darkSpyro

We're doing VV, why not make TfB feel awful too?

Lol, I joke, they're both great, but they do have their flaws.


I love tfB, they're wonderfully creative in both characters and levels, but they need to match SF in terms on content and gameplay, while match SSC in story. Imaginators was a step in the right direction for them, minus it's sotyr, which was a total crash and burn and disregarded what THEY THEMSELVES SAID, that following SSC, the games stories would be more connected. I'd say more, but I'd like to see other people's opinion and see how they influence mine.

TFB's a smaller team and it shows. They clearly have a better idea of the world as a whole and what mood the series should have, but while the art direction and mechanics are great, they always end up lagging behind in technical aspects; and the visible budget cut in Imaginators meant that someone's idea to replicate Academy went horrible. Their strengths are definately more in writing than the plot, but for SI, both were really bad and cynical, but it makes me think how much was just jokes and how much was the fear that the franchise could end right there and they shouldn't even bother to expand the lore too much.

TfB can be great at writing jokes, but they rely too much on food jokes, and they're hardly, if ever funny.

I'll take food jokes any day over whatever is up with the Dungeon Missions. All of them sound like I'm watching an adult animation where everyone sounds tired and with no care to make the dialogue work, not a saturday morning cartoon with hit-and-miss things that are still full of heart.

They created Star Control, not Starcraft. TFB was known for that until they lost the IP and got bought out by Acti.

Yes, thank you Drawdler.


TfB relies WAY TO MUCH on puzzles, and a very similar offender is that they're puzzles are hardly new. It's pretty much the same lock imp puzzles, with hazards added in, or a slightly different mechanic, but pretty much they all play the exact same. The Vv introduced BRAND NEW, LIKE, ACTUALLY NEW puzzles that have an entirely new style of game play, more so for locks. Yes, they didn't change up the push block puzzles a while lot, but they could still be different. TfB needs to think of entirely new ones instead of rehashing the old ones with crummy new features.

I like Spyro's Adventure and both Madagascar games, so I guess I like them. Not much to say, personally, but their Skylanders entries definitely feel like they have a lot of heart.

Full disclosure, my kids and I started with Swap Force, so there's a soft spot. But I always thought the VV art/design style is a lot slicker than TfB. SSA, SG and TT have a much more cartoonish style. I can't really think of a better way to put it. What the TfB style reminds me of is the ikea kids furniture line. Bulbous, brightly colored, like, well, a cartoon. VV is obviously still cartoon animation, but it feels more like an adventure, more realistic, than TfB.

I've only tried out imaginators a bit - will give it to the kids for Christmas - but it seems like TfB bridged that gap well for this last go-round. Less campy, sleeker, tighter style. I like it.

Toys for Bob's Skylanders games would be absolute perfection if it weren't for the deadlines, publisher meddling and mediocre humor. They have the better gameplay gimmicks and lore ideas, but my GOD! Their writing can be painful sometimes. Not all the time, mind you, but Imaginators was easily the worst in terms of dialogue, IMO.

They clearly bite off more than they can chew, too. Villain Redemption is one of the most poorly executed mechanics in a Skylanders game to date. Trap Team as a whole was a mess with some good ideas thrown in there. If only they had more time to develop said ideas.

That being said, TfB Skylanders are the best, bar none. Even when they have to all wear the same outfit, they are truly unique and creative. I always loved finding out what cool characters I-Wei and the crew had cooking for us.

They're not perfect, but I love TfB way more than VV

They are a very interesting company with a very interesting history. They had a big hit with the Star Control series when they first started out, then made a bunch of extremely obscure games, followed by a bunch of licensed games, until Skyanders took off and gave them a stable franchise (for a while).

I kind of want to play through their old games some time, particularly from before they started making licensed games. It's such a...random assortment of games. A simple arcade style spaceship battling game, followed by an in-depth story-driven space exploration game, followed by a goofy medieval action/strategy hybrid with live action cutscenes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPz_eTwKWKo), followed by a sidescolling platformer starring a weird jester and an acrobat who wants to be a wizard, followed by a proto-Skylanders pvp styled game with monsters battling one another on 3D arenas.

Then they got stuck making licensed games, but interestingly the first one of those was a Japan-exclusive game featuring a crossover of various magical girl anime characters. Kind of want to play that one too.

