Why You'll Want to Buy Skylanders Trap Team

Disclosure: Activision provided the new Skylanders Trap Team game for review. All opinions are my own and have not been influenced in any way.

Last night my husband and I stayed up for an hour and a half past the boys’ bedtime playing Skylanders Trap Team on our Wii U. Sure, I probably should have been grading papers, but instead I was laughing out loud like a little kid as I ran around the screen as a sheep, knocking over gigantic tortoises.

Say what?

I’ll explain in a moment.

You’ve heard of Skylanders, right? It seems as if every time I walk into Toys R Us or Target, there is a group of young boys gathered around the Skylanders display discussing strategy and characters. As a mom, I’ll admit, I didn’t really “get it.” I mean, who were all of these characters? What was up with the portal? And what in the world was a trap?

The story is that the evil Kaos orchestrated a prison break for the most notorious criminals in Skylands. Your job, as a member of the Trap Team, is to capture the villains and then bring them back to fight alongside you. To play, you place a character on the portal (genius, really) and then go off on your mission to capture villains.

And that’s how I ended up as a sheep knocking over tortoises. I had started as the Skylander, Food Fight, shooting barrels with tomatoes, when I stumbled upon a seemingly innocent sheep. This sheep was not so nice, however, and started shooting at me! So, I got him with a bunch of tomatoes and then trapped him in my trap. I was excited to see that once the sheep was in my trap, I could switch back and forth between Food Fight and the sheep – and seriously, what is more fun than running around as a sheep?

I had been waffling back and forth on a Skylanders set for the boys, but they had been asking for one for months and pouring over the character lists in the latest holiday catalogs.

We made the jump with Skylanders Trap Team and I really am so glad I did. As a parent, I think the game is well-constructed and age appropriate.

What I Love About the New Skylanders Trap Team as a Parent of Young Kids

The characters are fun and not scary
When you trap a “bad guy” you can make him play as a “good guy”
There are 3 levels of play, and the easy version is perfect for my little guys
On the “easy” level of play, the game will give you directions as to what to do next – no getting stuck in the game because you don’t know how to move on.
The characters are collectable and the boys can “build their team” as they go
The graphics are out of this world – really clear and resemble a movie
The situations really are funny. We threw tomatoes at a sheep. We played a trick on a soda-guzzling villain.
The game can grow with the boys – as they become more sophisticated with age, the game becomes more sophisticated.
Skylanders Trap Team allows you to use your Skylanders you collected in previous versions of the game (Swap Force, Giants, Spyro’s Adventure)

Things to Keep in Mind

There are lots of collectables with the set, but you do not need ALL of them to play. Some advice:
- You need a trap for elemental type (there are 8), but one trap will “capture” more than 1 villain. Villains you have already caught will be sent to a vault for later use.
- Trap Master characters will help unlock features.
Skylanders Trap Team is available on the tablet, Nintendo 2DS and 3DS, XBOX 360 and XBOX ONE, Wii and Wii U, and the PS 3 and 4.