During Gamescom 2015, Activision focused their attention once again on Skylanders. With the Nintendo guest characters and the vehicles, the developers at Vicarious Visions want to do a lot to make the experience refreshing. That is a good thing as I found last year's Trap Team nothing impressive. When I heard the Nintendo 3DS and Wii experiences would involve racing, I didn't expect it to be in the big console release. As I sat down for the demo, it turns out that I was dead wrong and the entire showcase was even focused around it.

In the demo, there were three tracks to go through, each of them used a certain set of vehicles. I began on the ground as I moved over the Dragon Spine track, which sees you racing between and on top of various big lizards. It also featured narrow streets and some rougher terrain to go through, just to keep you constantly on your toes. What is immediately striking about the racing, is how great it all feels right from the start. They require very precise movement and timing your drifts is incredibly important. Letting the button go will give the boost needed to leap ahead of the competition.

As far as items are concerned, there are pick-ups along the way. The problem is that you don't have any control about when you can launch them. They will be activated almost instantly, so you have to make the most of them in those seconds. Luckily, you can use your weaponry to deplete your opponent's health bar. You can only do this in a limited capacity, so that aspect becomes a bit of a balancing act in the process. That is good though as it requires you to keep focus at all times. I was engaged with what I was doing and thinking of strategies to outsmart the competition. Disappointingly, I always ended up placing second.

The second track on offer sees the Skylanders soaring through the sky. The stage was called Cloud Factory and that name wasn't just for show either. Machines around the track would extract the wool from the sheep and circulate them in the atmosphere. For how strange that all sounds, Cloud Factory had a lot going for it. From temple pillars to various weather conditions, players had to adapt as they went along. The many obstacles made it a challenging track and there was less room for error. Married to the stage are the flying controls, which give you more freedom to move about and explore the area. When you lean at the correct moments, you will go into hidden paths and quickly sneak ahead. There was a lot of fun to be had.

My absolute favorite part though was the water course, which is the Frozenfossil Festival. Not only is racing over the water super entertaining, they have found new ways to make it their own. A good example is how you can dive underwater and avoid most attacks that way. You will go slower in the long run, but it makes the playing field more tactical and makes for brand new things to avoid. There are swimming sheep, ramps and exclusive paths for both sides. It is all packed in a beautiful winter aesthetic that just looks sharp.

That is something that can just be said about the game in general. Skylanders SuperChargers just looks incredibly sharp and all the track attributes seem incredibly well polished. It is colorful, bright and a lovely spectacle. Skylanders players can look forward to single-player, local splitscreen and online options to duke it against buddies close and faraway. This ensures, if there are enough tracks, that players will keep coming back to this year's version. Another interesting bit of information is that the regular adventure will have online co-op as well, so you can team up and battle against Kaos together. All that and a lot more makes Skylanders SuperChargers a game to get quite excited about!