I wonder what the future of TfB is? Same for VV, but more so the former. Hopefully they can find another great IP (As it seems they're sadly done with Skylanders. Not to mention I-Wei seems to be gone) As for VV, hopefully, just hopefully they're working on Sky 7.

instead of having tfb and vv as two teams, after ssa and sg they should have made them into one team, and had a two year cycle of game releases instead. then i think the skylanders games would have been so much better and even lasted longer.. you can see the effort of both teams in imaginators, and that game is the best skylander game to date.

Quote: CountMoneyBone

instead of having tfb and vv as two teams, after ssa and sg they should have made them into one team, and had a two year cycle of game releases instead. then i think the skylanders games would have been so much better and even lasted longer.. you can see the effort of both teams in imaginators, and that game is the best skylander game to date.

For franchise longevity, yeah. But Activision (and corporate America in general) are all about making as much money as possible as fast as possible. Activisions loves yearly franchises. It burns out players and you get inconsistent games with less differentiation each year, but Activision gets to rake in more money faster. They have a completely different perspective from Nintendo, which will often go years before dropping an iteration of a franchise (and in the case of some like Mario Kart, only one per console). If we got a new Mario or Zelda every year, it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal. But they would bring in some extra money (and send the franchise to an early grave).

Pretty sure I've said it somewhere else, in another thread, but I genuinely feel like TfB games are the only ones to truly capture what Skylanders is for me.
Might be simply because they created the franchise in the first place, that probably helps, but I don't think it stops there.

As many other have already pointed out, they seem to put their heart in every aspect of the game, whether it turns out to be good or bad: I cannot help but genuinely feel the efforts, and that definitely impact my perception of their games.
Not saying V.V. doesn't put their soul in theirs, not at all, but I could say it doesn't "resonate" with me as much as TfB's.
And that goes for the levels, the character design, the plot and so on.

Is there something I don't like about them?
Of course.

Sometimes they get a bit carried away with puzzles and mini-games to the point they kinda break the flow of the level.
They are not as willing to experiment as V.V., and that has been shown multiple times (which is why I agree with the Count, Imaginators was such a fantastic experience because both teams worked together, and I frankly hope the same will happen in the future).

But in the end they always manage to deliver small, whimsical and funny adventures with some epic moments and surprisingly challenging final bosses.
And that's ultimately what I'm expecting out of my Skylanders experience.

To start, I will state what I like about how Toys For Bob designed their games:

--A big one was the puzzles they put in (most namely the ones with the lockmaster imp in Spyro's Adventure and Giants) were things I really liked about Toys For Bob. I loved trying to complete them in the fewest possible moves and while planning it out usually took longer, it was a lot of fun to do!
--Toys For Bob also did a better job expanding on some of the enemies they put into the games--back in Skylanders Spyro's Adventure, we had a spell punk for every element at the time (meaning no light or dark spell punks) and they all were fun enemies to fight! Some really were a threat too. This was rather than the same typical air, life, undead, magic and fire spell punks we have had since Skylanders SWAP Force, which has been the formula for all spell punks ever since.
--Having started in Skylanders Spyro's Adventure, Toys For Bob also has done something very special for a player like me, which was including Kaos battles that let you fight against actual evil Skylanders in Spyro's Adventure, and then Kaos battles with Doomlanders in Imaginators. Not only were these bosses usually more challenging, but they were also based on (or in some cases were copies of) Skylanders you could actually use, and that was so cool and made for an awesome experience. Vicarious Visions certainly never used this idea, which was a real shame.

But Toys For Bob does have some weaknesses that have consistently frustrated me too. These include:

