This morning Toys’R’Us locations across the US start selling Rubble Rouser and Stink Bomb, the two Skylanders toys needed to 100 per cent complete levels in a game released three months ago. What?
First, a little background for those who’ve not played Skylanders: Swap Force, the latest entry in Activision’s incredibly lucrative marriage of toys and video games. It’s a platforming adventure game in which players use a plastic portal plugged into their game console’s USB port to translate physical toys placed upon it into playable characters. It’s really quite good, as platformers go.
The toys are broken up into elemental groups — Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Life, Undead, Tech and Magic. Scattered throughout the game levels are gates that only open when a character of the corresponding element is present — a fire gate requires a fire Skylander.
Swap Force adds a couple of new twists to the series’ formula. For one, special Swap Force characters can switch their tops and bottoms with each other, leading to dual-element combinations, used to unlock dual-element gates. Each Swap Force character also has one of eight travel powers — digging, teleporting, climbing, spinning, rolling, flying and sneaking. These powers unlock corresponding mini-games scattered throughout the levels.
In order to 100 per cent a level in Skylanders: Swap Force, which rewards a player with rank-enhancing stars, every secret area needs to be unlocked, every secret area found. Until now, that was not possible.
Rubble Rouser is the first Earth-based Swap Force character. That means that any dual-element gate requiring Earth could not be opened until the character was released. Players could at least get around this by playing a co-op game — those dual-element gates can also be unlocked by two separate Skylanders.
Stink Bomb, a green skunk ninja, is the first sneaking Skylander. No sneaking mini-games could be unlocked in Swap Force until now. Without unlocking those areas and earning the rewards for completing them, any level with a sneaking challenge in place could not be completed.
What an odd way to release a toy-dependent video game. What a delightfully devious way to keep parents, childrens, and non-children fans chomping at the bit for new figures.
Stink Bomb and Rubble Rouser, along with Light Core Whamshell and Countdown and new Adventure and Battle Packs should be available at Toys’R’Us stores in limited quantities this morning.
Comments
6 responses to “Skylanders: Swap Force Finally Gets The Toys Needed To Finish The Game”
Are these the last to be released? I appear to need Doom Stone and Trap Shadow. That’ll cover my Earth and Magical elements as well as the spinning and sneaking travel powers.
Looks like I’ll have to buy more than just the two to be able to get 100% as soon as possible. Doh!
I just bought SWAP Force for my PS4 at an EB Games sale as well as a dozen characters. It’s slowly dawning on me that I’ll only be experiencing a fraction of the gameplay, having spent up to $200. I didn’t realise that you needed a character of each element type, so I’ve got a couple of one type and none of another, for example.
Look around for the figures from the older games – they work fine in Swap Force, you can pick some up for next to nothing, and it should be the cheapest way to cover any elements you need.
Also, this article is about American releases. In Australia, we already got the battle and adventure packs mentioned (before Christmas too), but the above Swap Force characters are rumoured for late February here.
20th of January I believe is the next wave for Australia 🙂
Do you have a source/link for this?