Skylanders: SWAP Force Announced
Company: Activision Product: Skylanders SWAP Force
Activision Publishing has revealed their upcoming game, Skylanders SWAP Force, which will be the next installment in the popular franchise. Skylanders SWAP Force will be featured at Toy Fair 2013, February 10-13 at the Javits Center in New York City, in booth 3061. SWAP Force builds upon the success of the franchise's signature gameplay with an all-new innovative play pattern - swapability - that gives kids more choice than ever before by letting them swap the top and bottom halves of the toys to create their own characters. The game lets Portal Masters reconfigure 16 SWAP Force characters into 256 unique combinations. It seems that, for the most part, the top half of each SWAP Force figure determines the character's powers, while the bottom half determines the character's type of movement, allowing players to match up the powers and movement type they need for a given situation. However, it is worth pointing out that some powers (such as the stink cloud power of Stink Bomb) appear to be tied to the bottom half, if the Teaser Trailer (embedded below) is any indication. Fans of the franchise will also be able to play Skylanders SWAP Force with their entire collection of characters from both Skylanders Spyro's Adventure and Skylanders Giants and, in SWAP Force, these characters will have the added capability of jumping, something sorely missed in the previous games.
16 New SWAP Force Characters Creates 256 Unique Combinations Skylanders SWAP Force features 16 new SWAP Force characters, along with 32 core Skylanders characters (16 completely new Skylanders and 16 new versions of fan favorite characters from previous games) and eight new LightCore characters. Skylanders SWAP Force also delivers high-resolution graphics that bring the game's detailed characters and rich environments to life, immersing players in the gameplay like never before.
"With Skylanders, we didn't just create a beloved new franchise, we actually created an entirely new category that brings the world of physical toys and videogames together like never before. And now with Skylanders SWAP Force, we are pushing the genre we created forward with another big innovation: customization. The idea that kids can customize their own characters in the physical world, and have their unique combinations recognized in the virtual world, is an idea as big as the concept of bringing toys to life itself." - Eric Hirshberg, CEO, Activision Publishing, Inc.
"Skylanders Giants was named to our 2012 Holiday Hot Toy List for good reason - it extended the franchise's breakthrough gameplay and its performance at retail has been incredible. We're continually impressed by the originality that Activision delivers in bringing toys to life. The innovation of allowing kids to customize their toys in the real world and then send them into the Skylanders SWAP Force game is sure to raise the bar for the franchise." - Jerry Storch, Chairman and CEO, Toys"R"Us, Inc. In Skylanders SWAP Force, Portal Masters embark on an all-new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands, home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in Skylands. During an epic battle, a brave group of Skylanders were caught in the volcano's eruption, which blasted them apart and sent them to earth. But, the magic of the volcano gave these heroes a remarkable new power the ability to swap halves - turning them into a special team known as the SWAP Force. Meanwhile, Kaos is back with a new evil plan. And now, Portal Masters everywhere must reassemble the SWAP Force - in their original form or in new combinations - and send them back to Cloudbreak to save Skylands!
-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins
Related Links: The Official Skylanders: SWAP Force Website Game Vortex's Coverage of Skylanders Games The Entire Skylanders: SWAP Force Reveal Presentation at the 2013 Toy Fair
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