darkSpyro

While the rest of this forum might be complaining about the lack of info for Trap Team (can't say I blame them) I've been looking back on the series and trying to analyze the games. What I found through multiple play sessions actually suprised me

I found that the game I enjoyed the most was the original Spyro's Adventure. You might ask yourself, "Why?" At first, but, trust me, it'll all make sense. I feel the original game had something that I didn't think achievable for such limitations graphics wise. Atmosphere. The level layout, the THEMES of the levels, all the NPC's created a very atmospheric game to me. It's not perfect, the in-game cutscenes, while funny, had a strange way of flowing. You see, it takes a millisecond pause for the game to load it's next character dialogue segment. I notice that pause and it bothers me and takes me out of the game. That and the Elemental Areas don't match up with the Element the gate is assigned to.

With all that in mind, there is one other thing that sets SSA as my favorite, Character and Toy Design! I fell in love with these creative, original characters the moment I saw them on the website. They weren't as complex as say a roller derby vampire girl or, heck, a dinosaur on a gyro copter, but they were still cool. The reason why characters like Trigger Happy, Eruptor, Stealth Elf, etc. are so popular was their simple yet effective design. I mean, who wouldn't want to play as a gunslinging gremlin, he looked GENUINELY FUN! That's the key word here, FUN! These characters didn't need Swapping or Traptanium to make me want to buy them, the original characters just needed to be super awesome characters that had cool abilities. What I'm trying to get at here is, I buy these characters and upgrade them because their designs are creative and special and cool with neat abilities to go along with them. I feel that SSA pulled this off the best.

Hopefully, Trap Team will follow a similar structure to that of Spyro's Adventure. I've heard the original short levels make a return here. That's good, but I want to see more elements from the first game come back like elementally themed areas that aren't restricted to element zones or maybe more connection from Hub to Game. I loved the slight change in background during certain parts of the game. It was sort of replicated in Giants but not to the same effect... Plus the Giants hub sucked so... yeah!

But, hey... That's just my opinion. What's yours? Do you like SSA, Giants or Swap Force the best and WHY!

Not even close. SSA. More heart and soul, loved the elemental level designs. The other two are good for other reasons, but the king still lives.

No lightcores, no variants, just new fresh characters. Wish they would "retro" their toy marketing strategy as well.

Quote: GhostRoaster

Not even close. SSA.

Is it for the same reasons I posted? I kind of wanted to have a very in depth discussion about this.

EDIT: IGNORE ME, YOU GAVE REASONS!

Quote: GhostRoaster

Not even close. SSA. More heart and soul, loved the elemental level designs. The other two are good for other reasons, but the king still lives.

No lightcores, no variants, just new fresh characters. Wish they would "retro" their toy marketing strategy as well.

Technically there were still legendaries... And Chase variants.

You name it, SSA had it. Yes graphics were limiting (but I've yet to see a villain catch fire since SSA), but I grew up with dedicated Pong consoles on my TV before upgrading to a 4k Atari 2600, so gameplay matters most to me. Still love the music, the "dungeon" feeling, and the feeling of having a REAL antagonist. He's little more than a comedy sketch now.

Also, the law of diminishing returns apply. Activision is rehashing the same formula, and like the episode of Johnny Test "101 Johnnies" a copy of a copy becomes less ammenable over time and degrades. So is the series, because the suits don't have enough guts to change some of the core mechanics.



Legendaries are ok, I was talking about the dozen or so repaint in game variants that are now customary. and chase variants showed up very late, and poorly planned--it was clearly an afterthought.

Yeah, there was a steady increase in variants after the first game. I don't collect them much so I'm fine. Heck, I only have Six variants in total, and I only picked them up since they were readily available to me.

I thought the point of a rare variant was to be... Rare. When I see more Legendary Night Shifts then regular ones in a Toys R Us, that's gonna be a bit of a problem

PS Am I the only one that doesn't think Johnny Test wasn't that bad of a show?

My kids (and sometimes myself) watch Johnny Test on Netflix from time to time. And Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. Cartoons are sometimes better than real shows, if you ask me.

