Spyro has always been and forever will be one of those iconic characters that helped propel the gaming industry to what it is today. The franchise in general has seen much better days, and I couldn’t help but feel pretty pessimistic about Spyro’s latest adventure. While Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure may not be the Spyro I grew to love, this latest iteration is a positive step in restoring some credibility to the franchise.

For better or worse, the Spyro you and I knew is pretty much dead. This latest iteration has completely overhauled the character and universe in a mostly positive way. In fact, Spyro doesn’t look anything like he used to, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. Activision could have easily turned out another crappy Spyro title targeted towards players that enjoyed the PSone classics and repeated several of the same mistakes. Instead they opted to essentially re-haul the franchise and target it towards kids. The result is something very refreshing, and a great cooperative family title; which with a few exceptions has become a rarity in the industry.

The plot resembles a weekend cartoon, with a huge cast of diverse characters, and the common theme of good vs. evil. The Skylanders have kept the darkness away thanks to a machine called the Core of Light, and the Portal Masters. With the greatest of the Portal Masters power beginning to weaken; this gives our villain, Kaos a chance to permanently dispose of the Skylanders. Things don’t exactly go as planned (they rarely do) for Kaos and he soon resorts to plan Z. This causes essentially the big bang, shooting the Skylanders into space, shrinking them down, and petrifying them into plastic. They soon land on Earth, and thus you, one of the new Portal Masters are born.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure is the Portal of Power. This wireless device allows you to put Skylander toys on it. The really cool thing about this is that the toys automatically hold all the character data and they can be instantly swapped out for another character. For instance, if I was playing with Spyro for 30 minutes or so, and wanted to change characters, I simply grab Spyro, take him off, and place another toy on the Portal of Power. As I stated before all the character data is saved within that toy. There’s also no backing out to the main menu to switch characters, because as soon as you place the character on the portal it appears in-game, ready to control. It works flawlessly and doesn’t have the technology curve that might alienate the audience it’s trying to capture. It is worth noting that the initial setup takes a bit of work.

When I say that the device works flawlessly I’m not joking. To test how quickly the device responded I quickly removed each toy and attempted to trick the device by swapping characters or adding several on the portal. While this slows things down, it still processes each move with complete accuracy. Even if I had too many toys on the portal it would still tell me the exact number. That’s impressive, and really helps as a selling point, considering how radical children’s behavior is. Really the only downside to the device is that it takes 3 AA batteries, instead of being chargeable. Players are not required to buy all the characters to finish the game; however there are lots of extra areas, only accessible with them.

The game itself is pretty simple, though it does feature a ton of content, and some addictive RPG elements. Skylanders isn’t really a platforming. There’s no jump button, and the emphasis has been clearly put on a more action/RPG formula. There’s a lot of hand-holding with every action, which helps insure that the best effort is made not to frustrate the users, whatever age they might be. The graphics are simple, yet charming enough to sustain the entire adventure. The sound design is actually where things are surprisingly good. Older players will probably recognize the voice of Kaos from Invader Zim, and there are a couple of other surprises sprinkled in there.

The starter pack which comes with the game, Portal of Power, batteries, and three Skylanders will run you about $70. It’s not a bad deal when you consider most retail titles run about $60 anyway. One thing that did sort of bother me is how aggressively Activision encourages users to look into buying other toys. It’s completely optional, however playing videos showcasing different characters seems like borderline manipulation, especially when you consider the intended audience. The toys are also not cheap, and run about $8 dollars per character, or $20 for a bundle of three. It’s not terrible pricing, considering that you’re getting a toy rather than purchasing something digitally, however I couldn’t help but feel they could have did a bit better on the pricing.

Skylander’s Sypro Adventure is a fun family title, and a competent reboot to a series that frankly has needed one for a while. Despite a questionable business model, there’s a very fun and enjoyable cooperative title that can be enjoyed by any age group.