Skylanders Giants screenshot provided by Activision
Last month at Activision’s Pre-E3 event in Los Angeles I had the opportunity to play through a couple levels of Skylanders Giants with a few of the new characters. Without a doubt, my new favorite Skylander is Bouncer. Bouncer is a robot with laser beam eyes! Be sure to say “laser beam eyes” with an evil mad scientist voice; it sounds better that way. In addition to the laser beams, Bouncer also has a mortar ranged attack that rocks. I only got to see a few of the Giants, but what I saw was impressive.
In all there will be sixteen new characters, including super-sized giants with awesome powers, and new LightCore Skylanders that light up in the game and in the real world on the portal. The LightCore Skylanders are powered by the portal and will light up on the old portals, so you won’t have to upgrade your portal.
More areas within Skylands can be explored. Houses can be entered, and items within destroyed to find treasure. It appears that money will be easier to obtain in Giants, but there will be proportionally more opportunities to spend it. Characters, new and old alike, can now be leveled up to 15, but only new characters will support the new upgrade paths.
The release date has not yet been announced, but I would start looking for Skylanders Giants in October or November. The game is developed by Toys for Bob and will be available on the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows PC, and mobile devices.
