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The voice blares over the loudspeaker, begging me to quit fooling around and to get back to saving the world. A little grudgingly, I quit randomly punching bad guys in the space dock with giant treelike fists erupting from the floor and sprint off to find the power cores that need throwing to make a ship explode.
I’m playing Groot in one of the missions of Disney Infinity 2.0, the toy/game hybrid from Disney Interactive.
This installment is Marvel-themed, and in this Guardians of the Galaxy playset, my play partner called first dibs on Rocket Raccoon. But instead of blasting the bad guys, she’s summoning a neverending series of hovercars and driving them off very tall things. It’s not ending well.
Above: A little crossover action: Hawkeye gets comfy with Nick Fury, Thor, and Spider-Man.
The $75 core game includes The Avengers “playset” (world to play in) and three figures. The Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy playset are $35 each and include two figures, and other figures are sold separately. Disney Infinity 2.0, developed by Avalanche Software and published by Disney Interactive, releases on Sept. 23 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, PC, and iOS. I reviewed the PlayStation 4 version.
Disney Infinity 2.0 helps you toy with the Marvel universe — and like all good tie-in merchandise, the more you spend, the better it gets.
Above: Figures are high quality, the translucent Play Set pieces are pretty, and the base they rest on is attractive and sturdy.
What you’ll like
This truly is a high-class toy box
The concept behind Disney Infinity is simple: You plug a flat base into your game console, set a figure on top that represents a world to play in, add a couple of characters to play with, and voilà: instant story.
The figures trigger those characters inside the game. If you kill them by repeatedly doing silly things (as we did), you can revive each other, start over, or pop new figures on the board (as we did).
You play through a series of quests in those figure’s game world, or take them to the Toy Box, where you can play pre-programmed mini-games or build your own.
The hardware that comes with Disney Infinity 2.0 is just as beautiful as the original Disney Infinity: As in the original, the base is neatly designed, and the figures themselves are well-crafted, solid, and detailed.
The Play Set pieces that represent the game worlds are translucent and attractive, and the ones for the characters would look at home on your office shelf, not just a kid’s console. When you pop the figures on the base, the glow uplights them – a nice touch.
Even if you stop playing the game, you might want to keep these figures around. They feel good in the hand, and are just a little cartoony without being completely goofy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_IsUMtnUOQ
The worlds feel legitimate
Nobody can accuse the Mouse House of skimping on the production values for this game’s major assets: The voice acting is extremely high quality, the dialogue is frequently funny, the music is typical Disney loveliness, and while the look and feel of the game worlds aren’t identical to the movies, it evokes the feeling of those places.
The storylines the quests and missions follow are right in keeping with the worlds where they’re located. Marvel comic author Brian Michael Bendis did the writing.
The original Infinity came with three worlds right in the box compared with Infinity 2.0’s one (the Avengers playset). But the size of Infinity 2.0’s levels is much larger.
Above: Each hero’s abilities makes them feel unique to play.
The characters are more customized
Characters this time around can level up during missions and combat and spend points on a skill tree, which offers some pretty entertaining abilities at fairly low levels.
Characters cap at level 20, and you won’t have enough points to spend on every skill, so you’ll have to think about what you’ll take and what you won’t. The system seems largely random, though; while you must take some skills to get at others, you follow no real trees here – it’s more like Groot’s meandering roots than any real structure.
That’s all right; what the system does is help to make each character feel unique, as many of their special moves aren’t duplicated by the others, and give you the sense that you’re customizing your virtual friend. Some fly; some (guess who?) crawl the walls; others take the elevator or double-jump their way up pipes, turning levels into pseudo-platformers.
You can also collect crossover coins that will allow a figure or two from one play set to wander in another’s world – another nice touch that adds some freedom to your gameplay, compared to the first installment.
Above: The Toy Box offers premade adventures and build-it-yourself gameplay.
The Toy Box: Do it yourself or have the game do it for you
The Toy Box is an area of mini-games you can play that unlock more in-game toys, using any superhero figure you own. You’ll find plenty to do here even if you never touch the game’s build-your-own features –- the little mini-map is a cluster of quest exclamation points when you arrive.
You can stick with the premade races and challenges, or you can build your own platformer-type challenges, cities, and even room interior designs. It gives both players who want complete control and players who just want to dink around in the game world a chance to experience what they want.
Above: You can pick up boxes. You can pick up your friends. You can pick up your friends while they’re picking up boxes. And throw them off ledges.
Multiplayer is a hoot
Disney Infinity 2.0 is directed at younger audiences (it’s rated E10+ for cartoon violence and its online play), but it’s not annoying to parents. I played with a 13-year-old, who felt perhaps a couple of years older than the target audience.
