The Skylanders series makes its next-gen debut with Skylanders: Swap-Force on the PS4. As would probably be expected, the graphics are beautiful. Everything is cartoony, as with previous Skylanders games, with some very interesting character design, but the image quality is great, the particles and lighting are impressive, and the water looks really good, to boot.

This time around, Kaos' evil plan involves his invention of a device which can turn things evil. He calls this device... the Evilizer (of dooOOOooom). Anyway, it's interesting to see the results of evilization on the cute, fluffy and otherwise adorable creatures found in the Skylands. You can tell that something is evilized, because it is black and purple in color, and is encrusted with crystals or gemstones, which is, of course, a direct result of the crystlized darkness used in the process. Luckily, defeating these evilized creatures doesn't kill them, but merely reverts them back to being cute and fluffy. It's fun to see the evil versions of these cute creatures, to see how they're modified to make their evil-alternate versions.

There is a lot of dialogue in Swap Force, and all of it is well done and generally entertaining, including the over-the-top voices of Sharp Fin (a landshark with a Cockney accent) and Avril (an elf with a thick Scottish Brogue). There are a lot of bystanders to talk to as you play through the story and they generally give you some useful information. There was one character who you have to ride on a raft with in one level, and this guy droned on and on about how he used to be a gladiator, which, given the character, seemed like a tall tale. However, it turned out that, after the completion of that level, he set up a Challenge Game Mode in Woodburrow (the hub world), where you can fight - gladiator-style - to level up your characters and work on your skills.

The music in Skylanders: Swap Force is quite pleasant, with a simple motif that is played with to great effect in different parts of the game. You wouldn't want to leave the Main Menu up unattended too long, or the music might bother your wife or editor or someone, but the music inside the game is well-suited to the action and is kind of catchy.

For those familiar with the series so far, there are several new twists worth mentioning. The new Swap Force characters are the most obvious, with their ability to be recombined to mix and match attacks, motility and abilities. However, there are other new features in Swap Force.

As simple a thing as it may sound, the inclusion of the ability to jump makes its debut in Skylanders: Swap Force. The inclusion of jumping gives Skylanders: Swap Force Platformer aspects that it didn't have before. Mind you, players aren't penalized for falling; you just get zapped back to a safe place. Still, I am glad to finally be able to jump in a Skylanders game. It was needed - and is greatly appreciated.

Additionally, new gates can only be unlocked by a combination of two different elements - which can be accomplished one of two ways, Either by combining the appropriate Swap Force characters together or by playing in co-op mode with characters of two different elements. For the Swap Force route, if you want to be able to unlock all of the gates, you will have to have at least one Swap Force character for each of the eight elements.

Further, there are eight "Swap Abilities" that are possessed by the Swap Force characters. Throughout the game, there are mini-games that are tailored to these Swap Abilities and you have to have a Swap Force character with the appropriate Swap Ability to play that mini-game.

In the place of the puzzle locks from earlier games in the series, Swap Force features some locks that simply take button-mashing to open and a new type of puzzle lock that involves navigating two electric sparks through an interactive maze (think switches, fans, pistons and conveyor belts) to meet each other. Getting the two together will complete the puzzle and open the lock, but you get additional rewards for getting each of the two sparks into the same square as a color-coded electric bolt that matches their color (blue or green). Get both and connect the two sparks to earn three bolts and solve the lock. If a single player is playing, they can switch back and forth between controlling the two sparks, but when two players are playing, each one controls their own spark.

The Story has a decent length, providing several hours of gameplay - especially for those of us who want to play all of the side mission areas, bonus areas and mini-games. However, even once you've finished the stoyline, the good folks of Woodburrow will be the first to point out there's still much to do. You can fight against hordes of baddies in the Challenge Arena, you can play Score Mode and try for the highest possible score on a level, you can play Speed Mode and see how quickly you can race through a given level, or you can just keep playing the different levels to catch any of the things you missed on your earlier run-throughs. If you're not sure what you've yet to do, see Eon in NorthWest Woodburrow and see what Portal Master Rank you've achieved and what else you can do to complete additional Portal Master Challenges and up your rank.

Then, of course, there's also the two-player game modes that allow you to pit your favorite Skylanders against your friends' favorites. There's a lot of gameplay here... and, since the two Swap Force characters with the Sneak ability have yet to be released... you can't completely complete it just yet.

