Disney Infinity 3.0 Review

Our Disney Infinity 3.0 review is here!

It might seem like overkill to some that in order to play with every aspect of a video game, you have to buy a bunch of toys and plastic discs, but then you play Disney Infinity 3.0 and realize what a blast it is. The price point for these endeavors will always be a point of contention, and for good reason – there are a lot of peripherals for the game and buying all of them would cost hundreds of dollars just to get “the full experience.” The good news, however, is that there is enough already built into the game this time around that it feels like a complete package even if you just get the base set.

Purchasing the base set of Disney Infinity 3.0 gets you a couple of things – the game itself, the new toy pad, two figures (Ahsoka Tano and Anakin Skywalker) and the “Twilight of the Republic” play set. The play set itself is a lot of fun, and a big upgrade from the Marvel play sets from last year. Players can go between four different planets, and the space just outside them via ships, to explore and perform missions. Visually it maintains the psuedo-cartoon look of the series but the love of Star Wars is clear as every imaginable detail from the franchise can be spotted. There’s also a great variety in the landscapes and terrain of levels, a major upgrade from the dower grays of “Marvel’s New York.”

Gameplay wise not much has changed, this is a game mostly for kids after all. Players have a simple button layout for their characters and an upgradeable skill tree, which looks neater in its more spread out display but is perhaps not as open as the 2.0 version. Hand-to-hand combat works well enough once you make your character stronger of course, but the real trouble comes in vehicles themselves. It’s easy enough to pilot speeders and cars, but flying still hasn’t been perfected for the Infinity series. You can cruise around the stars with some ease, but it takes a lot of getting used to. Granted, the mechanics of flying an X-Wing or a TIE Fighter are smoother than say Captain Hook’s ship (a relic from version 1.0 that somehow maintains the clunky flight mechanics of that game).

The truly genius thing about Infinity 3.0 is the training mode found in its opening moments that leads to the Toy Box itself. Plucking players in and out of different realms and games, we get a better idea of what the game is like from every angle. Ever since the series began its flagship center has been the Toy Box, a creation-based mechanic allowing players to create their own games and literally do whatever they want. It was a fine thing that seemed to promise more than it delivered in the other versions, but Disney Interactive finally got it right in 3.0. Not only are there a number of already pre-made Toy Box levels for players to explore, but the creation tool just works better. The best part is if you don’t want to make these things yourself, like me, you can download the creations of others straight from the source.

Perhaps the biggest drag of the Disney Infinity games is the lack of crossover between the characters in the play sets. In the original game, only the characters from that franchise could take on that play set, in 2.0 there was limited crossover among the Marvel characters, but in 3.0 you can play as any Star Wars character in any Star Wars play set, provided you find their corresponding coin hidden in that play set. This is a welcome change to the game, but I think the true potential of what makes this game special lies in the Toy Box Takeover mode. A dungeon crawl that spins every conceivable Disney property into one gigantic game. Want to play as Darth Maul with the Winter Soldier as your companion while you fight Davey Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean? You can. Want to play a Yoda while a friend plays as Jack Skellington with War Machine by your side? You can. The Star Wars play sets are fun, there’s no question, but this amalgamation of Disney into one chunk is where the real joy of the game lives.

Disney Infinity 3.0 is a giant step in the right direction for the series. The game has never been more fun, while sticking to its family roots, and visually it’s a huge improvement. It course corrects a lot of the problems with the previous versions, but to its detriment it also leaves some unadjusted . There’s still plenty of room to make this better, but they are certainly on the right track for making themselves the best toys-to-life gaming franchise. The best part, however, is in the sheer replayability of the game, which is infinite.

Rating: 8.5 / 10

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