The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’m probably going to write more about Skylanders 3DS once I beat it, as well as do another review of all the new Skylanders I have because I am ridiculous and bought so many. However, I just feel like I should comment on how the 3DS game works mechanically, because I find it really interesting.

In normal Skylanders, you have your Portal of Power next to you at all times. By throwing stuff onto the Portal, you can quickly swap characters, add or remove a second player, or activate powerups. This is a really awesome process that feels very dynamic and natural. It’s also kind of a tense situation a lot of the time. “Oh crap, I need to swap to a Skylander with full health, but looking away from the screen to find my Skylander and slam it onto the Portal might get me killed, here goes nothing!” That’s really damn cool. That’s what made me such a big fan of Skylanders. That base mechanic of swapping out physical objects is just something you don’t get in a video game.

Now obviously they needed a 3DS version of the game. Gotta sell that second copy to crazy people like me, and get those without consoles proper hooked on the toys. However, the basic mechanics of Skylanders I’ve just outlined don’t work in a portable game. You can’t count on a player having the Portal of Power there at all times. You can’t hook the Portal of Power to the 3DS via a USB cable for near-instant transfers and swaps. You can’t expect kids to have their full collection of Skylanders on hand at all times.

Thus, they’ve got this weird storage system. You use the Portal to draw the souls of the Skylanders into these crystals. You can have two at a time, and swap between them, but you can only change crystals in between levels. With the powerups, you can store one of them to the R button, and it costs in-game radiance to activate, instead of having a limited use time in each level. They won’t let you just store every single Skylander and power to the game, because then you don’t need to buy Skylanders, you can just scan your buddy’s, which is kind of evil of them, but I also understand why that’s the case.

This solves the “I want to play but don’t have my tons of toys around” problem, in general, but I find it’s much less satisfying than being able to swap on the fly. The levels have Elemental Challenges, so you have to double check the level you’re going to play and prep Skylanders for those challenges before you go in, which, to me, is just a lot less fun than throwing in random Skylanders as the level calls for them. It also makes having more powerups less appealing. I can only equip one, and I’m me, so I’m always going to have the Healing Elixir. Instead of making you more powerful, able to do random stuff, you just kind of feel like you have all these powerups but none of them ever get any use.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am having a ton of fun with 3DS Skylanders. But it’s clear that this sort of thing doesn’t have the magic of the “main” game. It’s fun because I have the main game, and this is a little side story to fuck around with. However, I just can’t imagine someone with just this 3DS game getting as hooked on these stupid things as I am. The 3DS version just doesn’t stand up on its own, in my opinion, though it works great as a companion game. That’s kind of a shame, because the main game really is a lot of fun and I’m sure there are little kids out there that only have a 3DS or portable system who would love Skylanders. Oh well.