Skylanders Swap Force leaps over its predecessors with jumping and platforming elements (review)

You may have felt like your bank account might finally be recovering from the first two Skylander installments (not to mention Disney Infinity trying to muscle-in on the toy/video game crossover craze). Your reprieve, however, was short-lived; Publisher Activision is bringing Spyro and friends back in Skylanders Swap Force, available Oct. 13 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. This time around, the body-switching Swap Force characters join all of your favorites from Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure and Skylanders Giants in a vastly expanded and improved version of this colorful, kid-friendly dungeon-crawler.

While the titular Giants from the previous entry provided some hard-hitting muscle, often at the cost of speed and mobility, the new Swap Force characters emerge as clearly superior to both the regular Skylanders and their hulking cousins. With top and bottom halves that can both be upgraded separately and then swapped (via clever modeling and small but strong magnets), the Swap Force figures give you hundreds of combinations with which to construct your own favorite Skylander.