X15 Toronto: Skylanders Remains Kid Friendly

When trolling around the show floor at Microsoft of Canada’s X15 Xbox event in Toronto this week, I stopped in to play the new Skylanders game from Activision. I was partially enticed by the game play I saw from far away, and also slightly enticed by the sweet swag they were offering. Regardless, I sat down with a member of the development team, played the game, and asked the one question I had: will Skylanders Super Chargers still be (little) kid friendly?

I explained my perceived issue: my son has been playing Skylanders since he was three, and through Spyros Adventure and Giants, traversing the levels has been fairly easy as the platforming elements and puzzle solving is incredibly basic, things he could complete with minimal hand holding. However, Super Chargers is introducing a new idea: races, and races that involve shooting things. Now that my son is five, I wonder how he would handle what I perceived as a fairly fast paced experience.

Fortunately, I have very little to worry about. Changing the difficulty within the game not only makes enemies easier to defeat, but also will slow down the races, considerably. On easy, those vehicles are moving at a snails pace…well not literally, but close enough. They moved slow enough that my son would be able to complete the challenge. The Activision representative also informed me that any driving and shooting levels could be completed cooperatively, with my son driving the vehicle while I shot the enemies, or vice versa.

Skylanders was a franchise for kids, and remains a franchise for kids. Even through innovation, Activision has made sure that the game remains user friendly and widely accessible to all ages.