that would work with a piece of hardware that communicates with the game and create a real-world relationship. "The floor of what we needed to achieve was almost unachievable,” Paul explained. "Fortunately, they gave us some time to prototype, and we ended up coming up with this idea for Skylanders.

"All through this idea, I kept asking myself, 'Am I smoking crack?' Because we literally had to craft everything by hand, go to Activision, show these crazy demos, and once we actually got to the point where we could put [??a toy] on a portal, and it would com??e to life in the game, this sort of light bulb went on in everybody's head and we said, 'Okay, now we just got to make it good.'"

Creating a toy company within a game company

As we all know now, Paul and Toys for Bob's crazy idea worked. Penny Arcade immediately took to it, figures were selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and even Justin Bieber is a fan. Toys were selling out like crazy, especially around Christmas. Right now, there are so many Skylanders figures that if you were to put every one of them side by side, they would stretch out for 1500 miles. Paul further drove that point home by stating that there are more Skylanders toys than there are people in the United K?ingdom!

The series is successful now, but I couldn't help but wonder if Paul had any fears when developing the whole idea. "I think we were fortunate in that we didn't know what we didn't know. I think if we had known all of the things we were going to confront, we would have said it was impossible. But fortunat?ely we didn't know, and so what we had was people who worked with us for many, many years. The guy who actually invented the portal technology [Robert Leyland], I've worked with him on and off for more than 30 years. Robert had done hobbyist electronics his whole life. We actually signed Electronic Arts development contract #1! A very obscure game about a murder on a zeppelin."

Robert, I-Wei, and Paul went through a lot of different prototypes with the Portal itself, and even at one point made things out of dish drainers. Once the prototype was settled, they went to Red Octane, Activision's? proper hardware group.

"[Red Octane] had made all of the hardware for Guitar Hero, and then Guitar Hero had sort of found its natural level of success. And so they were ready and waiting to help us take a prototype and make it manufacturable. There's a whole proper physical engineering that we really didn't know about how to do it. We worked with a company called Creata, and they did the toy engineering for us. And then we worked wit??h Red Octane an??d they did the Portal."

While Red Octane was busy creating the Portal, Paul and the team focused on making the toys. "?This time around, we sort of went from the Stone Age where I-Wei was crafting things with clay. I had made rubber monsters and plastic monsters as a hobby, that was my contribution to the hobbyist part. I was able to say, 'Well, I can show you how we can take your clay toy, ??make a mold and then we can cast a bunch of them.' 'Cause every time we would send a toy down to Activision for them to show somebody it would vanish." Paul joking speculates that some kid of an executive would end up with it.

"So we started making our own little sweatshop here where we would, after work, cast all these toys and hand paint them. And then those would all vanish. So finally we ended up working with Creata, and they took our solid toys and showed us how they get broken apart." Paul described how the toys are broken down into a very complicated system so that they can be created with as much detail as ?possible, marveling at how "there's a whole science to how you break toys apart."

It's a process that was well above what Toys for Bob could do on their own, so it was fortunate for th??em that Red Octane was seemingly lying in wait. As for Creata, that whole partnership came about thanks to a man named John Coyne.

"We knew when we were getting into toys that we actually needed to have someone in the business who understood toys and had sold them before. So we found a guy named John Coyne, and he had worked at Spin Master, which was the company that launched Bakugan, and before that he had worked at Matte??l,? and he knew collectable toy lines.

"So he helped introduce us to people in the traditional toy world. A lot of them said this is impossible. No one's ever, out of the blue, made 32 toys and sold them in Toys 'R' Us." Paul was grilled about the idea, being asked by people what isle they would sell the product in. To which Paul simply stated, "The aisle with space ... ?" It's not as simple as that, of course. "In Toys 'R' Us, there's an aisle for boys' 8-10 action figures, there's an ?aisle for girls, there's an aisle for this, etc. And we were like, 'It should sell everywhere! It should sell by the videogames, it should sell in the toys!' And they were just like, 'You can't do that!'