Local multiplayer is split screen, which is a little unfortunate, but it still opens up huge opportunities for fun gameplay. Disney, Marvel, and Pixar characters are everywhere; the driving mini-game in the Toy Box features the cast of Cars, for example.
We spent the first 10 minutes after we got the game out of the box just tackling each other to throw each others’ characters off ledges to their deaths (you can pick each other up in-game, and neither of us was terribly fast on the trigger to get down again).
It was so fun that we eventually carved our health bars – even after resurrecting each other – to bare slivers, and we finally gave up and popped in new figures to start anew. Uh, sorry, superheroes.
What you won’t like
This doesn’t look much like a next-gen game
While the levels and Toy Box appear thoughtfully designed, the graphics are lackluster. This could easily have been (and is) just a PS3 or Xbox 360 game – it doesn’t take advantage of next-generation console capabilities at all.
The animations and look of the heroes are good, but bad guys all look alike, and their design is unmemorable.
Above: The game worlds and superhero mechanics: fun. Gameplay during missions: not so much.
Wait, I have to do this again?
The action in quests and missions in the main play sets are repetitive and inane: kill this, protect that, carry the other thing somewhere. You can also play the mini-games (the starter set includes two Toy Box Game Discs, a dungeon crawler and a tower defense game; others are available for sale), and the games in the Toy Box.
The voice acting gives them more replay value than they deserve, but you’ll still have more fun playing with the people on your couch or online than you ever will from the missions you’re completing.
Their lower difficulty level is excusable considering the younger target age for this game, but their mind-numbing repetition isn’t. Boss fights toward the end of levels provided welcome relief, and the achievements sprinkled throughout the games are fun to earn.
Above: Disney Interactive’s buildings: way, way better than my Toy Box buildings.
Okay, I’ll admit it: I build boring games
The Toy Box build-your-own features are still clunky to use, and in the end, the games you design are not that fun to play. Well, at least mine aren’t. The sheer number of control combinations it takes to build anything halfway decent is a deterrent, especially when the content included with the game is reasonably fun in its own right (especially the mini-challenges on the Toy Box side).
However, trying is reasonably addicting, even if your results are terrible, and I expect this is the part of the game that people will come back to long after they’ve tired of the main missions and quests. Building cities and rooms is still fun; I enjoyed the challenge, even if the results weren’t great. Then again, my houses sucked in The Sims 4, too.
Above: Just the start of your kid’s wish list.
Press Start, open wallet
You’ll find loads of ways to spend lots of money on Disney Infinity 2.0. The core game isn’t cheap, and more play sets, those Toy Box Game Discs, and more than 20 character figures make the price climb.
Our condolences, parents: Disney has done a fine job of making each character feel and play differently this time around, so it truly is fun to swap between them and explore new abilities.
Unfortunately, that means your kids are actually going to have some ammunition when they convince you to buy a bunch of them at $14 a pop. (Not to mention the $35 each time you have to buy the world they can play in; while you can collect coins for some crossovers, they’re limited.)
Just in case you didn’t have enough to buy, Power Discs give your game random enhancements. (One allows you to see the world through Iron Man’s visor, for example; another lets you drive the Hydra motorcycle.) And yes, those are fun too.
On the bright side, you can use your original Disney Infinity figures and power discs in Toy Box areas of Infinity 2.0, sometimes giving your characters new abilities.
Disney was kind enough to supply all the figures and playsets and some sample discs to test the game with, and if you can shell out that kind of coin … it adds immeasurably to how fun the game is to play, long-term.
I’m so sorry. Feel free to pretend I didn’t say that, even though it’s true.
Above: Preeeetty sure the guy in the back playing Iron Man is practicing his skills to throw another player to his death.
Conclusion
Disney Infinity 2.0 has a pile of different types of gameplay in a single box: story-based missions and quests, mini-games of different types, the micro-games in the Toy Box, the pre-built quests and rewards in the Toy Box, and the build-your-own areas.
It’s designed for younger audiences, and it’s definitely best when played with other people. The physical parts of the game and the soundtrack and voices are truly well-done.
This one has the potential to have some staying power in your living room, as long you don’t mind coughing up some money to feed the beast. The story-based quests aren’t going to win you over after you’ve seen them once, but playing the different characters with all their abilities will, and you’ll find the build-your-own section engaging, despite the wonky controls.
Hopefully, with better results than I could create.
Score: 75/100
Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes is available September 23 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, PC, and iOS. The core game with the base, three figures, two mini-games, and The Avengers Play Set piece costs $75. Disney provided GamesBeat with the game, figures, play sets, and power discs for this review.