Quote: GhostRoaster

My kids (and sometimes myself) watch Johnny Test on Netflix from time to time. And Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. Cartoons are sometimes better than real shows, if you ask me.

Glad you and I share the same guilty pleasure show.

SA for all the reasons you guys gave. It has the most heart and it wasn't choked with unnessicary LightCores, S2s etc (there were still variants, but those of the later games horribly outnumber them).

SF had some of the best mechanics- aside from the stupid dialogue skipping mechanics- like improvements to knockback making combat more interesting and jumping making the environment design more organic, plus some of the new modes are really great, but it lacks the heart SA had.

Giants is not bad. It has some notable improvements over SA and an interesting, darker feel than the other games- but SF's improvements are more significant and Giants didn't keep the magic of SA, while having some of the most sloggy levels in the series.

I like Giants the most.

Spyro's Adventure didn't have many things to do rather than complete heroic challenges and get stars. And I couldn't 100% the game as I don't have any adventure packs. I bought Spyro's Adventure last Summer so adventure packs were pretty hard to find that time. Also Darklight Crypt will be impossible to find to get everything in the game. But the Kaos battles were pretty good. I know most of you like this game, but I wasn't playing Skylanders when this game was around. So I don't have the exact experience with the game and collection.

As for Swap Force, I was getting pretty tired with it after playing the story over and over again trying to upgrade my skylanders. Every time I would go back to Woodburrow Rufus will say what he has to say over and over again. It's pretty annoying. I think this game isn't like the other two in terms of style. Also this game has some ridiculously hard challenges. Like no-damage boss battles and swap zones.

So it's Giants that takes the cake. It's the only game which I can 100% right now (I don't have both adventure packs for SSF yet). No pay-to-win adventure packs getting in the way. And sixteen long levels which I like the visuals from. Also, the boss battles are really awesome. Chompy Mage has the danmaku-style projectile patterns, Drill-X's phrases and boss theme are epic, and the final boss was amazing. I love how when the laser eyes activate the music goes "WOOOOOAAAA" something like that.

Spyro's Adventure was also my favorite for not just originality and creativity, but also for introducing some of the most original characters I've seen in a game in years.

Swap Force was a close second and was gonna be my favorite if it didn't have problems with unavoidable cut-scenes and overhyped characters that didn't translate well.

Giants was easily my least favorite because of long levels, a not so exciting feature with the giants and sadly the smallest cast of not so original, fun, or creative characters to choose from. Still like some of them like and , but it doesn't excuse the lack of imagination they had for that game.

even if it was not perfect, SSA was the best, it was a spyro game at heart.(i guess it was the last anything spyro game we got)

i have stayed with 3 games now and it have gotten less fun for each releases. i have enough figurines and the game content get less, older figures get nerfed and more useless gimmicks get priority. i think many of us are at a cross road now, specially since there is no online gameplay. we know there will be a skylanders 5 game, so it maybe just good to take a break and wait for that.

I might be a little bit biased, given I just got the game recently and haven't finished everything I plan to do in it yet, but out of the Skylanders games, Swap Force is definitely my favorite by far.

I was skeptical at first because just because they added jumping, doesn't mean they actually added platforming; and watching gameplay that VV put out there to show off didn't convince me they actually added platforming. But, as I found out, they did. Swap Force has the most variety of any Skylanders game: with the basic combat in the main areas, some platforming to get to hidden areas, all sorts of challenges in the elemental zones, and of course the different gameplay found in each Swap Zone.

I can't help but to compare it to my favorite Spyro game: Ripto's Rage, and really, the challenges have the same difficulty. Some are ridiculously easy, some are hard the first time you play them, but with practice become second nature (okay I don't know if the second nature part is true about Swap Force yet, but I've improved at the fishing games a lot since I first encountered one, at least).

Another thing about Swap Force that I enjoy, is that I haven't thus far needed a guide in order to find all of the collectables. That's not to say some aren't well-hidden (I missed quite a few my first go through), but they aren't hidden unintuitively. It frustrated me to no end that in SSA you had to know you have to be a life Skylander on a specific bed of flowers to get that one Legendary Treasure. There were no hints that there was even a legendary treasure hidden in a building that would blow up if you happened to shoot that cannon twice. In Giants, there were several areas that you had to lift up everything that a Giant could lift because - who knows? - there might be something hidden in one of these statues or rocks that looks exactly the same as all the others.