"Fortunately, or unfortunately, there's been a decline in the age at which kids will continue to play with toys, particularly boys. They migrate to videogames cause videogames are so compelling. Toys 'R' Us was really excited that we found a way to reintroduce toys and make plastic toys more by adding this sort of intelligence into them and this communication, and then building this narrative about the toys moving between worlds. We showed it to them early on and they said, 'Wow, this is really cool.' So they worked with us as a ?partner, helping us, again, learn all the ropes of 'well, how do you move into this aisle?'

"The world of retail is a whole really complicated business. We make videogames and we have partners at Activision that really help us and [one day] they said, 'We got the something shelf at Walmart!' And we were like, 'Cool! ... What is that?' And they said, 'This is the shelf that normally stocks ketchup and mayonnaise.' And we were like, 'Okay ... ' They said, 'No, you don't understand, this is the most coveted shelf at Walmart ??and you guys got it worldwide!' 'Cool! Mayonnaise and ketchup alright! We got it!' It's business. Because we have something people want to buy, we're getting a lot of support from the retailers."

How the Skylanders are born

The scope of how much quality control Toys for Bob have now wasn't made clear until I talked to I-Wei, who will draw, create loose sketches, make iterations??, and then get a 3D model printed in full color. He told me, "Once we have this in our hand, that's?? when we go, 'Okay, is this a cool toy? Do we like it?'"

I-Wei specifically showed me the many iterations of Bouncer, one of the new Giants characters. He first was this extremely fierce-looking robot with Gatling guns for hands. It reminded me of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, in fact. Cool but not something suitable for the kids. From this initial design, Paul and I-Wei tried to mold the character. They were set on giving him some type of gun-like weapon, and while trying to think of specific examples, they both kept using their own hands as a gun. It's somet?hing everyone has done with their hands, so they applied that idea to Bouncer.

From there they went through many different color designs and wheel designs, making sure that not?? only did he look cool from the front but also from the back and above, as that's what the player has to see in the game. I-Wei went through about a couple of dozen designs, from small to large changes, before settling on something on paper with Bouncer.

For the next step, the team modeled the character out in full 3D within the game, animating it and ma?king it strike different poses. Part of this process is to f?igure out the actual constraits for the toy, as they have to make sure that it both fits on the Portal alongside another toy as well as in its retail packaging.

Next they get feedback from Creata and the manufacturing process. If the design can't be mass produced within the set limitations then the design has to get altered yet again. Then there's the painting process -- this i??s something Paul and I-Wei really obsess over, debating back and forth with each other. Automation is not part of the paint process, and every paint stroke co??sts money. They first go about making the toy look cool then scale back, typically with the color schemes, in order make the toys affordable.

"If you compare [our toys] to what's on the shelf today in Toys 'R' Us or whatever around the same?? price range, this is a much higher quality 'cause we use so much more paint then anyone else," I-Wei tells me. "That's mostly because we care, first of all, about our characters. Originally, it w?as because we were ignorant. We weren't toy people, we just wanted cool toys.

"When we got prototypes back, it's like, 'No, that looks like crap, you knew you need to paint this part, and let's try doing this and this.' The toy companies are trying to tell us, 'You know, you're like twice more than what you should be. It'd be fin?e just doing this.' No, we just want a cool toy," was I-Wei's blunt answer to the manufacturers.

I-Wei pointed out a case filled with Skylanders figures across from him that all had something wrong with them. "We go through a lot of eyes, eyes are never painted right the firs??t 10 times." Bouncer in particular took a few months from concept to final version to complete. That's just one figure, but they're creating a lot of different characters at the same time, too.

"I was really fortunate that I got to participate," Paul told me. "I-Wei and I decided early on that he and I would work together to do all the character designs. He's the artist, the illustrator, and the modeler. So really, the vision of the characters is very strongly in his hands. What I come into it is saying, I come from a D&D play?er head, I'm like, 'Okay, I have this giant tree guy, and he's going to be really strong.' I started clenching my fist, and I-Wei would go off and start sketching.

"Sometimes, we'll get requests from the design department they'll say, 'Okay, we need a range guy, he's a fire range guy who's funny. Those are the things ??you guys have to work with.' But normally, I-Wei would bring me some sketches and I'll say, 'Oh my God, that guy's great. Now let's replace that crazy skull head with a furry little creature head,' and he would go do 40 variations on that. I-Wei sometimes just draws these crazy monsters, and I just get to play with them."

