Skylanders: Giants
A direct sequel to Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.
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| Platform | Developer | Age Rating | Release Date | ||
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| EU | NA |  |
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Oct 19th 2012 | Oct 21st 2012 |
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Nov 30th 2012 | Nov 18th 2012 | ||
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Oct 19th 2012 | Oct 21st 2012 | ||
Story
As a direct sequel the story picks up shortly after the events of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. The very basic premise of the game as told by a press release:
Players will resume their role as a powerful Portal Master, who controls their a team of Skylanders, including Giants, mythical and powerful heroes that play a pivotal role in the quest to save the Skylands from Kaos, who is back with another plan to rule over Skylands. Players will navigate perilous lands, battle powerful enemies, collect treasures and solve interesting puzzles.
Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow have returned to help write the story.
Characters
As well as being able to use all of the Skylanders from the original game, Skylanders Giants introduced 16 brand new characters to play as. This new lineup was made up of eight regular sized Skylanders and eight Giants who were about twice the size of the other characters.
Here are pictures of all of the Skylanders new to Skylanders Giants:
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Along with the brand new Skylanders and variants there will also be new "Series 2" poses for 24 characters from the first game (compared to the original characters they have a special "Wow Pow" upgrade and the ability to switch paths at will - you can use these toys in the first game but you won't have access to that extra power there) and eight LightCore characters (versions of characters who light up when placed on the portal and cause a massive in-game explosion of light when they first enter) who are made up of four of the new Skylanders and four of the old (they are not Series 2 so do not have a Wow Pow - you can also use these toys in the first game but again do not have any sort of extra power).
Altogether that brings the total number of new toys to 62. Combine that with the 37 playable toys from Skylanders Spyro's Adventure and you have a grand total of 99 different playable Skylander toys.
In the Starter Pack you get three Skylanders (on console Jet-Vac, Cynder (Series 2) and Tree Rex, on 3DS Punch Pop Fizz, Cynder (Series 2) and Tree Rex), a Portal of Power, Trading Cards, a Poster, and the game. The Starter Pack was also available without the Portal of Power for those who already had one but it only had one Skylander: Tree Rex.
To help differentiate between the old and new sets, the base of the Skylanders for Skylanders: Giants are orange instead of the green that is seen on the bottom of the Spyro's Adventure toys.
Here's a table to show the compatibility and features of the characters:
| Type of Skylander | Wow Pow | Path Switch | LightCore Blast | Spyro's Adventure | Heroic Challenge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giant | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Legendary Giant | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| New Skylander | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| LightCore New Skylander | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Legendary New Skylander | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Series 2 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| LightCore Series 2 | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Legendary Series 2 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Series 1 | No | No | No | Yes | No |
All toys were compatible with the online world of Skylanders: Universe but it is no longer running.
Portal of Power
Once again the game uses a Portal of Power, the technology inside has not changed so you can still use the portal that you got with Spyro's Adventure, there is however also a version of the game sold without a portal.
The portal included with the Starter Pack for Giants has a slightly different appearance to the old one; the base of the portal (previously green) now glows the same colour as the top but the runes on the side no longer glow at all. All console portals were wired this time to combat the issues with battery consumption that plagued the first game.
The new large "Giants" are sized so that you can still fit two of them onto the portal at the same time for co-op play.
The Portals (both new and old) also power the brand new LightCore features of certain special Skylanders. When brought near the Portal of Power they start glowing! All of the Giant Skylanders contain this LightCore feature but only a select few of the normal sized Skylanders have a LightCore variant. Those that have an additional LightCore edition are Jet-Vac, Pop Fizz, Chill, Shroomboom, Drobot, Hex, Eruptor, and Prism Break. The LightCore versions of these characters cost slightly more than the regular versions (and the ones in the Starter Pack are not the LightCore versions).
Platforms
The game was released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. There was not a PC/Mac version this time.
Music
The theme music was again by Academy Award Winning film composer Hans Zimmer and is a brand new score by returning composer, Lorne Balfe.
Exclusives
Toys R Us again had several Skylanders exclusives, including a Legendary Triple Pack containing Legendary Ignitor, Legendary Slam Bam and Legendary Jet-Vac. At launch they also had a single of the giant Legendary Bouncer.
Target in the US had a special darker version of Crusher, "Granite Crusher", as an exclusive.
At launch GameStop had an exclusive Golden version of the "Dragonfire Cannon Battle Pack", a normal version was also available elsewhere at launch.
GAME/Gamestation in the UK and Walmart in the US had an exclusive Glow in the Dark variant of the Series 2 Cynder and a Glow in the Dark Portal of Power in their console Starter Packs.
Comments
They went backwards rather than forwards with the story by introducing the Giants.
But to be fair the same was done with SSF.
V
and S2
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Why not have something for each of the games so that people have a chance to get the characters they want?
V Giants are hard to come by where I live unfortunately.
I would have thought the Giants were the easier to get hold of than the cores.
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darkspyro
net
V Exactly. They should have done something like... Maybe Kaos tainted one of the elements with petrified darkness and it starts corrupting, and the only way to stop the core of light from exploding is to reverse the darkness by... You get what I'm saying.
Overall, this game was... meh