Skylanders has created an interesting version of "pay to play" that turns your investment in character figures into additional "lives" for you in your levels. Overall, the difficulty isn't too daunting, but if you mess up and die (well, get "too tired to continue"), then you'll need to swap to a different Skylander until that level is completed, at which point all of your Skylanders will be rested up and available to play again.

I say all this to point out that, should you find the enemies too tough in the game, one brute force way to push on through the level... is to buy more Skylanders. One way to avoid wearing out all of your Skylanders as you're trying to get through a level is to manage the provided health pickups well. If your Skylander is running low on health and you haven't seen any health pickups in a while, you may want to go ahead and switch to a different character for a bit; when you find a health pickup, if your current character doesn't need it too badly, you can switch back to the character that's low on health and let him have the health pickup. By using health wisely, you can drastically increase your longevity with the characters you have.

Of course, the difficulty level has a lot to do with the difficulty, as well. Harder difficulty levels will have tougher enemies and less health available, so if you have trouble progressing, you may want to try an easier difficulty setting. There are three save slots available, so you can start a new one on an easier level and then come back to continue your progress on the harder difficulty level, if you like. Remember, your Skylanders' get more powerful as they level up and you carry this over into your game, regardless of the difficulty level, so the leveling up that you do on the easier difficulty level will still be making your Skylanders more powerful, which will make it easier to play on the harder difficulty levels, as well.

The Bolt Locks I mentioned above are an interesting new addition and can actually require a bit of thinking through, at times. More impressively, these types of puzzles could actually help to develop problem-solving skills. However, smaller children may not want to take the time to figure them out and could grow frustrated with them. These locks often would impede progress if they remain unsolved, so they might require the occasional assistance from a friend, sibling or parent to get past. Skylanders: Swap Force is rated for 10+ and children 10 or older would probably be able to figure these out, but younger children may occasionally need assistance with these locks.

The most notable game mechanic added in Skylanders: Swap Force would have to be the one that takes top billing: the Swap Force characters, themselves, and their ability to be mixed and match to create several new varieties of characters. This provides for a deeper level of character customization, obviously, allowing players to combine two characters to get their favorite pairing of motility and attacks in one character.

However, this also provides for gates with more complex requirements. Throughout the game, there are bonus areas that are blocked by Dual-Element gates. In order to access those areas, you must use Skylanders that are of both of the indicated Elements. To do so, mix two different Swap Force characters with the two indicated Elements and you're in. Additionally, there are mini-games located throughout the levels that are only playable with Swap Force characters that have the indicated Swap Force Ability. There are eight such abilities, so to access all of these mini-games, you'll need to get at least eight Swap Force characters with these different Swap Abilities. This isn't a big deal for those of us out there who try to "collect them all" anyway, but for those who want to play the game on a limited budget, you'll want to choose your characters carefully and, even so, the minimum investment to access all of the content is going to include several characters in addition to the ones that come with the game.

The two Swap Force characters that come with the game, Wash Buckler and Blast Zone, have the Climb and Rocket abilities, respectively. That leaves you needing an additional six Swap Force characters to have access to the mini-games based on the other six Swap Abilities: Dig, Speed, Spin, Teleport, Bounce and Sneak. Mind you, the two characters that will feature the Sneak Ability (Stink Bomb and Trap Shadow) have not yet been released. You will also need a Giant character (from the previous game, Skylander: Giants) to unlock certain things, so you can throw that on your list.

While Swap Force is designed to encourage players to collect as many of the figures as possible (figures sold separately), I was pleased to see that Swap Force rewards players for their investment in figures from the previous games. All figures from previous Skylander games can be played in Swap Force. Additionally, magic items from the level packs can be used in Swap Force. Furthermore, the toys of those levels can be used in Swap Force, where they act as magic items that cause an area of effect attack of the same flavor as the level they represent, such as a hail of cannonballs from the Pirate Ship level.

With the exception of not being able to get my hands on a Sneak Swap Force character yet (grumble, grumble), I have no complaints about the game; you get a nice story, entertaining banter, a variety of characters (sold separately), a couple of Swap Force characters in the starter kit and great presentation from start to finish. Whether you've followed along with the Skylanders series from the beginning or you're jumping in for the first time, I highly recommend Skylanders: Swap Force.