Swap Force also does not hold your hand nearly as much as the TFB games. In SSA and Giants, if there is something that you need that happens to be offscreen when you get to the area (like a key or something), the camera will point to everywhere you need to go to progress before you can attempt to solve the puzzle. Or, if the puzzle involved pushing blocks, you needed to push each one as much as you could. After you finished doing that, puzzle solved. Swap Force doesn't do this nearly to that degree. Sure, in the hub, it'll show you where to go if you need to talk to someone you haven't spoken to before, or if they aren't in the docks. But in the actual levels, it lets you explore around and solve the puzzle yourself. Sure, the puzzles aren't hard to solve, but neither are the ones in SSA and Giants.

And also pettier reasons like the fact that the Shock and Bolt puzzles are more fun to me than the Lock Puzzles and Skystones, and that you can 3-star all of the exploration levels without speedrunning (which I don't care for).

Of course, SSA does do better in creativity of playable characters, and the magic of being a Portal Master, (and having skippable cutscenes) but it lacks in all-around fun in my opinion. It is a solid kids game, but SF is a solid "E for EVERYONE" game.

I like SSA because it has all the basics and the best hub. However the dark places where there was very little lit up make it a little bit worse.

I like Giants because there are a few more characters, however, the levels were shorter.. And less levels, less fun ones as well.

I like SSF because of the Swapping. But the levels were too long. The mechanics seemed a bit different too..

Overall, I have no idea which one I like best..

I predict that I would like Trap Team best though. The mechanics look a bit more like the first two games, the characters can all play and villains can be trapped.

Quote: Technos

I like Giants the most.

Spyro's Adventure didn't have many things to do rather than complete heroic challenges and get stars. And I couldn't 100% the game as I don't have any adventure packs. I bought Spyro's Adventure last Summer so adventure packs were pretty hard to find that time. Also Darklight Crypt will be impossible to find to get everything in the game. But the Kaos battles were pretty good. I know most of you like this game, but I wasn't playing Skylanders when this game was around. So I don't have the exact experience with the game and collection.

As for Swap Force, I was getting pretty tired with it after playing the story over and over again trying to upgrade my skylanders. Every time I would go back to Woodburrow Rufus will say what he has to say over and over again. It's pretty annoying. I think this game isn't like the other two in terms of style. Also this game has some ridiculously hard challenges. Like no-damage boss battles and swap zones.

So it's Giants that takes the cake. It's the only game which I can 100% right now (I don't have both adventure packs for SSF yet). No pay-to-win adventure packs getting in the way. And sixteen long levels which I like the visuals from. Also, the boss battles are really awesome. Chompy Mage has the danmaku-style projectile patterns, Drill-X's phrases and boss theme are epic, and the final boss was amazing. I love how when the laser eyes activate the music goes "WOOOOOAAAA" something like that.

Actually, I didn't get SSA until the April of the year that giants was going to be released. The adventure packs were still easy to find for me. I finished off my collection with getting Voodood (He was incredibly hard to find for me) in the Summer of that year.

Seems like a lot of you choose SSA (including me) because of its charm and atmosphere. I can certainly agree, I think we should ask ourselves a different question now.

What game had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? Not reposes or lightcores. What do you feel was the greatest example of original, creative character design. Not so easy now, huh.

For me, this is where I give the point to Swap Force. Yes, the SSA Skylanders are classics, but when you get down to it, a magma rock monster isn't all that creative. A lot of the designs were simple but effective. That's the thing, though... they were EXTREMELY simple. Give a skeleton some armor, a sword and a shield and BAM, you got your Undead character. How about Camo or Warnado? Dragon with a leaf tail and turtle with a tornado at the bottom. You see what I'm getting at.

