While getting a Christmas list together for the kids at Toys R Us yesterday, there was a gaming rep demoing this new Skylanders game. Pretty neat concept that came off kind of gimmicky at first. But if you have small kids aging from about 5 or 6 to about 12-13 this is a neat game you should have a look at. It's kind of a cross between your classic co-op RPG and Pokemon with the premise being that with these small character figurines, you can swap characters in and out of the game on the fly!! The starter kit comes with the game disc, a peripheral called the Portal of Power (a small platform that connects to your console via USB or wi-fi, which you place the figures on) and 3 figures. You can expand the characters with different sets and even expand the game with adventure kits. After one evening, I already like the way it has my kids thinking about strategies while playing and the puzzles within the game has them thinking too and are right at their level. The game also gets appropriately harder as you progress throughout the story. Another cool feature is that the figurines store the stats and progress for that specific character and can be used to play across all consoles!! So if my kids (which have the Xbox 360 version) want to go to Bs house and play with Timmy and he has the Wii version, the characters and their stats will be present on that console too!
