darkSpyro

The last of the Giants series is rolling out soon it seems and it stands to reason with E3 a month away there's going to be new material on what we can expect with SSF. So with all this is mind what does everyone think of SSG?

I personally am not a die hard collector and I came into the game very late so I haven't been able to follow the production of figures. While I find the variants interesting, I'd prefer that in the future they have more variants like the Legendary line where they actually have a unique appearance in game instead of the GTID stuff.

As far as the game, I enjoyed the Giants themselves. I've yet to get my hands on Eyebrawl or Ninjini but the rest of the crew is a lot of fun to play as. I liked that other than the tutorial there really aren't any parts of the game that require you to use the giants themselves. I also enjoyed the branching talent trees, it keeps things fresh for the most part and gives you something to do with your characters later on. I also hope they do more with the customizing the Dread Yacht, it doesn't really add anything to the game play experience but I have to say my ship looks awesooooome.

Things I didn't really enjoy as much? It bothers me the amount of mini cutscenes showing you where to go or what to do especially during something like the Amber Medallion challenge where every time you clear a room they show you a scene of the gate being lowered.

I was also kind of bugged by the lack of dialog. Some of the characters are pretty hilarious (Here's looking at you Terrafin.) I would've liked to have heard them say a bit more or some dialog between certain characters like Hot Head threatening to burn Tree Rex or something if you've selected both of them in co op.

The game play itself I only have two gripes. The controls seem a little sluggish at times and that really bugged me, like my characters were running through wet cement. The other gripe is that sometimes you with all the effects going on during co op especially in the later chapters it's easy to get lost in the chaos and lose sight of your character. I'm not sure what they could really do to fix that except turn the effects down slightly.

I've enjoyed the game a lot and I'm really excited to hear what they'll have to say at E3.

What are everyone else's thoughts on Skylanders Giants?

They should've made it longer! Story is way too easy and short. Nightmare mode isn't too hard either!

unfortunately overall our family has been underwhelmed

comments from my sons aged 3 and 6 ...

"once the game is finished it is boring doing the same things again with different characters"

"i don't like the characters being joined together instead of split screen" (they are used to split playing screen with their lego games)

"the lightcore figures are rubbish"

comments from me ...

"after collecting every figure including all variants i wish they would just release the last ones so i can get it over with. my sons have no interest in the game any more so this is just a matter of ticking the last figures off the list so that the collection is complete."

"we enjoyed skylanders as it was something new but giants didn't really offer anything different. after watching reveal videos my sons have shown no interest in swap force."

I just need to get and and I will have all of the new Giants characters.
I still need and *winces* for original characters. I can find all of the above except for Boomer.

I hope none of the Giants characters I have become the new Boomer for me.

My 8-year old still likes it. At first, I thought he was losing interest, as he didn't play much shortly after Christmas. But now that he has completed Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, he is back into it.

So am I, actually. I'm finally working diligently on the heroics for all of our old figures and now the new ones. Takes a while. Good grief.

Quote: Himewad

My 8-year old still likes it. At first, I thought he was losing interest, as he didn't play much shortly after Christmas. But now that he has completed Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, he is back into it.

So am I, actually. I'm finally working diligently on the heroics for all of our old figures and now the new ones. Takes a while. Good grief.

You know I like that the challenges are there and I don't mind doing them for a lot of characters but it does get old and they really need to do more than just give you a new challenge per skylander you unlock.

Giant to me is pretty cool. The Giants really excited me, since I like to smash things, and Tree Rex; out of all eight, is my fave Giant. He fits me to a T, and even sounds like me, with his slang talk lol

Only figure that I need now, is LightCore Pop Fizz, since I like his new pose, over his "maracas" pose.

And that's my only nitpick. The rate of figure releases kinda ticks me off... But eh, I can wait. Once they show up online, I usually nab them up, so it's not much of a big deal.

Other than that, both Spyro's Adventure and Giants have been enjoyable, to say the least. And I love to collect these figurines, so it's pretty much win-win.

