Figments of imagination
Skylanders Imaginators is the sixth entry in the long-running series that, despite its addictive gimmick, is showing its age.
SKYLANDERS Imaginators was born conceptualised in a different environment than its eventual release.
As the progenitor of the toys-to-life genre, the series was facing competition from all sides with heavy-hitting franchises like Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Lego, and Warner Bros.
Imaginators seems directly responsive to these challenges, resulting in a strange and satisfying mixture that can’t quite escape the curse of annualised familiarity.
Mix and match
Each new Skylanders game carries its own gimmick and Imaginators revolves around the titular character customisation – which read to me as a response to competitors with a more recognisable stable of characters. You’re pput in chargeg of makingg some of your owno from a mix-and-match bucket of f body parts, facial features and voice typ pes. You be egin with an elemental type, as defined byb your Creation Crystal toy, and thenn you determine one of several battle cla asses from familiar Skylanders types: Qu uickshot, Bowcaster, Knight and such.
This do oes give it a great degree of variety, bbut even so, it’s not as customisable as yo ou might expect. All of the Imaginat tors are essentially bipedal, humanoi id creations, with some slight diff ferences to their proportions.
That mmeans you can’t create a four-legg ged dragon, a mainstay in Skylander rs thanks to its roots in the Spyro o series. Plus, some body types are e just too rigid, as I discovere ed when trying to make a Ninja-typ pe that wasn’t a gigantic head with h a tiny body. Imagin nator parts are unlocked through cchests. Some specific parts are givenn as rewards for owning a particula ar Skylander or completing a special ta ask, but more often they’re doled out t in random packs. That le ends itself to microtransactions, wwith a store prompt wwaiting at the end of th he row of chests wh hen you go to open a large set. This givesg the Diabl lolike loot loopl of Skylan nders more sub bstance, since now w you can be rewarded with more tha an just coins.
On the e other hand, this also means that you can’t necessarily design the
Imaginator you want to right from the start, because you may need to unlock the correct parts first.
Weak imaginations
More disappointing than the bodies, though, were the powers. I’ve always loved the Skylanders progression loop, which takes the diminutive heroes from relatively weak to extremely versatile and powerful.
A Skylander’s core moveset is constantly given greater power, more projectiles, and different effects as you upgrade them. As a function of their customisation, Imaginators are more limited.
Characters are given a mix of abilities based on their element and battle class and you can select one per button at a time. The variety is nice, but it also means each one of the powers has only one upgrade.pg
This makes Imaginators feel underpowered on the whole. Even with relatively high-level ones and all of my upgrades purchased, my ability to deal with enemies and bosses was equivalent to around the early-to-mid-game in most other Skyanders games, far from the nimble and powerful late-game characters I had grown accustomed to.
A game so heavily centred around making your own dream character should have optimised that wish fulfilment to make your creation feel appropriately powerful by the end, but that quality is lacking.
Instead, the strength I’ve come to expect from real Skylanders comes in the form of Senseis, figurines on the scale of Skylanders Giants, each of which are masters of an individual battle class.
These have a more traditional upgrade path, and a fully decked-out Sensei could easily run rings around a boss that I struggled with using a higher-level Imaginator. These figurines are especially detailed, as well, in stark contrast to the smaller, cheaper-looking toys of years past.
Out with the old
Maybe as a result of the sheer growing mass of Skylanders games, though, the level design here is particularly uninspired. Most maps are simple A-to-B affairs, with some simplistic ppuzzles dottingg the landscape.
It carries somee legacy issues, like the frustratingly sloww block-pushing puzzles and the inability to easily read ahead when characters are slowly delivering their dialogue pooints. Plus the centraal hub, called MAPS, is a bit more confusinng than most of the past hub worlds, sincee it consists of several floating islands wwithout obvious paths between them. That’s not to saay it’s absent qualityof-life improvem ents, though. The ability to swwap out your character customisaation brought the added benefit off allowing you to upgrade yoour powers at any time, even amongg the Sensei characters. Gone are tthe days that you’d have to headd back to town and approach Perssephone, who would ask if you’re “reeady for another magical upgradde” in the same grating, chirpy voice youu’ve heard a thousand times. Finally.
End game
For all its focuss on customisation, Skylanders Imagiinators feels fairly paint-by-numbber. It makes some smart imprrovements, and its creation gimmick is oddly addictivee despite some of its design drrawbacks.
Even so, this is the sixth entry in a longg- running series and it’s showingg its age. The level of customiisation in Imaginators is probablyy enough to tide over the hardcoore Skylanders fans for a while, so pperhaps it’s time for Activision’s rotaating Skylanders studios to take a bre ak and slow down. – Shacknews/Tribbune News Service