Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is a toys-to-life game developed by Toys for Bob and published by Activision on October 12, 2011.

Plot
After Kaos destroyed the Core of Light, the Skylanders were turned into toys and were sent to Earth. Using your Portal of Power, you can send the Skylanders back to their world and play as them as you rebuild the Core of Light.

Why The Skylanders Were Brought Back To Life

 * 1) The game normally comes bundled with three Skylanders and a portal, which means that players will be able to play the game as soon as they buy it without having to purchase anything else.
 * 2) The idea of placing a figure on the portal and getting to play as them is very innovative.
 * 3) The Portal of Power can either have its wire connected to the console that the game is being played on, or it can be wireless without needing to be connected, although it does require batteries to be wireless.
 * 4) There are 32 unique Skylanders for you to choose from, each with different personalities and move sets.
 * 5) A Skylander can be 1 of 8 elements:
 * 6) * Magic: Skylanders that are magical and have mystical attacks. A notable Skylander of this element is Spyro.
 * 7) * Water: Skylanders that are usually sea creatures. A notable Skylander of this element is Gill Grunt.
 * 8) * Tech: Skylanders that are usually robots and have attacks that involve technology. A notable Skylander of this element is Trigger Happy.
 * 9) * Fire: Skylanders that are related to fire or other hot things. A notable Skylander of this element is Eruptor.
 * 10) * Earth: Skylanders that are Earth-related. A notable Skylander of this element is Prism Break.
 * 11) * Life: Skylanders that are related to plants or other things of nature. A notable Skylander of this element is Stealth Elf.
 * 12) * Undead: Skylanders that are related to scary things like skeletons. A notable Skylander of this element is Chop Chop.
 * 13) * Air: Skylanders that are often related to air and weather. A notable Skylander of this element is Whirlwind.
 * 14) You can upgrade your Skylanders to unlock new abilities. You can also collect Winged Sapphires around the hub world to get a 2% discount on upgrades.
 * 15) You can collect hats for your Skylanders to wear. Apart from looking good, they can also give you stat boosts.
 * 16) Every Skylander you collect unlocks a new Heroic Challenge for you to do, and completing them awards you with stat boosts, much like hats. Unlike hats, however, stat boosts gained from Heroic Challenges are permanent. You can also get achievements that boost the XP Skylanders collect if you collect lots of Skylanders.
 * 17) Portals from later games are compatible with this game, so you don't need to use the wireless portal if you don't want to, and you can also save some money if you don't want to buy another portal.
 * 18) Skylanders save their level, money, upgrades and hats (if wearing any) to a chip inside the figure, so you can use a Skylander in any copy of the game and it'll still be the same.
 * 19) There is lots of stuff to collect in every level, like hats, Soul Gems (which lets you unlock a Skylander’s final upgrade), Story Scrolls, Legendary Treasures, and Treasure Chests.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Misleading Title: Despite saying Spyro's Adventure, Spyro is just the same as any character, and you can even beat the game without him. He has a much bigger role in the comics and TV show, however.
 * 2) Speaking of Spyro, he was shoehorned there to make sure the game doesn't fail; this was proven so because the sequels don't have Spyro in the title anymore, and it got the Spyro series killed for a while.
 * 3) The Skylander figures can be expensive, and worst of all, they're mandatory to play the game, so if you don't have the portal or one Skylander, then you can't play the game and the game will refuse to continue unless you have a Skylanders figure. However, as stated earlier, if the game is bought normally, then you'll start off with three Skylanders and a portal. Skylanders figures for this game also work on future Skylander games as well, which can save some money for people who don't want to buy more Skylander figures.
 * 4) Skylanders can only go up to level 10.
 * 5) You can’t jump, having to use bounce pads to get up higher.

Reception
When Skylanders was first announced in February 2011, the announcement received strong negative reception from older Spyro fans because the game had little to do with the character.

Upon its release, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure received generally favorable reviews from critics.

Nintendo Life gave the game an 8 out of 10

On Metacritic, the game got a Metascore of 81 based on 11 critic reviews.