Skylanders: Trap Team

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Activision Blizzard

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Review:

Note: Are you confused by all this “Toys to Life” stuff? Check out eShopperReviews’ helpful guide here!

Skylanders: Trap Team is a family-friendly Action-RPG with 3D Platformer elements released in 2014 on mobile devices, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, and Wii, with an entirely separate game with the same title released on Nintendo 3DS the same year. This is the fourth game in the Skylanders franchise, the series that started the “Toys to Life” craze that has largely died out by 2022, save for Nintendo’s own Amiibos, which continue to linger on. Much like Amiibos, Skylanders figurines have NFC chips in the figurines, which can be read by a “Portal” device that connects to your Nintendo 3DS wirelessly via the Nintendo 3DS’s little-used infrared port (on the top of the handheld, near the L button).

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Getting Started

For those wondering about what additional toys/gadgets/doodads you’ll need to get to enjoy this game, know that in order to play this game, you need to get a compatible Skylanders portal – any Nintendo 3DS Skylanders Portal will do, but only those designed for Nintendo 3DS. Console portals won’t work. The Nintendo 3DS Swap Force portal is highly recommended, as this is reputedly the only portal that works with all Nintendo 3DS games in the series.

You will also need at least one compatible Skylanders figurine (this game only works with Spyro’s Adventure, Giants, Swap Force, Trap Team, and Eon’s Elite figurines) – Different figurines have different abilities, and some types of figurines are required to access certain areas, but no specific figurine is required to play the game.

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Dream Team?

Where Swap Force saw a significant leap in quality on the consoles, the Nintendo 3DS would apparently need to wait until Trap Team before it too saw a decent jump in quality. This game once again features the excellent 3D characters with wonderful animation that the series is known for, but this time around the game levels these characters find themselves in actually look pretty good, and certainly better than the blocky-looking locales of the Nintendo 3DS version of Swap Force. And naturally, once again have some excellent voice acting here from talent like Patrick Warburton, and another excellent soundtrack that works well for the game.

This time around, the game’s creators have also wisely opted to retain the ability of the Nintendo 3DS version of Swap Force to keep track of all your scanned Skylanders figurines, meaning you’ll only ever need to scan each of them once, and after that point you can simply summon the Skylander you want from the touchscreen.

Curiously, this game also completely ignores the Traptanium Trap figurines introduced with the console versions of Skylanders: Trap Team. They’re not used at all here. So… one less thing to worry about, I suppose?

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Building a Better Trap?

It’s a pretty well-established pattern by this point, but for the most part, Skylanders: Trap Team on Nintendo 3DS plays like the previous Nintendo 3DS Skylanders games. There’s not too much new I can say here. 3D Platformer with a focus on combat, solid entry in the genre… you get the drill.

As far as differences go, they’re very minor, but they do generally tend to be positive. This time around, the only reason you’d need to reach for a different figurine (or rather, tap its icon on the touchscreen after you’ve already scanned it) is to access an element-specific optional area. You won’t need any specific type of Skylander to play through the game, there aren’t any obstacles I saw that needed a Giants figure to get past more quickly, and even the Trap Master figurines designed for the Trap Team set only have an added functionality as it pertains to fighting some boss-type enemies, where they get a damage bonus. As far as Skylanders’ pattern of figurine gatekeeping goes, this is all pretty tame.

The camera is once again out of the player’s control, but this time around the level design is decent enough that this isn’t really a major issue. And once again, not having to constantly scan things into the game using a portal is a wonderful change that helps to keep things moving.

The “Trapping” element of the game has you using the touchscreen to capture some of the enemies you encounter as opposed to the Traptanium Traps of the console versions, and this can even make for some nice variety in the gameplay, giving you an opportunity to temporarily control a different sort of character that’s not in your normal roster. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a nice addition all the same.

All in all, this is a solid entry in the series that addresses the biggest problems with the prior game, but doesn’t really do anything especially different or ambitious to drastically change the formula.

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It’s… Not a Trap?

Skylanders: Trap Team on the Nintendo 3DS is ultimately the best entry so far in the Skylanders series on Nintendo 3DS, fixing the issues with the prior game, improving the visuals, and not introducing any major new flaws. It’s not especially ambitious and it’s going to seem very familiar to anyone who played any of the previous Skylanders games, but it does a good job with what it sets out to do. If you’re looking to try a Skylanders game on Nintendo 3DS, this is a solid choice.

tl;dr – The Nintendo 3DS version of Skylanders: Trap Team is a family-friendly 3D Platformer. This game, and its console counterparts, are also the fourth game in the Skylanders series of Toys-to-Life games that kicked off the entire craze. Trap Team is a solid, if predictable, entry in the series that plays much like the prior Nintendo 3DS game, but fixes a few of that game’s flaws and has much better visuals, all without much of the multi-figurine issues that bogged down Trap Team’s console counterpart. This is the best entry in the series so far on Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: B

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