Does version 3.0 of Disney Infinity bring any new to the table, or is it just another rehash to cash in on figures for fans and kids alike? Or will the new characters add so much freshness that the game is worth it, even after playing the two previous games in the series?The game starts with a cutscene as expected, and it won’t scan for a character on the base to start with. You’ll get control a couple of times during this introductory cutscene. Going from hunting a droid as Anakin to drive a car as Mickey, racing through mountains in a race against Donald Duck.
This cutscene takes a few minutes to play, mostly to tease the player on what you can do in the game. It ends with the player being in a white room, and the base asking to add a character if you didn’t already. Now you’re in the Hub World, ready to play!
The player will find themselves in the middle of a circle of helpers; Mickey the Sorcerer (Fantasia), Cogsworth (The Beauty and the Beast), Luigi (Cars), Phil (Hercules), Genie (Aladdin)*, Mulan (Mulan), Woody (Toy Story).
*Genie has to be unlocked as a sidekick by answering a trivia question right, this can be done by talking to guests in your house/INterior. If you haven’t, a random character (or one I don’t recognise), will be in his place.Each of these helpers has tasks for you to do, so you can learn how to play the game, including how to fight enemies, how you move around in the game, what you can collect and how to build in the game.
There’s lot to do, even just in the Hub World. The world is riddled with minions, I assume every single one of them representing a character from the Disney/Tron/Marvel/Star Wars/Guardian of the Galaxy and Pixar universes. There’s some characters I don’t recognise, so there might be some neutral minions wandering around as well, but the player can’t interact with those other than pick them up.
Character movements is fluid, and the character moves legs and arms as we would when changing direction – a few steps backwards and a turn of body if you suddenly goes in the opposite direction as you were. Small funny and cute comments from the character makes for a personal fitting experience for that character you’re playing with.
As said, the Hub World throws a lot of options to you. This is the base game, and have all the trophies/achievements ready for you to fetch by doing different jobs and chores. You can go into your house and build it up, adding rooms, floors and choose the design and interior to decorate it with. Different items will unlock as you do stuff or by playing playsets (more story based gameplay) and by buying with ingame currency. You can theme the different rooms which include ceiling, walls and floors to fit together, and you can choose to theme all the rooms in the house, then you can choose items to decorate the room like windows, chairs, tables, beds, wall hangings and much more. Building games usually bore me, but I enjoyed this way of building – despite the lacking of explanation on how to build, alongside complicated wordings, which baffled me a bit, since the games main target group is kids!
Back outside, you can go and talk to the guys at the center, asking them questions and do some missions for them, like collecting orbs (which you can do without being on a mission), and you can go visit different things – one of the more prominent ones being the Arcade. Flynn’s to be exact and for the game to refer to a franchise that Disney owns. Here you can activate some of the machines and start some multiplayer with other gamers around the world. The biggest issue being that no one is playing shortly after release!
With the starter pack is the Star Wars playset piece included which grants you access to the Twilight of the Republic adventure. In this playset you can play as any Star Wars character, including, but not limited to: Yoda, Anakin, Asoka, and Obi-Wan. You start out on Geonesis where General Grievous is building an army of battle droids. The four friends has set out with a mission to stop the production. Making your way into and up in the droid factory, you end up fighting Grievous first hand. After that, the game takes you to other planets from the Star Wars universe, including (still not limited to) Tatooine and Coruscant, each with a bunch of available missions. Only downside is that playsets doesn’t have trophies or achievements, but that depends on how you look at it – my opinion changes from one second to the next. I miss the satisfactory pop up when getting a trophy, but on the other side, I don’t have to get back to the game to mop up the trophies.
All in all, game and starter pack gives the player a significantly playing time if they so want to let themselves immerse to the game, including building the house and check out other players creations. There’s a lot to do in Disney Infinity 3.0, especially if you want to go for trophies/achievements as well as locating and collect all the available sidekicks. The characters from all of the Disney owned franchises, including Pixar movies, Star Wars, Tron and of course Disneys owns characters such as Mickey Mouse, is alluring all kind of fans of the franchises, kids in particularly, to try out the game, or at least watch another gamer play it, because of movies and series that they can relate to.
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Hit; Characters from well-known franchises is always funny to play as and meet up with in the game. Recognising different sidekicks as a character from a movie one second, then wondering who the next one is and what franchise they belong to is a fun time spender.
Miss; Hard to understand the textbased tutorials/guidance, wording is referring to stuff ypu can’t possible know. On top of that, text is way too small, but this is a general problem for ALL games played with high resolution on a big screen.
Need; More funny missions inside the Hub World, in case you run out of playsets.
3.5