Paul explains, "[I]t's this amazing new creative job, but by shifting and taking more responsibility over the look of it, what we're able to do is really increase the quality of the toys." The toys and game models in Giants are 1:1 this time around, something that wasn't the case for the first game as they didn't have certain techno??logy at the time, specifically their gigantic 3D printer.

Improvements have of course happened on the game itself too, as the team knows what they're doing better for the sequel. "This time around, we really knew what we wanted to achieve on both on the toys and on the game." Combat is better, there's a better presentation and more variety, and they even got some more Hollywood talent. Patrick Warburton is back as Flynn, Richard Horvitz is back as Kaos (who's basically Invader Zim here, I mean, come on). New to the cast is George Takei of Star Trek fame and Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo. Kevin actually reached o?ut to Toys for Bob, asking if there was s?ome way he could be part of the game so he could score some cool points with his kids that love the series.

_{This is Crusher, a new Giants character voiced by Kevin Sorbo}

Dealing with pressure by focusing on quality

Skylanders is now one of Activision's biggest sellers with the likes of Call of Duty. That adds new pressure to the humble studio,?? but it's "the kind of problem you want to have," Paul tells me. "You can't look at the dollars and the numbers or you'll go insane. You have to just focus on the things that you can control, which are quality.

"There is tremendous pressure. We went from being nothing to being a half-billion dollar franchise. And of course [Activision] wants it to be more. We ?would love to do that too. We want more kids to enjoy our game. And ?success is good, it guarantees we continue to have jobs. The only way we can control it is quality, and that's what we focused on."

This time around, "[Toys for Bob] went into the toys and said, you know last time the way we worked with the? toy developers ??[and] the engineers was we would send them illustrations where we would send them in-game models and they would craft from 3D from the ground up. We would go back and forth with them many, many times trying to actually recreate the character that we created.

"This time, we bought a 3D printer, and we did all of the new characters in hi-res and ZBrush ourselves. So we sent them, this is exactly how it should look. We had the 3D prints, so we could send them a soli??d object and say this is how it should be colored, and then we would go back and forth on the paint operations."

The ultimate bar that Paul envisioned was reaching Nintendo heights. "When we started this project, we said, 'What do we need to achieve to make this work?' One of?? them was our game needs to stand up to Nintendo fi?rst-party titles. They're the gold standard of quality for our audience.

"Nintendo has a way of tracking how many hours people are spending with what games. We just surpassed Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 in terms of average number of hours players play Skylanders. That was as good as we could of imagined. We want kids who are spending money on these toys to feel like it was really worth it. Not only in terms o??f how cool the toy is but that they got more play value.

"I-Wei and I both have to evaluate stuff, and mine is 'Do I want to be this guy?' I-Wei's is 'Do I want to reach up on the shelf and buy this guy and convince mom to pay for it?' Without t??hat, it's too cerebral because toys are way more emotional. Physical objects trigger different relationships than virtual ones. I think they're more emotional, and I think they're more deeper in your brain."

Skylanders Giants is out today for the 3DS, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360, and coming November 18 on the Wii U. Read up on our review  for all that's new and improved.

[Special thanks to COIN-OP TV and Nintendo World Report for providing some of the photos. Go check out their video tours at Toys for Bob for more!]

The post Merging toys and videogames with Skylanders appeared first on Destructoid.

Activision ditches the Spyro moniker but keeps the fun intact

Skylanders was one of the biggest surprises of 2011. Pretty much everyone expected it to be a cheap cash-in of 9??0s nostalgia to sell toys to unsuspecting kids -- and boy, were we wrong.

It was actually a pretty fun, serviceable action game, and the toy cr??aze took off like wildfire. Now here we are in 2012 with the sequel, featuring even bigger Skylanders and even more toys.

In light of this, I have bad news for you folks: it's time to break ??out ??your wallets again.