Swap Force, I feel, did much more with their character design. I mean, a roller derby vampire girl. That is something that I wouldn't have come up with in a million years! How about some of the Swap Force themselves. An ice cat that throws a ice chakram... I didn't even know what that was until Freeze Blade came around. Don't even get me started on Doom Stone! That is just a brilliant Skylander design! What I'm saying is that Swap Force took the design of the Skylanders a step further than previous games in terms of design of the Skylanders. Like I said, SSA is still my favorite in terms of overall game feel. But, in a game where you go out and buy the characters you want to play as... I think Swap Force succeeded with making me love the aesthetics of the toy I was picking up from TRU more than SSA.
While, I do admit I loved SSA's characters, that was ONLY after I played them. Swap Force however, not only did the characters play great, they looked well thought out and creative, to me at least.

What game did you think had the greatest new Skylanders?

Quote: Toynerd14

Seems like a lot of you choose SSA (including me) because of its charm and atmosphere. I can certainly agree, I think we should ask ourselves a different question now.

What game had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? Not reposes or lightcores. What do you feel was the greatest example of original, creative character design. Not so easy now, huh.

that is easy.... ssa had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.

Quote: CountMoneyBone

Quote: Toynerd14

Seems like a lot of you choose SSA (including me) because of its charm and atmosphere. I can certainly agree, I think we should ask ourselves a different question now.

What game had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? Not reposes or lightcores. What do you feel was the greatest example of original, creative character design. Not so easy now, huh.

that is easy.... ssa had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.

But why?

Best new characters.
I have to give that to Giants.
SSA had some amazing characters, but some terrible ones too.
SSF is the same as SSA.
Giants, I liked almost all characters. All but Swarm. Jet-Vac and Sprocket were okay.

It seems we're polar opposites, Toynerd14, since I think SSA had the best designs.

I remember reading in an interview that for SSA, TFB took 8 elements, and thought: How many things can we do with this element? Because of this, the cast of SSA was very diverse. Sure, there were some that seemed less inspired than others, but each character that I played seemed directly inspired by their element (aside from Stealth Elf, but that's why she's my favorite Life Skylander: she's not made of plants!). There was something for everyone, and all of the characters felt unique.

Giants retreaded old territory with some of its characters: especially the Giants themselves. Design-wise, Crusher was a huge Prism Break, Ninjini a huge Stealth Elf, and Hot Head a huge Eruptor. In fact, looking at all of the Giants together in one place, I realize why I don't like them so much: they're all humanoids! The core characters seemed to be a bit more inspired, and did add some of my favorites: Flashwing, Fright Rider, and Hot Dog.

Swap Force was basically nothing but humanoids. One of the big turn-offs about this game was that I had to get at least 8 characters that I had no interest in to 100% the game. Give me some choice! I know why they chose to make them all humanoids, but would it have been that terrible to add a centaur or a similar theme? I guess Spy Rise was okay, but I'm not a huge fan of Tech Element characters in general. Out of a total cast of 32 new Skylanders, VV added 3 non-humanoids: Pop Thorn, Scratch, and Slobber Tooth. Of those, Scratch was the only one I would get alone. (as in not in a 3-pack with 2 other characters I like or in an adventure pack)

Look at the numbers:
Spyro's Adventure 32 Skylanders, 11 non-humanoids ~34%
Giants 16 Skylanders, 2 non-humanoids 12.5%
Swap Force 32 Skylanders, 3 non-humanoids ~9%

Since I prefer 4-legged heroes to 2-legged ones, SSA definitely has the best selection to choose from, in my opinion.

Well, the thing is that the humanoid characters are still unique in Swap Force. I think they had to make the humanoid characters for the swap mechanic. They did well for what the gimmick allowed for. I never felt like they came to being the same characters.

Well, I didn't read through this completely, but put of what I did read I agree with the majority. SSA was my favorite. Not only was it the first of the series, meaning it was innovative, it had amazing characters, most of which are still some of my favorites, it also had all sorts of things that the others didn't.

It had both shorter and longer levels, really fun NPCs, an easy flow, an awesome, and still my favorite, hub, and best of all, it had the feel that you were actually a portal master!

Now I want to go play it!

Quote: Toynerd14

What game had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? Not reposes or lightcores. What do you feel was the greatest example of original, creative character design. Not so easy now, huh.

