Skylanders Swap Force review: Toy Story

The game ships with three "starter" characters — all of which are real-life figures that appear in the game when you place them on the "power portal." There are hundreds of creatures with which to play, if you care — and have the means — to collect them all. New to Swap Force is the inclusion of "Swap Skylanders" — figures with detachable halves that allow you to mix and match your heroes. Mixing and matching these guys was a lot of fun — I had a couple of trusty hybrids that became go-to characters after a couple of hours.

Swapping characters — and creating elemental mixes from the "Swap" Skylanders — is necessary to open special portals throughout the game, all of which offer bonus areas good for more loot. There are also Swap challenges that require you to have a Skylander with a particular ability to participate in.

This variety is Swap Force's greatest strength. Aside from the meandering paths, portals and character class-specific challenges littered around every stage, the core challenges of each level satisfied. I rode the rails of a runaway mine cart in a crazy Wild West town, beat up a German-accented evil crab in a crab-tank, navigated weird swamps with loud-mouthed frogs and solved simple jumping puzzles to restore music in cartoon saloons. I was never doing any one thing for too long, which kept Swap Force going strong throughout its relatively long campaign.

But the many mandatory cutscenes and character asides outlasted their welcome. Most story cutscenes are skippable — after a few moments, at least — but every time I wanted to upgrade my abilities in town, or visit the arena in order to level up, I had to sit through an aggravatingly slow dialogue scroll. Likewise, there were dozens of scripted events that required me to wait for a character's agonizingly dumb exposition to finish before I could set myself to task. Every time a new enemy appeared, a brief cutscene announced its presence. This quickly wore thin.