Skylanders: Giants (3DS, Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360 [reviewed])
Developer: Toys For Bob (Mac, PC, PS3, Wii, Wii U, 360) / n-Space (3DS)
Publisher: Activision
Release: October 21, 2012 (3DS, Mac, PC, PS3, Wii, 360) / November 18, 2012 (Wii U)
MSRP: $74.99 (Starter Kit) / $59.99 (Portal Owner Pack)

As some of you may know, Skylanders incorporates physical toys -- lots of them! -- that you can pick up at your local brick and mortar store. Using a USB device called the "Portal of Power," you can digitize any number of the eight giants (read: big toys) or the 45+ smaller figures into your game. All the characters have a ??tiny microchip inside them that? captures and saves their data, such as the amount of coins you have, your experience, and what Gamertag/ID they're registered to.

Considering the main hook here is essentially peddling children's toys, I hope you aren't expecting a transcendent Machiavellian narrative of the subjugation of the proletariat. To be blunt, the setup is going to be really familiar with anyone who has ever watched a cartoo??n aimed at the 16-and-under group.

After the day was saved in the first game, the premise is basically your typical "big bad villain returns" scenario. The eight giants, once thought to be a myth to the citizens of Skylands, have now come out of hiding to band with the rest of the Skylanders and do battle with the evil ??wizard Kaos.

The tone is completely lighthearted, at times cheesy, but not overly hilarious. Just like the first game, it gets the job done. If you enjoy movies like the criminally under-appreciated The Emperor's New Groove, you'll have a good enough time in Skylands (especially so, as Patrick Warburton reprises his role from the first Skylanders, which is basically Kronk).

When it comes to gameplay, your experience will pretty much mirror any standard dungeon crawler you've tackled before. Obstacles range from simple puzzles to straight-up battles, and there's even a home base of operations with various merchants (like the Diablo series).

Giants themselves offer a new layer to the series, as they're required for traversing certain extra areas and obstacles, most of which are optional. They're large, they're lumbering, and as a result, most of them are slow, which may or may not suit your play style. That's totally fine, as the Skylanders series is built upon giving you the fr??eedom to use just about anyone you want (keep in mind that you will need a Giant on-hand for at least a few required areas, even if you can play 99% of the campaign wit??hout them).

As was the case with the previous game, the nuances of combat and exploration are going to be pretty basic, and since most characters don't jump, it probably couldn't even be considered a basic platformer. But it would be criminal to dismiss the game ba??sed on that premise, as there is a ton of depth here should you choose ??to dig further -- and what it does offer, it does very well.

First, the optional challenge missions are back. They're still quasi-difficult and task you with va?rious objectives like "destroy X amount of enemies in a certain amount of time," granting you bonuses should yo?u succeed. These can be done very easily from the main ship at the beginning of every stage, and they're even easier to get sucked into as you try to complete them all.

Challenges aren't the only thing that will test your mettle, however, as there's also a number of arenas to conquer, all of which net you some sort of reward. If you're feeling lonely, local multiplayer is thankfully supported by way of full two-player coop (for the entire campaign), and a fairly meaty versus mode that has a decent ??number of different gam??e types to choose from.

Add in hundreds of collectibles, a fully fledged Othello-like game called "Skystones," ability gems hidden in each level, stat-boosting hats (hats are all the rage these days, I'll tell ya), and optional in-game achievements that boost your stats and XP, and you have a full ga??me that inherently gives as much back as you put in.

If you're a completionist, you can level up your character to the increased cap of 15 (up from 10 in t?he first game). Earning XP and gold in multiplayer battles is also a nice touch (provided you have a local partner in crime, as there is sadly no online play support).

This all works well and good within the contained Giants ecosystem, but what about prior adopters? As we all know, Activision isn't the most reliable of folks when it comes to backwards compatibility, so I'm sure a lot of you are concerned whether or not Giants will play nice with your old toys.

Thankfully, I'm happy to report that Activision and Toys For Bob did a solid job of serving both games. Figuring out what works where is fairly simple: look at the bottom of your toy's base. If it's green, it's from the first game (Series 1), and if it's orange, it's from the second game (Series 2). All Series 2 characters that were carried over from the first game will work if you plug them back into the original. All new ??Series 2 characters (i.e. Giants) will not work with the original game (which is to be expected). These details are also clearly marked on the actual packaging for the toys.

