Date played: August 5thPlatform: Wii U
Session fun rating: 8/10
It's not obvious to me that I am a gamer dad. My three year old daughter has been in many video game stores with me and has always loved looking at the Skylanders figures. I saw the starter pack on sale for 40$ and caved. I bought the starter pack as well as three additional figurines, one for each member of the family. I got the game on Wii U which includes the portal of power, the giant Tree Rex, Jetvac and Cynder. I bought Hex, Ignitor and Whirlwind separately.
The game is a sort of brawler with loot. It's obviously aimed at kids, with shitty graphics, a cartoon art style and a very dumb and light story. The key feature is the portal of power thing. Dropping a Skylander figurine onto the portal spawns it in the video game. Swapping Skylanders works very well, is fast and tons of fun.
I played in co-op with my girlfriend and put my daughter in charge of changing the creatures. She got a real kick out of just putting different characters on screen and was nice enough to put on the needed creature when the game required it. We only played the first level, though we played it three times to unlock all hidden items. I also scored some hats that act as stat increasing equipment. While I'm not expecting much from the game itself, the figurine stuff is really cool.
