This year's big video-game conference in California has just concluded. During the three day event in Los Angeles it provided a host of information about the games our families are likely to be playing later in the year.
Beyond the headlines around the PS4 and Xbox One battle was a fight for the hearts and minds of younger players between Skylanders Swap Force and Disney Infinity. Particularly interesting this year was a range of new figures for Skylanders that can be mixed and matched to create custom characters both with the toys themselves and in-game.
At E3, the following swappable Skylanders were announced:
In addition to these new novel figures were the following new regular Skylanders:
There were also a couple of new Light-Core Skylanders announced, these are the figures that illuminate when placed on the USB portal peripheral that is used to access the toy-characters in the game:
Finally, there were the following Series 3 Reposed figures. These add a new attack, and ability to switch upgrade paths, to existing characters from Giants and Sypro's Adventures:
Each of these new figures work only in the new Swap Force game. However, it has been confirmed that you can use your old Skylanders figures in the new game. For families this is a key point as it keeps the potential cost of the new game significantly lower. With just the Swap Force starter pack, and some old figures, you can complete the game and access the majority of the elemental zones.
The Wii U version of the game has an interesting feature that allows players to view the stats of the current figure while playing the main game. I used this at the conference to check out how the stats of the new Skylanders characters compared:
Skylanders Swap Force will be released in October, starting at £64.99.