What’s New with Skylanders Trap Team?

We were rather late to jump on the Skylanders bandwagon, and the first version of this highly successful game that we ever played was Swap Force, which we were sent to review earlier this year. Swap Force was the third release of Skylanders, and last week the fourth version, Trap Team, was released.

We were invited to the Skylanders Trap Team launch party in London last weekend, and as we were in the capital anyway visiting a friend we managed to attend. Prior to the event I had been vaguely aware of Trap Team coming (mostly thanks to Family Gamer TV), but didn’t know much about what the game entailed.

We were welcomed to the party by Gill Grunt.

And soon after arrival I had the opportunity to “trap” both kids – if only I could have left them there!

As you’d expect with any party there was plenty of party food, a balloon artist…

… and even a pinata (this one was PAIN-YATTA and was powered by twitter!)

There was plenty of chance to get hands on with the new game…

… and to meet the new Trap Team characters. This one is Jawbreaker, and he is the geekson’s new Favourite Skylander Ever!

I also managed to find out a few interesting things about Trap Team

1. The new feature of Trap Team is is that you can “trap” the bad guys. The game is supplied with a new Portal which has a speaker inside it, and when you trap something you hear the effect of it moving from the TV speakers to the portal.
2. All existing Skylanders from all three previous versions will work in Trap Team. So you’ll still be able to play as your favourite characters (although there are of course new characters to buy as well!)
3. As well as all these new characters, your kids are going to pester you to buy them traps – you have to have a trap to hold the bad guys, and there are traps of different elements – you have to have the element that matches the character you’re trapping. I’m sure I’ll understand how this all works a lot better when I’ve actually tried it.
4. Great news for Nintendo Wii owners. Skylanders Trap Team is fully functional on the Wii, and also comes with a download code so that you can download the Wii-U version for free if you upgrade your hardware. I think this is a fantastic idea and would love to see more games do this.
5. Also good news for tablet owners – for the first time Skylanders Trap Team is available and fully functional on a selection of tablet hardware. It does require quite a high spec of tablet (sadly neither of my kids’ iPads will handle it), but I think this is a really interesting development, and shows how mobile gaming is becoming more and more popular.

From what I could see of Skylanders Trap Team over the geekson’s shoulder it looks like very similar gameplay and controls to previous games – indeed the geekson had no problems picking it up and being able to play it. The largest challenge of the afternoon was getting him away from the game at the end of the event – there were tears!

Skylanders Trap Team is available now from all usual stockists.

Disclosure: We were guests at the Skylanders Trap Team launch event, and received a goody bag at the end.

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