As for Swap Force, I have to wait and see just what they're bringing to the table, before I go ahead and buy. So far, I only know that it looks WAY better, graphically, and that now there are Skylanders that switch around parts, and that you can now jump....Not exactly ground-shattering news...

Hopefully, with E3 around the corner, I expect new content, as in "We're gonna kick Disney's aft end!!"...kind of new content, because I don't wanna see them lose to Disney Infinity.

Activision....Toys for Bob... Viscarious Visions... GO BIG or GO HOME this year at E3!!!!

You guys got me into this thing for two years...DON'T STOP NOW!

I already beat the game six times, got all Quests, Heroics, upgrades and levels done, and played multiplayer to death. There's really nothing for me to do to the point that I'm playing SSA more. After the last three figures are out, I will enter Battle Mode, level them up, and place them on the table again, only to revisit 3DSSA as I have for the past year and a half. I wish that Skylanders were not a yearly franchise and instead bi-yearly, so that they could put more quality into the games- they feel almost like afterthoughts to the figures with how short things are. They have a crafty system that forces you into buying more and more if you want any sense of replayability, and it's especially those horrible reposes that are just... Unnnghhhhhh.

I loved Giants when it came out(and to those of you who know me- as I feel I owe some people this- I apologize for hyping it up then), but while Giants was a genuine improvement in a bunch of areas, I enjoyed it as much as I did only becuase I hadn't played SA in a long time outside of Heroics. Now I regret buying Giants somewhat. I have no idea of wether I will buy Swap Force as I want to explore areas that are actually new- but that's part of the little game that they play, starve you, and then give you a munch to eat, and then scraps again, I don't want to fall into it, and get frustrated needing to sell my old figures, buy reposes, and do what looks like pretty much the exact same thing again. In the end, it is really a regular dungeon crawler- past the figure gimmick which is fun if frustrating, it's utterly mediocre as a game.

Either way, Swap Force would be one of the worse AAA games this year for me against stuff like *insert Wii U/3DS title here* lawl

Quote: GamingMaster_76

I already beat the game six times, got all Quests, Heroics, upgrades and levels done, and played multiplayer to death. There's really nothing for me to do to the point that I'm playing SSA more. After the last three figures are out, I will enter Battle Mode, level them up, and place them on the table again, only to revisit 3DSSA as I have for the past year and a half.

I haven't played SSA is there really that much more content in it than Giants?

Good game, but way too short. Admittedly, I haven't gotten 100%, but I have gotten a lot of stuff and all the legendary treasures and so forth. I do wish Nightmare mode had new, insanely hard levels (admittedly, with a weaker character, Nightmare can be a challenge).

Quote: Mexitalius

Quote: GamingMaster_76

I already beat the game six times, got all Quests, Heroics, upgrades and levels done, and played multiplayer to death. There's really nothing for me to do to the point that I'm playing SSA more. After the last three figures are out, I will enter Battle Mode, level them up, and place them on the table again, only to revisit 3DSSA as I have for the past year and a half.

I haven't played SSA is there really that much more content in it than Giants?

There's a fair bit more, plus the variety of the theme design makes it feel more varied. Some areas in Giants feel new while others feel like retools of SA(for example, Autogyro Adventure feels similar to Arkeyan Armory, Cutthroat Carnival to Pirate Seas, Glacier Gully to Empire of Ice). It's $50 more or so for a new starter pack and you'll be spending much more on Skylanders so I recommend that you just get the disc via eBay anyway- you'll almost certainly make yourself at some point. It isn't really a huge leap, but the option of visiting more levels is a very positive thing.

What's SSG? That would be Skylanders: Spyro's Giants...

good because then spyro owns them

Needed more content in the campaign. Note if you're a completion there's plenty of monotonous heroics, quests, and stars to get.

Quote: GamingMaster_76

...They have a crafty system that forces you into buying more and more if you want any sense of replayability, and it's especially those horrible reposes that are just... Unnnghhhhhh.

...it's utterly mediocre as a game....

