Disney Infinity 3.0 is here, and with it come new features and new characters, as well as new adventures. Yes, Avalanche Software (not to be confused with Avalanche Studios, who made Mad Max and the Just Cause series) is back again for the 3rd time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaosmPwlizo
With each revision Disney plans a year’s worth of additions, which includes a specific group of characters and their lands to romp around in. The original brought us worlds from Monsters Inc. and Pirates of the Carribean, and 2.0 gave us Marvel and more. This time around we are getting the much anticipated addition to the Mouse House: Star Wars! We knew this day would come, and now it has arrived.
At first look the base game looks very nice and polished, offering more Toy Box fun than before and a journey essentially covering the Clone Wars storyline (Twilight of the Republic), as well as two figures to get us started: Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker. If you pick up the Saga Bundle, available only for PS3 and PS4 as a Sony Exclusive, you will also get Luke and Leia with the original trilogy story adventure (Rise Against the Empire) a month early, and a Boba Fett figure nearly 5-months before he releases to store shelves.
Awesome deal for sure. And if you preordered the base game or the bundle, you also got the Toy Box Takeover, which is a new game story that allows use of any Disney Infinity character. If there was one complaint so far in this odyssey, it’s that Avalanche Software didn’t take advantage of the same tech idea Skylanders have with their LightCore figures–to allow lightsabers to glow when the characters are placed on the Infinity base.
Oh well… maybe we’ll get that next year with 4.0 and revised figures.
@DarthHistory
Let’s talk about the Toy Box for a minute. One of the things Disney has touted with its Infinity series is the Toy Box – where players can create their own landscape and play however they want. It’s a cool idea, but the practical application left something to be desired. Within the Infinity hub, players have the opportunity to hone their battle skills, learn how to drive & ride all sorts of vehicles, explore other players’ creations, and build your own sweet Disney mansion.
So you don’t have to; I tried out all of these features for you.
First, the racing. At E3, the feature that the Infinity gang was showing off was the racing – Disney’s answer to Mario Kart. I got to race as Boba Fett through Halloween Town. It was awesome. In the game right out of the box, however, this racing feature is nowhere to be seen. There are a few small challenges that involve you driving, but to actually race (and pick your own track) you have to wait until Fall….and then shell out extra money. Color me disappointed.
In the house builder, you can customize your fake home all you want. I tried this out, and found myself running into a number of glitches. Having to kick yourself out of the game a number of times to get out of a frozen screen is extremely annoying. Thankfully, just the house builder is glitchy.
For younger players, or those newer to the Infinity series, the Toy Box is fantastic. You can learn to shoot, fight, attack, and ride. For the more advanced player, Infinity will be a calm and easy haven of downtime between the battle rage can build during Mad Max and Destiny. 3/5 Bibles, for the Toy Box.
@OffTheGeekEnd
So as mentioned, the new 3.0 brings new stories involving the Star Wars franchise. For this review, we got the Saga Bundle, which means we have both the prequel trilogy story and original trilogy story.
First impressions of the original trilogy story were great, right until you realize they took liberties with the course of events and what took place–as little things seemed out of place or happened a bit differently. The main storyline is still intact, but some details were changed and some just plain missing. Why am I seeing Jabba’s Palace in the Episode 4 portion of the story, and why wasn’t there a Leia rescue mission? I can only explain the latter, as they allow you to play as the Princess…
During your adventure you will run across Sparks of various colors which can heal you (green), give you points to spend in the Toy Box (blue) or even for leveling up (orange). And each character can progress through levels that allow new powers to be unlocked using a tier system. It gives a sort of RPG feel without being complex, which is a great way to introduce people to that game style.
Also rather than just playing through the story, you run into areas that require missions to be completed before allowing any progress to the next area. Eventually, we conquered the quests of Tattooine and made our way to the planet Hoth–thus switching gears to the Twilight of the Republic playset. Here we begin by taking out Battle Droids and Droidekas on Geonosis, and going through a droid factory. We didn’t play much further than the Geonosis factory, but what the Holy Obloys did play was overall enjoyable.
During our storyline play tests we did try different characters, and sure enough the game properly locks you out of using certain characters, as they either didn’t exist or weren’t the correct ones for that story. For example, you can’t use Luke or Leia in the Clone Wars story, nor can you use Boba Fett in the original trilogy story (he existed, but was not one of the main characters involved).
When Disney Infinity first released back in 2013, this function of the game bugged me to no end. However, it makes more sense when each game is the story for that particular set of characters, and not just some random Disney adventure. This is where Toy Box Takeover shines bright. While we didn’t get to test this one, we do know the details: Syndrome has taken over the Toy Box and created new worlds, and the other characters are fighting to defeat him. So the ability to use any character in a game like this makes sense. I sincerely hope they make more of these, as it makes collecting the figures more worthwhile.
Lest we not forget, do expect characters from The Force Awakens to eventually show up — I mean, “duh”, right? — as well as a story playset to blaze through. 4.5/5 Bibles for the Story games.
