Alex Yarde has been a gamer his whole life, and now he loves sharing games like Skylanders with his kids.
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A good friend recently gave my son a Skylanders Giants figure for his birthday. She said that her son loves them and she knew that my family would love them as well. She was not wrong—we all love it. I got the starter kit, which included a few more figures and the ingenious portal that goes with the game. I hooked up the portal to my Play Station and we were off.
This game is genius. My son puts one of his figures on the portal and the character appears in the game. He then gets to customize the character’s appearance and skills as he moves along in the game. The figure on the portal saves the information on the character that my son has developed. My son can then take the character with him and use it at his friends’ houses, on their portals and play his character. As he customizes his characters, he gets to be creative and the game is helping him begin to understand game rules, structure and strategy. On top of that, with the different characters available—from a giant with massive strength to a skilled and fast little elf—he can step into this fantasy world and embody all sorts of different strengths. As the new PlayStation trailer, Greatness Awaits, asks, “Who are you not to be great?” and with all these character options for the kids, greatness definitely awaits them—and us.
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Sharing games with others is one of the most important aspects of gaming. I remember a time when the only games were in arcades, and if you were good enough, you could take all comers in your game of choice and become a local legend. All gamers of the arcade age all had games like that. Kids huddled around game cabinets watching rivals on displays. Putting your quarters up and playing till the sun went down, sharing well honed techniques with friends.
PlayStation’s Greatness Awaits trailer does a magnificent job of capturing the endless possibilities that playing an opponent brings; the friendly completion, bragging rights and the awesome skills top players would elicit from newcomers and peers alike. The cutting-edge technology that exists today, like in the upcoming PlayStation4, far exceeds anything my peers or I could have even imagined.
Playstation seems to get seems to get that sharing the experience is a significant part of gaming. I’m looking forward to the day that I can play the new Final Fantasy & Batman games with by son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in this regard, he loves it when we can compete head-to-head and he even beats me once and a while! We both can’t wait for the latest Playstation 4 console release – just in time for the new Skylanders game.
Greatness Awaits.
Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Sony via Glam Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Sony.
I was listening to a group of young men the other night having a conversation about gaming with all of its histories and intricacies. It reminded of conversations young men used to have about cars. Maybe they still do somewhere.