For me, this is where I give the point to Swap Force. Yes, the SSA Skylanders are classics, but when you get down to it, a magma rock monster isn't all that creative. A lot of the designs were simple but effective. That's the thing, though... they were EXTREMELY simple. Give a skeleton some armor, a sword and a shield and BAM, you got your Undead character. How about Camo or Warnado? Dragon with a leaf tail and turtle with a tornado at the bottom. You see what I'm getting at.

Swap Force, I feel, did much more with their character design. I mean, a roller derby vampire girl. That is something that I wouldn't have come up with in a million years! How about some of the Swap Force themselves. An ice cat that throws a ice chakram... I didn't even know what that was until Freeze Blade came around. Don't even get me started on Doom Stone! That is just a brilliant Skylander design! What I'm saying is that Swap Force took the design of the Skylanders a step further than previous games in terms of design of the Skylanders. Like I said, SSA is still my favorite in terms of overall game feel. But, in a game where you go out and buy the characters you want to play as... I think Swap Force succeeded with making me love the aesthetics of the toy I was picking up from TRU more than SSA.
While, I do admit I loved SSA's characters, that was ONLY after I played them. Swap Force however, not only did the characters play great, they looked well thought out and creative, to me at least.

What game did you think had the greatest new Skylanders?

Wait a sec, watch out your words. You're talking about ARCHETYPES,not character design.

Good archetypes are a bunch of smart characteristics thrown together which work together - say, as you mentioned yourself,Roller Brawl - vampire skater girl.Swap Force does that well and I really can't deny that.
Good character design is a character that passes the Sillhouette Test - you have to see the guy without colors, without acessories(including hair or weapons), and STILL recognize him. Swap Force takes a big dump on that, and I made enormous pictures analyzing them several times and gone unheard several times. All swappers and all girl landers from that game look the same once you analyze their character designs.

Please use the correct terms for this kind of stuff, every time someone does that I feel like making the huge walls of text against SF's overall laziness and I usually kill the thread with that.
(and in topic, Giants is my favorite. SSA is the best,but Giants holds a special place in my heart.)

Quote: Bifrost

Quote: Toynerd14

What game had the best ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? Not reposes or lightcores. What do you feel was the greatest example of original, creative character design. Not so easy now, huh.

For me, this is where I give the point to Swap Force. Yes, the SSA Skylanders are classics, but when you get down to it, a magma rock monster isn't all that creative. A lot of the designs were simple but effective. That's the thing, though... they were EXTREMELY simple. Give a skeleton some armor, a sword and a shield and BAM, you got your Undead character. How about Camo or Warnado? Dragon with a leaf tail and turtle with a tornado at the bottom. You see what I'm getting at.

Swap Force, I feel, did much more with their character design. I mean, a roller derby vampire girl. That is something that I wouldn't have come up with in a million years! How about some of the Swap Force themselves. An ice cat that throws a ice chakram... I didn't even know what that was until Freeze Blade came around. Don't even get me started on Doom Stone! That is just a brilliant Skylander design! What I'm saying is that Swap Force took the design of the Skylanders a step further than previous games in terms of design of the Skylanders. Like I said, SSA is still my favorite in terms of overall game feel. But, in a game where you go out and buy the characters you want to play as... I think Swap Force succeeded with making me love the aesthetics of the toy I was picking up from TRU more than SSA.
While, I do admit I loved SSA's characters, that was ONLY after I played them. Swap Force however, not only did the characters play great, they looked well thought out and creative, to me at least.

What game did you think had the greatest new Skylanders?

Wait a sec, watch out your words. You're talking about ARCHETYPES,not character design.

Good archetypes are a bunch of smart characteristics thrown together which work together - say, as you mentioned yourself,Roller Brawl - vampire skater girl.Swap Force does that well and I really can't deny that.
Good character design is a character that passes the Sillhouette Test - you have to see the guy without colors, without acessories(including hair or weapons), and STILL recognize him. Swap Force takes a big dump on that, and I made enormous pictures analyzing them several times and gone unheard several times. All swappers and all girl landers from that game look the same once you analyze their character designs.

