Review: ‘Skylanders Trap Team’ Offers Great Fun at a Not-So-Great Price

It might be considered a family game, but Skylanders Trap Team is something of a home-wrecker.

My daughter is completely in love with it and gets upset if I play without her, which poses a problem when you happen to review games for a living. My wife is in charge of paying the bills each month; at some point, she’s going to notice the hefty assortment of Toys ‘R’ Us charges on our credit card statement. The “It’s a write-off!” excuse might not fly.

Though I should probably be worried about both of these things, I’m too darn busy trying to capture the Golden Queen to bother. And you will be, too, because despite a few bothersome flaws, the latest game in the Skylanders series is another addictive treat.

The Skylanders series came out of nowhere in 2011, introducing millions to the toys-to-life genre. Letting players warp physical toys into virtual worlds, the franchise has become a cash cow for Activision, a multibillion-dollar baby that lets its publisher take two bites from the apple: one from the higher-than-usual price of each game’s basic set and another (and another, and another) from sales of the figurines.

The fourth game in the series, Skylanders Trap Team, pushes this salesmanship even further by offering tons of new bits and baubles to buy. It’s a bit problematic, but thankfully the core game is another winner.

Series mainstay Kaos is at it again, this time freeing a diabolical gang of villains from Cloudcracker Prison. Your job? Track them down and capture them, a premise that leads to the game’s big innovation: trapping creatures.

You’ll face off against a collection of 40 or so special bad guys over the course of the game’s story. After defeating one of these boss creatures, you can “trap” it inside a little plastic trap toy, Ghostbusters-style. It’s a terrific effect; a nifty sound effect whooshes characters from your TV to the new Traptanium Portal (it comes with the $75 Starter Set). Once captured, the villains become playable characters. It’s a great trick. You’ll swear there’s a tiny monster inside the trap.

The addition of villains is actually a bigger game-changer than it may first appear. The portal can hold one Skylander and one captured villain simultaneously; players can swap between them at the touch of a button. This creates interesting strategies for solo players, as picking the right combinations can mean the difference between life and death in the game’s later stages.

Pepper Jack, an evil red-pepper-turned-chef-turned-hero, was the go-to no-gooder in our house. His thick, bayou accent elicited giggles from my 7-year-old, and his chosen weapon, a hand-cranked egg beater, never failed to make me smile.

And that’s really what makes Trap Team tick. Developer Toys for Bob has a knack for creating awesome characters, and there’s no shortage of cool new personalities here. With their disembodied voices acting as a bridge between the real world and Skylands, the villains in particular add a big burst of humor to what’s already a pretty funny, well-written game, even if some of the jokes are clunkers.

The problem with the villains — and the problem with Trap Team in general — is that enjoying them to their fullest is going to cost you.

You need the right elemental trap toy to actually capture and play as a villain, but the game’s Starter Set comes with only two of the game’s eight different trap types. You’ll quickly need to buy traps, probably several of them. At $6 apiece, it’s not a huge investment, but it’s an added layer of expense in a game that already steers you to the store for follow-up purchases.

Trap Team, like any Skylanders game, introduces a plethora of new figurines that your kids will beg for every time you wander into a Walmart. But it goes further than any past game by brutally gating your progress behind the game’s new Trap Master characters. There are eight of those ($15 each), and only one comes with the Starter Set.

The concept of locking out parts of the game until players have acquired the right toy is what drives sales for Activision, but Trap Team goes a bit too far with it, mainly because the Skylanders you may already own from past games aren’t especially useful in Trap Team. Yes, you can whisk characters from older Skylanders games into Trap Team and brawl with them to your heart’s content, but the game’s bonus areas can be accessed only by Trap Masters. It’s a frustrating, though understandable (well, from a cold, corporate perspective), limitation.

Kudos to Toys for Bob for stepping up its efforts to create a diverse lineup, however. Skylanders has always done a great job of featuring lots of female characters, and indeed, three female Trap Masters make the cut. It’s a small touch, but a very welcome one for the father of a gaming daughter.

Trap Team is also the first full Skylanders game to appear on tablets (iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire) day-and-date with console versions. Rather than a watered-down port, the tablet version is identical to what you’ll find in its console cousins. That even includes a gamepad, which smartly hides underneath the Portal when not in use.

You’ll need a lot of spare memory, however, as a full install of the game chews up more than 6 GB. Still, it’s a great way for parents to reclaim their living room television or to keep their kid occupied while on a road trip, since the game doesn’t require an Internet connection once it’s downloaded.

No matter the platform, Trap Team is another high-quality Skylanders entry and a terrific game for both kids and their parents. It’s a big investment, however, making it quite the trap for families on a tight gaming budget.

What’s hot: Trapping villains is awesome; wonderful character design; plenty of fun

What’s not: Requires the steepest investment yet; older Skylanders not very useful

Follow Chris Morris on Twitter.