Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure

If you have kids between the ages of 4 to 10-ish, and you desire to play video games with them, run out and buy it ($69). Recommend it to others. Our industry needs more family games like this.

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is so specifically targeted to children and the unique way they approach games, often vacillating back and forth between tightly focused and wildly erratic in under half an hour, it's difficult for an adult to fully and fairly evaluate this game's entertainment potential.

Regardless of your particular alignment on the question as to the value proposition, Skylanders is a very well executed and fun game. It's appropriate for the entire family and delivers a compelling new hook that isn't just the same stuff re-skinned for a new generation.

Overall, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is one of the more innovative gaming experiences I have played on the Xbox 360 to date. Its cross-platforming abilities, slick looking toy figures, and enjoyable gameplay all make for a game which should not only please long time Spyro fans, but will surely satisfy the games younger target audience.

Skylanders is a good game made wholly better by a great gaming experience that is provided by the Portal of Power and the figures. Enjoyable for all ages, you would be hard pressed to find a more engaging, better-produced family friendly game this holiday.

It may be simple in presentation, but the execution is near flawless, and all the extra content shows a great level of dedication on the part of the developers. Skylanders is certainly a full and unique gaming experience.

Overall, Skylanders Spyro's Adventure is a really fun title. The game is aimed at a younger demographic and kids should have a lot of fun with this adventure. If you are a Spyro fan you should still play this game no matter how old you are. If the game is properly marketed by Activision I can see this becoming a hot item for kids this holiday season.

Ultimately, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is a joy to play and a surprising treat that is destined to be the most talked-about game of the holiday season.

The design is quite inspired for a product designed for younger players, and the presentation is surprisingly high in value.

While the game has a few flaws and I have some concerns with lost or broken toys and portals, I believe the game (with the help of an aggressive marketing campaign) will make this one of the hottest game/toy combinations this Holiday Season.

I admit it, I enjoyed the time I spent hacking and slashing my way through the hordes of funny foes Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure threw in my way. I just wish it didn't cost as much as it does to unlock content that's already on the game disc. [Dec 2011]

The figures are an innovative concept and allow expanding the experience to taste. Budget permitting, you can add as any characters and treasures to the game as you like.

Wildly inventive and utterly captivating. [Jan 2012, p.87]

Without a doubt, Skylander's Spyro's Adventure is the best family-friendly, everybody-pleasing title I've seen in quite some time, and has handily eclipsed that other collect'-em-all franchise as the go-to at our house.

The cool part is the tech side of Skylanders, which merges its Gauntlet-like gameplay with physical objects that unlock new characters, levels, and bonus items. It all comes together to form a sort-of-insidious-but-surprisingly-fun mesh of collectible and video game.

Skylanders is really well thought out (especially business-wise, as it was built around collectible figures that you need to uncover all the secrets within the game) and the design was executed very well. [December 2011, p.93]

While the game is fun in its own right, the figures and portal make it into more than just the average adventure game. The price may be a little steep, with the game constantly encouraging players to buy more characters, but the figures are well made and make great collectables.

Yes, ultimately the content in the game is already on the disc and you have to pay money to unlock it, which sounds like BS. But even without the extras, Skylanders is a pretty substantial action game for kids (with a small cast). It's fun, it's challenging, the story is cute, and there is co-op.

A great toys idea and, quite surprisingly, a solid and entertaining game, with very nice characters and level design. A good gift for kids.

A video game played with real toys? Skylanders Spyros Adventure fuses real life toys with digital games and it actually works. Combine that with charming character design, great music and well implemented RPG elements and this game is a real treat for younger gamers.

This one is a must buy for kids, it's the ultimate RPG for our younger gamers. Furthermore the game has a whole new element: the portal of power. For the first time one can put little characters on the portal and play with them inmediately in the game.

It's a cross between a toy, card game and arcade game which makes Skylander: Spyro's Adventure such a compelling game from start to finish and then several more revisits. The

If it's survival-of-the-fittest thrills you want, Skylanders can do that.

Outside the novelty factor of its genuinely innovative tech, there's nothing especially memorable about Skylanders, but it undoubtedly fired the imagination of my little one, and I found it a perfectly pleasant time-killer.

Armed with a nice roster of characters, Skylanders is an engrossing experience. Outside of an odd difficulty spike at the end and a few less-than-polished moments, the game hits its target. If I were a kid, I have no doubt I'd be saving my pennies to buy more Skylanders. However, as an adult, it's hard not to feel manipulated.

It's not the most complex game on the market, but the innovative gadgetry and authentic thoughtfulness on the part of the developer stands out in a market so used to churning out the same old crap.

Skylanders reinvents Spyro for a new generation with its innovative tie-in toys, but it needs more content to offer true value.

Given that the elements designed around its collectability are the game's biggest hook, though, it's hard to recommend to those who'd play on the cheap. If you aren't willing to shell out for the plastic, then you should reconsider clearing some shelf space for this one.

A game using this toy technology with the depth and breadth of Pokemon, or the variety and replayability of the Lego games, would be absolutely amazing. For now, "pretty good" will have to do.

Activision nailed the market between toys and gaming, and Spyro is the perfect mascot to bring this into the 20th century. If you have, or are purchasing Skylanders for the holiday, you will be a hero.

A genuinely entertaining and imaginative child-friendly dungeon crawler, that's at least as good as the recent Lego games and not nearly as cynical as you might think.

It has some flaws, but the overall idea is well implemented, and pretty unique. It certainly tugs on the heart strings of the collector in me, and I'll probably soon lose the ability to resist buying a few of the additional figures for myself.

The 8 to 12 years old kids can easily add 10 points to our review score, which reflects the less transgenerational qualities of Skylanders when compared to Pokémon. But the concept alone, with its little monster toys, works perfectly well, and even on a 34 years old like me... I'm going to keep playing with my kids. Their eyes simply spark when I put a toy on the portal and it materializes in the game!