Um... so more skylanders?

Amazing news! I thought about adding this to the last article, but that one is already lengthy enough for first impressions, so here's sort of a follow-up article: I hit a really great deal today and basically I'm going back in time with skylanders a bit early, and even more price efficiently. I was in town today, stopped at a place called five & below (which is what it sounds like, $5 or less sort of bargain store) and checked out some stuff. I knew at one point they had some sort of skylander figures, but I sort of had to look in the back to find them. They only had a small few of them left, but I found the Giant edition 2 type spyro and thought sure why not see how the modern incarnation of my favorite playable dragon feels, It should still work to some extent with trap team, right? I pass by the game area where like usual it was abysmal (had Killzone 3 for $5, but I already have it). Proceed up to the register and to my surprise the guy is just like "hey we got a bigger thing of those back here?" and points at how they have a whole pile of Wii U starter packs (game and all) for $5. Yeah you read that right, what launched as a $75 game and likely still goes for $30-50 at your typical store (I checked wal-mart), is there for the price of imported candy. ...and its the Wii U version, so it should have been in theory the best port for Giants. So yes please!

So far the game is honestly a weird combination of better and worse. I can now truly see what people meant when they looked up to this game as possibly the best of the series. Even though trap team has made obvious strides forward with visuals, higher upgrades, and of course the ability to freakin' jump, Giants just manages to do what it does a lot better. The environments feel more interesting, the writing is a lot better (completely destroys my kiddie complaint with trap team), and things just feel like they have that extra care on them. Treasures actually do something (allow you to customize your airship hub world), the world has more polish, you can permanently increase your base statistics

Steampunk dragon? Awesome!

rather than relying soley on hat cosmetics, characters have individual challenges laid out, and things are just better explained and smoother in experience. Plus while its nitpicking, the first level actually works completely with starter kit material and isn't already begging for you to buy more like trap team did. Oh and that first level is also background story context that helps tell a better ground story where as trap team is more like "Yeah so these guys exist now, and they're your problem for this game. Go get 'em!". Still that's not to say Trap Team is awful, but... I'm just already getting this stronger feeling of care and adventure with Giants.

The game also reminds me a bit of an older PS2 type of game in its faults and charms. Its silly, fun, and yet feels like the team forgot something (jumping), didn't perfect its streamlining, and the graphical quality is strangely PS2-like. As in it doesn't even feel naturally HD; Its like I'm playing an HD port to a PS2 classic. Still this all isn't something bad, I'm quite enjoying it in the end. I'm going to keep playing this while I'm around my Wii U, then I guess I'll hop back into Trap Team and try out how the Giant figures translate to that game. Thanks to Tree Rex I'll also finally be able to open up those stupid rock blocking turrets in the arena mode.