All of this works pretty effortlessly, even without a patch or title update of any kind. For instance, my wife and I were playing coop in Giants and she proceeded to upgrade and level-up a toy she had picked up a year ago. After going back to the original game later that day, all her stats, coins, and abilities/upgrades were still there. So if you're interested in picking up the first game on the cheap some day, you can reap the benefits of re-u?sing select characters.

In terms of length, there are 16 stages, each which take about 30 minutes the first time through, or 10 to 15 minutes for speedruns. If you're looking for more replayability beyond going back to the original game or buying more toys, Giants has?? you covered with all of the modes and extras I mentioned above.

Aft?er playing through both titles, it's clear that a lot of heart went into the franchise. This should please fans both young and old, provided you're willing to go in with an open mind and embrace the simplicity.

Skylanders: Giants is a simple but i??ncredibly enjoyable game, packed with content should you decide to explore every nook and cranny. Despite the fact t?hat a lot of the characters are pay-walled behind what is essentially physical DLC, it's still perfectly serviceable even with just the characters in the standard package.

The post Review: Skylanders Giants appeared first on Destructoid.

Here's a nice look at all eight of the new Giants characters in Skylanders Giants. Thi?s may be old news to hardcore fans frantically look??ing for any bits of news on toys, but for everyone else you can see just how cool they all look.

There's a Thumpback, a giant-ass whale that uses an anchor to fight. Ninjini is a ninja that's also a genie. Eye-Brawl is a giant flying eye that's teamed up with a headle??ss body to fight as one. My favorite of all the G?iants though is Swarm.

I talked about Swarm a little before, and I got to see mor?e of the character during a recent hands-on demo. Each character has a surprisingly robust ?upgrade tree, and Swarm's is the best. Some of his later upgrades sees him transforming into a swarm of bees and anything that touches him will get hurt, Plus, he can take the shape of an axe and attack enemies with it as the swarm of bees.

Skylanders Giants will be out on October 21, 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii,?? and on November 18 for the Wii U.

The post A look at all the biggest Skylanders Giants charact?ers appeared first on Destructoid.

Activision has a number of games set for the Wii U, and Skylanders Giants is one of them. Players will be able to use the Wii U GamePad controller to perform actions, like dragging and dropping Skylanders heroes via the touch screen. You'll also be able to use the gyroscopic functionality of the controller to ??manipulate the game in some form.

The starter pack for the Wii U will ru?n ??$74.99, includes the Portal of Power adapter, and will come with the Jet-Vac, Cynder, and Tree Rex toys. Expect this pack to be out sometime this Holiday season.

Interesting that the Portal of Power is still needed for the Wii U version?, seeing as how the GamePad has the same technology ins?ide it now. Perhaps the next Skylanders game won't need the Portal?

The post Skylanders Giants for Wii U gets detailed appeared first on Destructoid.

Developer Toys for Bob showed off a few new characters for Skylanders Giants during gamescom this week. Amongst them was Swarm, a bee-like monster that's also one of the new oversized Giant characters??.

Look, bees and hornets are scary enough in real life. The?y f??ly around, stinging things, and are giant jerks. In the case of Swarm, he can hover slightly off the ground, uses melee attacks, and shoots beams of energy from his arms. His attacks aren't as scary as the real life bugs Swarm is based on, but he does look as intimidating. 

Another new character on display was Chill, who has a combination of defensive and offensive attacks. For ??instance, she can summon ice ??walls into the environment to protect against attacks. She can also push the ice walls at enemies to inflict some damage. Her other attacks include projectiles that have a wide range of impact, and a summon to bring in a flying Narwal to attack foes. 

Lastly there's Shroomboom, who has the most messed up backstory ever. Basically, he was born to be a pizza topping in the garden belonging to the main bad guy of Skylanders, Kao?s. He escaped, and now uses a variety of projectile attacks to fight with the Skylanders heroes. 

Skylanders Giants still felt as good as when I saw it at E3 not too long ago. It's a pretty straightforward sequel, adding a ton for players while keeping the core experience largely the same. You can expect Skylanders Giants out this Fall for the Xbox 360, Pla??yStation 3, 3DS, and Wii.

The post gamescom: Swarm is my favorite new Skylanders appeared first on Destructoid.

