darkSpyro

Ending months of speculation Activision have finally unveiled the fourth entry to the Skylanders series: Skylanders Trap Team. The game features new "Trap Master" Skylanders and a new Traptanium Trap toy for capturing and then taking control of villains from the game.


To capture a villain in Trap Team you must first defeat them, once you've done that you place a Traptanium Trap (with an element matching the villain) in the slot on the new Traptanium Portal and the villain is yours. You can then summon that villain back into the game at will and play as them on your own side in the fight against evil.


According to the story of Trap Team Kaos has discovered the location of Cloudcracker Prison and has blown it up to free the nefarious baddies housed within, he's done this to use them as his own personal army to takeover Skylands. It's up to the Portal Masters to find the Traptanium Traps that had previously made up the prison in order to recapture the villains and save Skylands from Kaos' evil plans once again.


There will be sixteen brand new Trap Master Skylanders, these characters are slightly larger than the core Skylanders and wield mighty Traptanium weapons that help in the fight against the villains of Trap Team. The Trap Masters can also find Traptanium shards as well as enter Traptanium zones to find hidden villains. There are also eighteen new core Skylanders, like Food Fight above, and more reposed returning favourites such as Gill Grunt and Shroomboom.


The new Traptanium Portal has a single slot for a Traptanium Trap and most notably also features its own speaker for the villains to talk to you through giving you a greater sense that the villain you've captured has really been brought out of the game and into this world.


A box of fifteen different styles of Traptanium Traps was seen in the trailer below, each one has an element assigned to it which means that you can only capture specific villains with each Trap. So for example if you're facing the Tech villain troll duo that makes up Shrednaught you'll need a Tech Trap to capture them. You will be able to house multiple villains in each Trap so despite a reported total of 40 villains in Trap Team you won't quite need that many Traps to catch 'em all.

The Starter Pack comes with the Trap Master Skylander Snap Shot, the core Skylander Food Fight, the Water Tiki Trap, the Life Hammer Trap, the new Traptanium Portal as well as the usual stickers, cards and poster that you'd expect.


Trap Team is once again being developed by Toys for Bob, the original developers of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure and Skylanders: Giants. They will be handling the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii versions of the game while Beenox will be on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U and Nintendo 3DS versions. The game is set for release on the 5th of October 2014 in North America, the 10th of October in Europe and the 2nd of October in Australia/New Zealand.

Many media outlets have articles and videos on the reveal including Game Informer, IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, Kotaku, Engadget, Polygon, Games Radar, Forbes, The HD Room, Connected Digital World, Family Gamer TV, The Skylander Boy and Girl and Coin-Op.tv. We also have our own gallery full of images on this very site.


And lastly in Swap Force news, Toys R Us have emailed out a Hot Toy Alert for Lightcore Bumble Blast giving him a release date of this Saturday, the 26th of April. They'll also have various other offers on the day in store including one for a free Lightcore Hex figure when you buy a Swap Force Lightcore figure. Because everyone needs another Lightcore Hex.

On Wednesday the 23rd of April Activision will be revealing the next Skylanders game at a special press event. In a separate event for the regular fans on the same day they will also be giving away 500 free Doom Stone figures at the Times Square Toys R Us store in New York, Doom Stone being the last remaining unique character still to be released for Skylanders Swap Force.


Quote: Press Release

Activision Publishing, Inc. and Toys"R"Us are giving fans the rare opportunity to receive a complimentary Skylanders toy at a special Toys"R"Us Times Square event celebrating Skylanders Day! Before the final Skylanders SWAP Force character, Doom Stone, is released to the public, the first 500 Portal Masters to line up at The World's Greatest Toy Store on Wednesday, April 23, will be among the first to get their hands on this must-have figure.

Fans attending the event will get the chance to meet Skylanders costumed characters, experience the bestselling kids' videogame franchise at in-store gaming kiosks and receive other fun Skylanders giveaways.

Last year had a similar event with Ninjini at the time of the reveal of Swap Force and saw the regular release of Ninjini around a month later, which hopefully bodes well for those of us who can't make it to New York.


A listing for one of the two remaining alt-deco figures from Swap Force, Kickoff Countdown, has been spotted on a couple of European Amazon websites along with a few different release dates including the 14th of May.


Target in Australia are giving away 25 limited edition flocked Springtime Trigger Happy toys. To be eligible to enter you must spend $30 or more on Swap Force gaming products, you then need to answer the question "Why would you like to add Limited Edition Trigger Happy to your Skylanders collection?" in 25 words or less and the best 25 answers will win the figure. The promo runs until the 30th of April.

And Skylanders Lost Islands has been getting into the update spirit again over the past few weeks with things like an increased level cap, new islands and a new companion.

• March 17: Fryno and Scratch became available for purchase with gems or using the Skylander spinner.
  
• March 24: A new Adventure Clock building that lets you instantly finish all active Adventure Balloons. The building costs 500 Gems, you can use it once every 24 hours and it costs 250 Energy per active balloon.
  
• April 1: The kingdom level cap was raised from 40 to 45 and a new small island called "Sheep Island" now becomes available for purchase at level 41, it'll cost 25 million coins once you're there.
  
• April 7: A visual upgrade to the Summoning Stone. It costs 15 million coins and ups the amount you get from Orville each day to 2,500 coins.
  
• April 14: New companion Willowbark who costs 200 Gems and doubles the XP bonus effect of your decorations. And another small island called "Troll Island" that becomes available for purchase at level 42 for a sum of 30 million coins.