Either way, Swap Force would be one of the worse AAA games this year for me against stuff like *insert Wii U/3DS title here* lawl

Past the gimmicks you are correct. Innovation is the only way to "stayin' alive". Not sure if they have enough mojo if the swap thing is it---they need to start varying up the other content.

I really enjoyed Giants – it’s Adventure did feel shorter, but that’s mostly a perception thing. The content is about the same as SSA, but having that content divided amongst few levels did make it ‘feel’ shorter.

There is clearly a lot more polish in Giants. There is the obvious graphical polish, but there is also a lot of smaller things – most movies are skipable, shops (and stuff to buy there), tokens to skip locks/cards (vital for multiplayer), character quests and so on. Awesome improvements!

I loved the arena mode – I don’t think the game gets enough credit for the simple, but awesome, addition of the single-player arenas.
I’d love to see that expanded in future games, with more maps and endless game modes.

I also love that they really respected SSA players, supporting all the hits/skills/level we had brought already. And I’m amazed that the level unlock figures worked.

About the only down side, for me, is that it doesn’t have quite the ‘mad genius’ of SSA. SSA might be less polished (for example, SSA often had jump pads that were fiddly to use and massive difficulty spikes), but in a way that added to its charm. Giants was a very safe title, while SSA felt like it was just throwing mud at the wall to see what would stick.

So, I love Giants – but I’d never ditch SSA. I look at them like two different tracks I can used my Skylanders on.

Let's see. I'm going to go over both the console version and the 3DS version.

Console (Xbox 360 version.)

Now over all i liked the game but it just seemed shorter than the first game. But honestly, i think the biggest reason is like you actually accomplish more in S:SA. As in every level you're progressing the main story as if seems. But in Giants it seems that every other level your "stalling" or trying to fix the ship or something in order to proceed.

Also, I think Khaos also seemed more eviler in the 1st one.

Ofcourse, don't get me wrong. They added alot of new things like the arena challenges (which can be mulitplayer) and new characters. So it was fun. Just in some ways seemed a step down to the first one.


3DS version.


Ok, Sadly, I actually liked the S:SA better. For starters the missions turned into some side thing and with the every level having a "Collect so many coins" "Element gate challenge" and "Giants area Challenge" there's only one mission that's individual but even then some of the levels share this one. like "Bash X amount of chest" In the first game only every level had a "Element gate challenge".

Level wise they seemed like they were making it more like the console version with the key gates and "Defeat all monsters in room" gates. I also kind of like the beat a mission and rush to the end but the way Giants does it isn't to bad. Also being able to go to the main menu without having to "reset" the game is nice.


One thing I do like is that they made it to where the Hektore challenge (or the Time challenge as Giants challenge) is optional once you unlock it.

@Tel Well, yeah... Though what I mean to say was that I think it isn't important if Giants has the same level of replayability, but SA feels longer because of more levels. In my opinion that's just the longer (though correct) way to say "SA is longer". You kind of can say "SA is longer" and be correct as arguably the increased variety of level designs will probably keep you playing more, aka longer, though.

I would be quite interested in seeing a 100% speedrun of Normal Giants compared to a 100% speedrun of SSA...

@JCat I sort of liked the 3DS version this time, but it was definitely worse than the first one to me. I like that Time Challenges are optional now since you can explore more steadily that way, and new characters, but it took a lot of drops for me as well(it's EXTREMELY glitchy, and I think that the theme design was much worse). Kind of like a companion piece to a companion piece to me lawl

Quote: Himewad

My 8-year old still likes it. At first, I thought he was losing interest, as he didn't play much shortly after Christmas. But now that he has completed Luigi's Mansion on the 3DS, he is back into it.

So am I, actually. I'm finally working diligently on the heroics for all of our old figures and now the new ones. Takes a while. Good grief.

I've been enlisted to do "heroics duty" too. I completed all of the speed challenges for Scarlet, LC Pop and LC Chill last weekend...now to wrap them up.

Also---quite a few SA levels are short...and because they're used in the challenges...I'm betting the content between SA and SG is actually similar once you factor that in.