Skylanders fanatics will have to pre-order Skylanders Giants from GameStop if they want to get their hands on the exclusive Cannon Battle Pack. This limited edition pack contains series 2 versions of Chop Ch??op, Shroomboom, and the Golden Dragonfire Cannon. The Dragonfire Cannon also contains an exclusive in-game arena that you can only unlock with the toy.

I stayed away from the first Skylanders because I know I would have gotten sucked into the whole collection aspect with the toys. The more I see of Giants though, the more I know I'm going to finally break and spend all the monies on the toys. ALL?? THE MONIES!

Exclusive Skylanders Giants Battle Pack [Game Informer]

The post This exclusive ??Skylanders Giants set only at GameStop appeared first on Destructoid.

Activision has released assets and information on a new Skylanders character due to appear in Skylanders: Giants, an over-sized bee prince named Swarm??. The above video shows off some of his moves, which seem to include a lot of sla?shing and shooting of stingers. Natch. 

I haven't gone anywhere near Skylanders. I'm a little afraid to, if I'm being perfectly honest. I know who I am and what I'm capable of when I get locked into something with a collectible quality and there's just no way I could take on another addiction right now. There's also the issue of having to find a place to put all that stuff, but it's mostly the expectation that it would break me financially. It looks like a lot? of fun for those who can maintain a sense of discipline, though.

The post New Skylander Giant Swarm revealed in video and im?ages appeared first on Destructoid.

Activision enjoyed incredible success with Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure this past holiday, and the company is planning on building upon it one year later with a sequel, Skylanders Giants. By bringing a huge, destructive take on a title that's already a favorite among kids, Giants aims to put a fresh new spin on the game with ?larger-than-life (literally??) characters.

In the original Skylanders, players were quite limited in what they could do on each level, be it taking down enemies or traversing new planes. With th?e Giants awake, that is all changed.

Skylanders Giants (Xbox 360 [previewed], PlayStation 3, Wii)
Developer: Toys for Bob
Publisher: Activision
Release date: Fall 2012

Eight new Giants figures will join the Skylanders universe when Giants releases this fall, though every previous character from Spyro's Adventure will be playable in the new inst?allment, upgrades and al??l.

At yesterday's reveal event in New York, Activision only showed one Giant, "Tree Rex." During the demo, the player came to a point where he was surrounded by enemies, and jokingly said that that's where the brute force of the Giants comes into play. He was right. Instantly, the game had changed, and what were once-formidable foes quickly became little more than pesky ants. The ground shook as the Giant traversed the level, and every ro??ck and boulder in his path soon became a weapon.

The Giants are able to destroy certain parts of the environment, such as a nearby castle that didn't stand for much longer once it was in Tree Rex's view. But the destruction is more than just a visual effect; it can also be used to?? find new passages and hidden objects. One such example was the Giant plunging into a weakening patch of concrete, and after making contact he plummeted roughly twenty feet into the grounds of the castle. Getting out was easy as pie,?? too; all he had to do was smash through a few walls.

The world of Skylanders sees a bunch of floating is??lands adjacent to one another, and a time came in the demo when the Giant needed to get to another island. Said island had a chain attached to the bottom ?of it, so using what was called "Feat of Strength," the Giant pulled on the chain, bringing the previously distant island only a footstep away.

That was where the demo ended, but Activision made its goal perfectly clear: We got the cutesy Skylanders characters last year, but this year is all about brute force and destruction??.

The post Preview: Skylanders universe grows with Skylanders Gian??ts appeared first on Destructoid.

Activision has today revealed a follow-up to last year's surprisingly enjoyable Skylanders, continuing the idea of toys that can be scanned into an active videogame world. Skylanders Giants is an all-new game that will introduce a new batch of "giant" Skylanders that are more than twice the si??ze of the original figures. 

There will be eight new figures, and some will feature new "light technology" that will see them light up when placed near the "Portal of Power" peripheral. Eight new regular sized Skylanders will also be introduced, and Giants will be compatible with all the toys already re?leased for last year's title. 

In terms of the game itself, Giants promises wider worlds, with new challenges and battle modes. ?The titular giants will also have gameplay and abilities that reflect their large size. 

I really liked Skylanders, so I'm eager to see how this on?e fares. Hopefully the gimmick hasn?'t worn thin already!

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