Please use the correct terms for this kind of stuff, every time someone does that I feel like making the huge walls of text against SF's overall laziness and I usually kill the thread with that.
(and in topic, Giants is my favorite. SSA is the best,but Giants holds a special place in my heart.)

Huh, I guess you're right. I still think Swap Force's Skylanders are the best. They are the coolest to me.

Cool doesn't mean well done though. I barely liked triangle chested guys with stubby legs on the game before (Jet-Vac, Voodood), let alone 16 of them at once. And no, it's not because they're Swappers, you could make different faces and leg or chest structures and they wouldn't look out of place - as long as the waist length is the same. But hey, this isn't about the best or the most well done game, this is about favorites, you can like whatever you want and I don't really want to question that.

The best new characters to me are from Trap Team, but that's because during SSA the more traditional archetypes grew on me - Hex, Ignitor, Sonic Boom... TT is visibly reusing some models but it's giving them such new twists and alterations to them that it feels like the character was made from scratch, and even better if that comes with fun gameplay.

Swap Force. All the new gameplay additions, the amazing graphics, and the Swap Force themselves really made the game shine for me.

Definitely SSA. They had some great character designs. Plus, they had a lot of characters in SSW and SG that felt like repaints. Like, Ninjini and Stealth Elf. Or Grim Creeper and Ignitor.

For me it will be Giants. It was the first game I played and, despite the fact that I didn't want to buy it because of the giant money pit this series is, having watched and played some of the game I couldn't resist. Giants had great levels, the core characters (for the most part) had great designs, Series 2 characters were actually worth buying with path switching and the extra power, the actual giant characters could be upgraded with speed heroics to make them more useful. Once they had the max speed, the giants would rip apart levels with ease. I loved doing the Kaos' Kastle level with new Skylanders, easily leveling them up with the right Luck-O-Tron wheels. I actually kind of hope Trap Team has the Luck-O-Tron again, I really liked how much that helped me with leveling and quests. Giants was a game that I played every day since I had gotten it, abandoning all other games at the time. I actually looked forward to getting home after work and playing with new characters in Giants.

I'm still playing SSA for the first time, and I enjoyed that one as much as Giants. I miss some of the features of the second game (graphics, Luck-O-Tron, Quests, etc.) but I find it just as fun. These games (on the 360) had achievements that gave us actually challenges to play in the levels, which made the replay value of levels even higher.

Swap Force was the worst in my opinion. On a positive note, it had better graphics, levels were longer to play through the first time and the online comparisons made things like bonus missions and the arenas more fun to do. However, I didn't feel the overall content of the game was as good. Old characters were made worse to play as than the new characters, which I didn't appreciate. Variants had nothing different about them compared to their regular counterparts. Nitro guys were no faster than the regulars. Portal Master Rank cap meant that I stopped caring about accolades after getting to rank 80. They should have just let the rank go up until there were no more stars left. I would have still been motivated to keep going with it. Even though I liked the longer levels during the initial plays, they were a pain to use for just leveling up characters after a while. I don't think the problem was the actual level itself, as much as the cut scenes you couldn't skip making them more annoying. Oh and this game had Rufus and Gorm... that's all I'll say about them. This game ended up on my shelf for a few months because of how disappointed I was in it, then started it up again in March. It has since gone unused since the beginning of April, only being put in to add any new characters I bought for SSA to my SF collection. Oh, and no heroics (especially speed ones). For some reason, this game hated giving out speed boosts, as noted by the single +1 speed charm. There's a lot more I could say about SF, but I've already said it in the past at great length.

This one is difficult for me. Spyro's Adventure was the first game that I played. I have a mild attachment to it because it was the birth of this game. I also like all the original characters that came out for Spyro's Adventure. That is one thing I wish the game would go back to. While I do like a few variants, I feel that the game has gotten out of control as far as the amount of characters made each game. Who needs Star Strike, Light Core Star Strike, and Enchanted Star Strike? I don't know, but that just bugs me. Sure, maybe some people like having all of those characters, but as a collector and completist, it makes things really difficult. To me, this is just evidence that Activision is squeezing all they can out of this for as long as they can. Still, I love the game and I love the figures. But that is something I miss about SA.