--Making levels that are too short to enjoy. I think some of their ideas for levels were some of the best we've seen in the series (such as The Oracle and Mirror of Mystery), but they drove them into the ground by making them too short and not long enough to really explore the gimmicks and how they could have been used in entertaining ways. I thought they could have made Mirror of Mystery into a 3-part series of levels that were all unlocked by the figurine for example. I think they could learn from time attack mode in SWAP Force and make a separate mode of play for speed runs so that way the levels can be longer and more substantive while the speed runs won't have to go away. The quality of the levels suffers too much from the levels taking just a few minutes.
--I know the next topic I'm about to mention can be something of a touchy issue. Everyone has their preference on the issue of "how much combat is too much?", and in my experience, Toys For Bob has historically had the problem of including too much combat and too few other ways to play the game. This is something I have historically been very frustrated by; combat is certainly fun, but when it starts to wear thin, Toys For Bob usually gives you little to no alternatives to doing so. Vicarious Visions doesn't have this problem and usually provides a great assortment of alternatives and that may be why I get tired of Toys For Bob games faster than Vicarious Visions games.
--I also find I enjoy Toys for Bob's gimmicks less, especially in regard to the figurines (such as giants and trap masters, "gimmicklanders" as I think they are known) and how they are used in the game. While this was doubtlessly not the case in Imaginators, it could basically be described as (after Skylanders Spyro's Adventure): Get an oversized Skylander that can open something only they can and that has really high damage output... that's it.
--Bringing back the same things over and over again (like arena battles and Skystones) and not using enough new ideas was also a weakness they had before Imaginators.
--One last (more minor) thing I would like to mention is the Skystones minigame and how Vicarious Visions (in my opinion) outdid them at their own idea. I liked how Skystones Overdrive was more random and spontaneous than the original Skystones and Creation Clash. Skystones Overdrive was like an actual card game where you don't know what card you'll draw next and you have to make the most with what you have. That's part of what made it so fun for me, whereas in the original Skystones, you could choose your skystones beforehand, but once you did, they were all there and you could play them in any order (and so could your opponent) making games usually turn out the same. Creation Clash was even worse, with both sides always having the same skystones and games usually playing out the same almost every time, making stagnation inevitable and replay value with the same opponent in Creation Clash low.

That's all I can think of for now, although I'm sure I'll think of more later and then edit them in.

It's hard to describe really - I feel like Toys for Bob make toys for fun, whereas Vicarious Visions make them for mass appeal. I see the two companies as TFB being for "children", VV being for "kids" if that makes sense. It probably doesn't. It could just be that TFB make games and characters with.... character, whereas VV make toys that look great but lack soul.

TFB have a certain charm in their games, even with my least favourite entry to the series so far being Trap Team. While SWAP Force is my favourite next to Spyro's Adventure, its quite cold despite its warm art style and characters. I paraphrase Drek95 often on this but they make Skylanders feel more like Skylanders than VV do, even if VV made - at least in my opinion - one of the better entries to the series.

I just like 'em. They can have that as a quote on the next Skylanders game.

Quote: Johnbonne

It's hard to describe really - I feel like Toys for Bob make toys for fun, whereas Vicarious Visions make them for mass appeal. I see the two companies as TFB being for "children", VV being for "kids" if that makes sense. It probably doesn't. It could just be that TFB make games and characters with.... character, whereas VV make toys that look great but lack soul.

TFB have a certain charm in their games, even with my least favourite entry to the series so far being Trap Team. While SWAP Force is my favourite next to Spyro's Adventure, its quite cold despite its warm art style and characters. I paraphrase Drek95 often on this but they make Skylanders feel more like Skylanders than VV do, even if VV made - at least in my opinion - one of the better entries to the series.

I just like 'em. They can have that as a quote on the next Skylanders game.

That's a really good point (and I was gonna say that even before you mentioned me ), I think you read my mind: TfB loves to create every single aspect of their games and figures, and knows where to stop most of the times, while V.V. are superior in many ways but almost fall "flat" on so many others that the overall result end up being less harmonic, if you will.
It's almost as if they preferred working on certain features compared to other, and that's fine, it's the human nature, but it shouldn't be that obvious.

For example, as much as I love the Swappers' gameplays I consider the majority of them to be among the less creative design in the series; and that has happened with TfB too, like kinda with Knight Light for example, but it's still one out of many other amazing Skylanders and not a whole line of gimmick figures.

V.V. puts so much effor that certain parts of their works end up overshadowing the others, they simply push the limits as much as they can, and that doesn't always work.

But in the end, I guess I really just like them too.

I started with SSA which is probably why I prefer their entries. Although as I mentioned previously I doubt I would have got into Skylanders at all if I had started with a VV entry.

TFB games tend to be more cartoonish and that's what I love about them. It's like interacting with a cartoon rather than playing a video game. Of all the entries SSA is the standout for me. I've played through the entire game 5 times now and still go back and play the odd level. I've tried to replay SF but I can't get into it. I prefer TFB's cartoonish graphics and for the most part I prefer their characters.

My favourite characters are from the original game. A few weak entries, but most of them so diverse that I feel they had the best roster. I love the numerous chapters and expansion packs in the original game too. Flynn, Cali, Hugo etc were all great NPC's, whereas I found the VV ones abrasive and annoying.

I agree with Sworn2Skylanders about Skystones Overdrive. That game is so good I find myself putting in the SC disc (easily in my opinion the worst Skylanders entry) just to play that game over and over again. But on the whole I liked TFB's puzzles more. I also loved the Grand Admiral rank offered in the first two games a lot more than Portal Master ranking.