I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. My family had a great Christmas. One of the favorite gifts we got under the tree was the Skylanders SwapForce starter pack for Wii U.

This is our first Skylanders game and we were really excited to try it out. I had heard just great things about Skylanders and Skylanders Giants. One great thing about SwapForce is that you can still use your characters from the previous versions of the game.
SwapForce adds a new element to the game, by giving you the ability to swap the character pieces with each other. For example, you could take the top of character Blast Zone, and put it on top of the Wash Buckler to get a new character Blast Buckler. Now you have a new Skylander with the abilities of both Skylanders. There are tons of swapping possibilities!
Below is a picture of Rattle Shake swapped with Night Shift to make Rattle Shift

The starter kit comes with the Skylanders SwapForce game disc, a game portal, two swap-able characters and one smaller character that doesn’t swap.

We figured that my almost 8 year old son would be the most excited about Skylanders SwapForce, but we were pleasantly surprised by how much my 6 year old daughter loves it. There are different difficulty levels, and the easiest level is perfect for her. She is very much a beginning level gamer and she gets frustrated easily. She has loved playing Skylanders with her brother and she is requiring very little assistance. Using the Wii U you can play on the game pad too. The game pad is a hot commodity at our house and we have to take turns, to avoid conflict. There is something fun about having the screen right their in your hand.

Skylanders SwapForce has been a great game for the whole family. We received a complimentary starter pack for review and then we purchased three more SwapForce and three Giants characters. I thought that we would be set for awhile, at least until my sons birthday in a few weeks. Well my son got some Christmas money and the first thing he wanted to buy was a new SwapForce character. My kids have a hard time spending their money, so it really says a lot to me when he is really excited to go and get a new SwapForce character with his own money.

If you have some gift cards burning a whole in your pocket, or maybe Santa didn’t hit a home run, I really recommend picking up Skylanders SwapForce. It really is a fun game for the whole family! As of 12/27/13, Amazon has the Starter Pack for $59.99. That’s a great deal!
Do you already play Skylanders? Who are your favorite Skylanders? Leave me a comment and let me know. I’d love some ideas of who to pick up next.