Disney Infinity

Disney Infinity is ambitious in its scope and clever in its aim – build on the love for Disney and give people the power to adventure in the universe of their favourite cartoons and films and create their own stories and worlds along the way.

Comparisons to Skylanders, a game or rather a franchise which turned out to be hugely successful, are inevitable. Disney Infinity comes with a base unit for you to place figures on in order to unlock in-game content. A Starter Pack gives you the game, a base unit, and a mixture of figures and discs for you to, well, start with. The figures are very sweet and range from models of characters to little ‘power discs’ to Play Set pieces.

The game has two parts to it: Play Sets and Toy Box. Play Sets are story-driven adventures revolving around characters and their particular section of the Disney/Pixar universe. For example, the Cars Play Set throws you into Radiator Springs as Lightning McQueen and his friends, in an adventure in that universe. Play Sets that will be available include Pirates of the Caribbean (the little figure and matching game model for Barbossa is impossibly cute, tentacled face and all), Monsters University and The Incredibles.

While I didn’t have the opportunity to play through a Play Set adventure, what I saw of it looked like a very cartoony, very fun mission-based game.

Toy Box was the mode I actually got to play, and it’s where the greatest potential of this game lies. Toy Box is essentially your playground – you are given a completely blank canvas and can build to your heart’s content using ‘toys’ you have unlocked either through playing through Play Set adventures, completing certain achievements in Toy Box mode, or through placing the collectible discs and figures on your Infinity Base.

It’s genius really because you have the whole of the Disney universe to play with. There are over a thousand pieces to start off with that range from the infamous Disney castle to the balloon house from Up to random things like beach balls and destroyable boxes. It doesn’t stop with just landscape objects – there are vehicles like Buzz Lightyear’s jet pack or Ralph’s wrecking car, you can change the sky or sections of the land if you want something to look like it’s come from Tron, and there are also weapons. Weapons in Disney style, of course. My particular favourite was a gun which launched a giant sticky green hand out of it.

It might sound a little corny to say that the only limit is your imagination but it really feels like it is. I spent 15 minutes building a rudimentary race track and it definitely wasn’t enough; I was already thinking of crazy curves that could be created as well as really unfair traps that would be triggered. You can also unlock ‘Creativitoys’, things like switches that you can link to other objects in order to make something happen when triggered. One example was setting a switch so that when stood on, fireworks would explode from a nearby box. Other alternatives can be firing cannons at players who make the wrong step, or unleashing a wave of enemies.

In the Toy Box you can create your own adventure. You can build a race track, a maze, a survival course, or just a playground that you can have fun running various characters around in. Sully using Buzz Lightyear’s jetpack to get to the top of an elaborate water slide was pretty funny, as was using the Lone Ranger to ride Ralph’s wrecking car around a Nightmare Before Christmas themed race track.

It’s great fun, even better in co-op (two-player split screen and four-player online mode is available) and even better still if you have a lot of dedicated time to spend creating something. Like I said, fifteen minutes definitely wasn’t enough and I can only imagine what someone will do once they’ve collected a substantial number of toys to play with. Your creations can also be uploaded to Disney’s servers for cross-platform sharing, something which is quite impressive in itself and unlocks massive potential for viewing and playing worlds that others have created.

The Starter Pack really is only the beginning. Those with sensitive wallets or young children who have that obsessive compulsion to collect things may want to brace themselves. The game reportedly starts off with a thousand unlockable pieces in the Toy Box, some of them attainable only through play discs (sold in blind packs of two) or play set pieces. Disney plan to expand things further with more Play Sets for people to have adventures in other universes. Toy Box is really at its best when you have a wide range of things to play with so expect Disney Infinity to grow bigger and bigger.

For the Disney mad, it’s an irresistibly wonderful package and it’s very clever of Disney to really push forward with this collectable and buildable game idea. The crossover madness in Toy Box mode looks hilarious and given time, the community will be sure to come up with some really smart and creative worlds… I’ll leave the ‘infinity’ related puns to your own imaginations.

Disney Infinity will be available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii U from the 23rd of August.