Skylanders: Trap Team is packed full of clever ideas and sharp design. It's well presented and well executed, but be warned: if you let your guard down, it'll also crit your credit card for massive damage.

Skylanders: Trap Team doesn't reinvent the franchise that first brought toys to life in a videogame, but it does mark a significant departure for the series by introducing a second element into the mix: the titular traps.

It's easy to assume that the sudden introduction of traps as a reaction to Disney’s Infinity games - which themselves allow players to bring an almost confusing array of plastic heroes into the virtual environment - but in practice their addition to Skylanders feels like a logical and comprehensible extension to the system that previous entries in the series established.

If you’re not familiar with Skylanders, the basic premise is simple enough. In addition to the game software, there’s also a “Portal” device you connect to your console. Placing real plastic Skylanders toys (each of which are sold separately, of course) onto the Portal puts a videogame version of that same toy into the game. You can swap them any time and you’ll need to mix and match their various abilities to get the most out of the experience.

Continue reading...