SA is pretty simple. The mechanics are strong, the story is strong, and it is overall a good game. However, SWAP Force has the ability to jump, which is AWESOME. Also, the replayability on SF is outrageous. Maybe it is just me, but I've found that SF has given me many, many, many.... hundreds of enjoyable game time. The amount of things to collect, complete, achieve seems astronomical to me. Of course, I don't get to play for hours and hours each day but when I do find time to play, there is always something to do. This may be partly do to the amount of characters available. I just bashed that earlier... ehhh, nothing wrong with a little contradiction. Nah, but with the amount of characters from SA, Giants, and SF... you can easily play through levels over and over with different characters and find more joy in it. The different move sets, the different styles... it all makes a difference to me.

Overall, both games are exceptional. Even though SA is the birth of the game and I hold strongly to that, SF has provided me with a game that has lasted all year. I bought the game just a month or two after it came out. My wife and I have played it, hunted for figures, you name it... for almost a year. While some may bash SF, claiming that it is not like the original game or it just isn't a good game overall, I find that SF is the best Skylanders game out of the two previously mentioned.

NOTE: This may change drastically in a few weeks when I land a copy of Giants, start playing it, and report back. I've also started collecting Giants figures... AND finding really good deals on them! WOOOOOT.

Quote: Eggers

For me it will be Giants. It was the first game I played and, despite the fact that I didn't want to buy it because of the giant money pit this series is, having watched and played some of the game I couldn't resist. Giants had great levels, the core characters (for the most part) had great designs, Series 2 characters were actually worth buying with path switching and the extra power, the actual giant characters could be upgraded with speed heroics to make them more useful. Once they had the max speed, the giants would rip apart levels with ease. I loved doing the Kaos' Kastle level with new Skylanders, easily leveling them up with the right Luck-O-Tron wheels. I actually kind of hope Trap Team has the Luck-O-Tron again, I really liked how much that helped me with leveling and quests. Giants was a game that I played every day since I had gotten it, abandoning all other games at the time. I actually looked forward to getting home after work and playing with new characters in Giants.

I'm still playing SSA for the first time, and I enjoyed that one as much as Giants. I miss some of the features of the second game (graphics, Luck-O-Tron, Quests, etc.) but I find it just as fun. These games (on the 360) had achievements that gave us actually challenges to play in the levels, which made the replay value of levels even higher.

Swap Force was the worst in my opinion. On a positive note, it had better graphics, levels were longer to play through the first time and the online comparisons made things like bonus missions and the arenas more fun to do. However, I didn't feel the overall content of the game was as good. Old characters were made worse to play as than the new characters, which I didn't appreciate. Variants had nothing different about them compared to their regular counterparts. Nitro guys were no faster than the regulars. Portal Master Rank cap meant that I stopped caring about accolades after getting to rank 80. They should have just let the rank go up until there were no more stars left. I would have still been motivated to keep going with it. Even though I liked the longer levels during the initial plays, they were a pain to use for just leveling up characters after a while. I don't think the problem was the actual level itself, as much as the cut scenes you couldn't skip making them more annoying. Oh and this game had Rufus and Gorm... that's all I'll say about them. This game ended up on my shelf for a few months because of how disappointed I was in it, then started it up again in March. It has since gone unused since the beginning of April, only being put in to add any new characters I bought for SSA to my SF collection. Oh, and no heroics (especially speed ones). For some reason, this game hated giving out speed boosts, as noted by the single +1 speed charm. There's a lot more I could say about SF, but I've already said it in the past at great length.

Even though I have reached level 80 Portal Master rank, the accolades have kept me around. Also, the quests for the new SWAP Force characters have kept me entertained. I didn't buy the characters and packs as soon as they come out. So in your defense, I am still trying to obtain some of the content and play through it. I try to wait and find things on sale or used. For example: I just bought the Arkeyan Crossbow pack that has been out for months. It was at Toys R Us for 15 bucks. But I also took a month hiatus from the game. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but because I had other things going on.