Disney Infinity is a giant leap into the toy meets video game world for the House of Mouse. Gorgeous toys compelling campaigns online multiplayer and the wide open country of the Toy Box make this a stand out game for families even with stiff competition from Skylanders.
That fact that even the least interested in video games have probably heard of Disney Infinity marks how important a title this is for Disney Interactive. Beyond the broad marketing push it will be communicating more than their toy meets game headline that is the real challenge though.
Let s be clear at the start. For all the similar retailing and profit making opportunities this is not Skylanders. Disney Infinity may use a similar technology but it leverages it in a totally different way. It is also worth stating that although both these games are used to incentivize collectable toy lines you can complete both and have many hours of fun with just a starter pack.
Disney Infinity is built around the concept of a virtual Toy Box. Here the different Disney brands can be played with together and span their franchises in a way that would not have been thought possible or desirable a few years ago. Taking this step is a big risk for Disney and involves not a little trust in developer Avalanche Software to do right by each character and world.
In this Toy Box players can use simple tools to customize the world add objects and even basic logic rules. Over time it becomes a place where dedicated gamers can create their own games and challenges. I was skeptical before putting it in front of my kids and seeing how far they got. Within half an hour they were creating enemies racetracks and a variety of made up games of chase football and hide and seek.
The Toy Box includes around 1000 items that are slowly unlocked by either winning them in the Adventure mode of the game which in the Starter Pack correlates to Pirates of the Caribbean Monsters University and The Incredibles or by purchasing special (hexagonal) Power discs one of which comes at random in the Starter Pack.
These adventures are the campaign element of Disney Infinity and offer around seven hours of game play each although watching my kids explore and fool around in each Play Set world this will be longer for us I think. In addition to the Starter Pack trio additional Play Sets can be purchased for other Disney franchises Lone Ranger Cars with Toy Story following in Wave 2 later this year.
This being a game blog let s clear a little space here to talk about the video game side of these Play Sets. Each is themed around the related franchise and offers a broadly similar experience to previous titles from Avalanche Software like their Toy Story and Cars games of old. This well worn combination of slick visuals varied fetch quests and combat is here joined by some world building elements.
As you progress through the campaign you earn money and unlock missions where you need to purchase buildings or boats or campus extensions that in turn unlock new interactions in the world. My family spend most time with The Incredibles play set and took great joy at putting each of the characters through their paces learning the different moves and discovering the various tools glider packs hover boards and toilet roll guns had my boys in hysterics.
The mechanics all flow together very well. The combat that slowly expands from single attacks into various combos complements the various missions. At any one time you can usually choose from a variety of things to do and if you aren t feeling all that productive you can simply tour the open world collecting items for the Toy Box and hunting for money and Sparks (the Toy Box currency strangely mirroring the moniker of the Xbox One s world builder Project Spark).
Those of us who don t grant ourselves permission to play with plastic toys on a regular basis or who don t swoon over Disney merchandise can easily overlook how important the physical aspect to Disney Infinity is. In fact one of the main reasons my kids like The Incredibles set the most was because it offered a full family of figures they could play with on the living room floor.
Placing these plastic play things on the Infinity Base is a surprisingly different experience to doing the same on Skylanders. Whereas Activision has had to work the toy player game connection super hard most of us already have a strong bond with each of these Disney characters. Where Skylanders has a magic moment Disney Infinity instead has a Star Trek like materialization. Where Skylanders has character upgrades and customizations saved back to the toy Disney Infinity has its Power Disc placed under the toys on the Portal Infinity Base.
It s this aspect of the game that I was most skeptical about before playing it properly with its much looser connection between the in game character and the toy would it feel like I really needed to have the toy at all So far the quality of the toys and the warm fuzzy familiarity of the Disney characters have more than won me over.
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