Skylanders: Trap Team - All About the New Game, Characters and Traps!

Last week we got a chance to head up to Northern California to check out Toys for Bob and get a hands-on preview of the upcoming Skylanders: Trap Team.  There is so much to tell you that it’s hard to know where to start. 

First off, here’s the story: In Skylanders: Trap Team, Kaos is still trying to get his grubby little hands on Skylands. After searching, he found the location of the legendary Cloudcracker Prison, which is made out of a magical substance called Traptanium. Inside, he found the worst of the worst; all the criminals of Skylands. Kaos blows up the prison while trying to create his own evil army, and now shared of Traptanium are all over the place, including right where you are on Earth. Portal Masters, it’s up to you to find the crystals and capture the bad guy. Once you have them, you can use them to fight for good and defeat Kaos! 

So, how do you do that? Well, you’re starting off with some new allies, including Fist Bump, a new Earth Master and Lob-Star who uses his powerful Traptanium Throwing Stars to defeat evil. You’ll have a bunch of Trap Masters to choose from, new core Skylanders, new version of old favorites, playable minis and even better, bad guys you use for good!

So, the bad guys. We got to play a few levels on the PS4, Xbox One and the iPad (it works on Android tablets, too) so we can tell you about how this works. The Skylanders starter set comes with a brand new portal, complete with an attached prison. In the prison is a slot for the crystals of Traptanium. 

Here’s what we saw: We played a level (on the Xbox One) where you start out by shooting the trolls, then fight your way through a food level (which includes a mini-game) to the boss man, Pepper Jack. When we beat him (and that’s no easy task!), we were given the option to trap him in the crystal. We put our fire crystal in the prison and Pepper Jack was sucked in! 

Now, as you play the game, you can do two things. You can switch back and forth between all your favorite Skylanders, and you can switch to the villain in whatever crystal you’ve got! We switched between Fist Bump (our favorite) and Pepper Jack by hitting R2. Your bad guy is now fighting for good! He’ll even yell from the prison, asking you to put him in the game and commenting on your performance! You can switch crystals, too, once you capture the baddies.

On the PS4, we played the Kaos Doom Challenge. It was a total blast to play. You fight off waves of villains and keep them from splitting open the Mystery Box of Doom. Kaos himself had something to say about it. “I, Kaos, will graciously allow you to build defensive towers and battle my fearsome allies using any of your Skylanders from your entire collection. However, when you bumbling Portal Masters utterly fail to progress past my hoards of evil underlings, the “Mystery Box of Doom” will be opened - which will then incomprehensibly spit out gigantic villains that will completely destroy you! And because I am both benevolent and merciful, I will even let you fools use any of your pitiful Trapped Villains to fight them.” So rude, right!

One super cool extra is a musical mini-game. Though we don’t have pictures, we got to check it out. In the University, you can unlock skeleton statues which will let you start a rhythm game. It’s call and repeat style. One side calls out the beat (and each statue opens a different musical style, like ska or rock) and you use the buttons to repeat it. Fun fact: Even the skeletons have back stories. Even better? You don’t lose anything if your musical stylings aren’t up to par.

The coolest part of all of this, though, is the way the game works on the tablets. This is the first time anyone has done anything like this. If you’ve got a tablet, the portal plugs into the bottom. You use a controller and guys, it’s exactly like the console games! We played a level where we had to defeat a villain in a clock tower and the console levels right after. There really was no difference! So when your sibling is playing something on the TV, you can grab your tablet and play right along side them! Not too shabby.

Skylanders: Trap Team will hit stores on October 5. Are you ready?