Skylanders: Giants

Gen cert, Activision, PS3 (also Wii, Xbox360, 3DS, WiiU tba) ****

If you have children of a certain age, no doubt you’ve heard of Skylanders. The game crosses the virtual/real world divide by giving you plastic figures that you plug into a portal, which transports them into the game. You can level up the characters, and should you decide to play the game on another console, your characters and all their enhanced abilities come with you. This year’s offering, Skylanders: Giants, does pretty much the same thing, except it gives you bigger models – and ones with some cool light effects. And the Giants are obviously more powerful than their smaller brethren once in-game, so you can smash through obstacles with them. The appeal of Skylanders is, like many games before it, the collecting and levelling up of characters. Which means it can be a pretty expensive endeavour for parents. For kids, however, it means hours of entertainment, with new powers to master, new skills to practise and levels full of new things to explore as you battle to save the Skylands again. This is strictly for the kids, but for what it tries to do, Skylanders definitely delivers.