QCF: Skylanders Swap Force

emember when you landed on those Card-playing mini-game spots that were scattered through various overworld maps in Super Mario Bros 3. that required you match three pieces of a Mushroom, Fire Flower, or Power Star? Yeah, and if you ever stopped the button press on the wrong piece to whatever you first choose, you would have this swapped abomination of Mario sin that awarded you nothing—Well, that’s the newest gimmick in the latest Skylanders entry.

A main entry into the franchise developed by Vicarious Visions entirely this time around, the Skylanders team is aware of Disney and Nintendo even are now dabbling in the toy craze that Activision and Toys for Bob have introduced to us back in 2011 and Skylanders has to do a little more than make them bigger. That’s where Swap Force comes in, the 2013 sequel encourages players to break the newest toys to join the line in half, and interchange them into different combinations.

While the notion of Portal Masters getting to play Frankenstein sounds like a promising one, the Pandora’s Box of seeking out and buying the new figures is starting to wear out its welcome, and it’s a shame too; considering all of the other improvements make it the best game yet otherwise.

Considered “Baldur’s Gate for babies” in the gaming wild, Swap Force has added enough to its combat to debunk the label with some refinements that give players more agency than ever before. This may sounds silly to lead into the list of improvements to combat mechanics but players can now freely make their Skylander jump from pressing a button on the controller—no more of that contextual jump-pad nonsense. It may not sound like having the constant ability to jump at your disposal will significantly play into fighting Kaos’ minions but it does. Enemy mobs are enforced in larger numbers, with  arena sequences being more common in this iteration, meaning players will encounter foes who constantly try to flank them resulting in jumping becoming a vital strategy—especially against bad guys who have spread-fire attacks. Aside from that, attacking and movement is much smoother in Swap Force, actions no longer feel sluggish whether you’re attacking or evading—which plays out a whole sweeter when you start swapping.

Swap Force characters have an extra advantage of an extra ability tree that they can be upgraded that’s distinguished from the torso versus the base, adding more to their effectiveness. Depending on what kind of branches you choose top power up, certain combinations of different Swapped halves complement each other better than their original counterparts ever will, and finding that right combination that works for you is genuinely gratifying. The process of Upgrading/leveling up your army of cartoon warriors is circumvented into a much more seamless flow that expedites the time it would have normally taken to  advance the elemental critters in the past. The first are the changes made to the Arena battles that you can initiate within the Woodburrow hub-world; chaining attacks against foes while evading them will grow a multiplier bar, the higher the bar, the more experience you get from defeating mobs. Keeping the multiplier as high as you can against subsequent waves will  earn you anywhere between three to four extra levels for the Skylander in play within just one outing in the Arena if the multiplier is kept at max or close to it.

In addition, you’re now given the ability to equip certain perks to gameplay in the form of charms back in Woodburrow, perks that add a number of boosts like increasing the amount of money earned which allows you to buy upgrades efficiently, or additional elemental buffs that are constant for that favorite Skylander character feel even more powerful. Little tune-ups like being able to upgrade in certain areas of a physical stage to additional hats and quests, Swap Force is has the most accessible barrier of entry and the most refined mechanics and yet, certain shady fundamentals in the overall design die-hard. The somewhat cheeky yet completely logical subliminal campaign to promote Skylander collecting within the gameplay is just unsavory more than it is appealing.

Skylanders has always been for a lack of a better deduction, a renaissance of the Saturday morning commercialism craze from the late eighties to early nineties; build a charming property that stars a large and continually growing assortment of colorfully vibrant characters that easily interpret into collectible toy line with incentives for buying more. While the series has never shied away from some arguably brazen tactics to promote their figurines through physical dynamics of gameplay, Vicarious Visions has pushed that questionably devious envelope even further.

See, in the previous two go-arounds, if Players wanted to unlock the most of the stage they were traversing through, they were going to need a collection of figurines that’s composed of the game’s eight elements, and then a Giant character in order to get through certain gated areas of the level. So this formula was somewhat reasonable in its ingredients to get the full Skylander recipe for families and kids to invest in especially those who only wish to gently wade into the market for buying extra figurines—but Swap Force just flat-out doesn’t respect your wallet. While adding gates does incentivize more collecting, it eventually comes to a stop at eight, the new gates in stages now incorporate different combinations, along with other gates that require specific abilities that are exclusive to Swap Force characters.

While it’s to be expected considering this is mostly status quo for the franchise, the frequency in which you’re asked to supply Swap Force figurines with the right requirements versus the normal gates that ask for your single element or Giant is a disproportionate ratio. Most of the time it stinks when you see so many of these Swap specific areas because it almost devalues the Skylander figures that players may already own just because they can’t Swap, this kind of exclusion never existed in the series before, even when Giants were introduced.

If there’s one thing this sequel nails down better than anything else, it’s definitely the presentation. The animation is as whimsical as it is beautiful, projecting a seamless motion of frames that propels the visuals into Pixar-quality territory versus Dreamworks. Colors are constantly parading the screen the moment the title screen is advanced, with each aesthetic boasting a radiant palate be it a forest or a haunted temple. The dialogue and humor is still centered around the kiddies but hearing the likes of Patrick Warburton and Richard Steven Horvitz deliver their lines definitely sells presentation, regardless of the demographic it caters to.

With no pun intended, Swap Force has a weird duality attached to it. Swap Force is the Skylander series at its best for both fans and new players, but the investment that comes with it is just as hard whether this is your third time around or your first time and it’s even harder to justify.

Swap Force is still a blast despite the ulterior commercialism, but if the trend continue to escalate then we may see some of the nastier elements of toy culture hitting the series like vehicles and play-sets, and then it may just not matter how fun the game may be anymore.