There’s a new main hub this time around too, a castle with a few different areas to explore. In the center is a vault which lets you switch different villains in and out of the traps you have to bring on missions, and you can even trap villains you might have missed because you didn’t have that elemental trap required to during the story. There’s also a really bizarre mini game that’s called a "rap battle" - it’s basically a quicktime event Guitar Hero clone with weird words. I don’t even know.
The story itself is fairly meaty and while most veterans of the series won’t find any area particularly difficult, the addition of different styles of platforming thanks to the jump ability and several mini-game like levels help keep a good variety and pacing throughout the campaign. Once again you’ll be blocked from certain areas if you don’t own Skylanders of the specific element or type, and you’ll be rewarded with bonuses for having trapped villains (there are optional mini stories for them) or Trap Team members in certain areas with bonus chests.
All in all Skylanders Trap Team is a solid and entertaining title for the series that builds on all of the previous games. The game looks great on the Xbox One and PS4 with colorful textures, as well as characters and environments that offer a lot of rich depth. The voice acting is superb as well, hearing your kid laugh at the cheesy one liners is always smile inducing, and of course many of them should make you laugh too. The Skylanders series continues to offer great co-op games for families with addicting and entertaining gameplay. I just wish it wasn’t such an expensive investment.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: 2 player co-op is supported throughout the game in both story and Kaos Doom Challenge modes. Players can use their own characters and gold is shared.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.