Disney Infinity

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Playing with toys is the fundamental idea behind Disney Infinity, and the game delivers this perfectly on several levels. Having a physical version of the toy figure you're playing as in the game gives a whole new level of creativity to playing with your toys. The visual style of the game and figures is perfect in that it lets any Disney franchise character jump into the game and fit right in with any of the others. This toy theme is spread throughout the visual style of levels as well. Areas are filled with tiny townspeople or enemies ready to get into a gunfight with your cap gun - orange red cap gun plug included. Vehicles and mounts (primarily animals) are there for you to place down anywhere you want and hop in for a ride. Excellent puns are scattered throughout the play set missions.

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Playsets are gameplay scenarios with a story and missions set in a particular Disney franchise. In these play sets you have to play as a character from that franchise and the story with extra missions gives you about three to five hours of gameplay. They use quality voice actors, if not the original ones, and excellent franchise music in the play sets. As you progress through missions, you unlock new items and level up your character. Scattered throughout the playsets are also many unlockables contained in vending machine capsules. True to their real world function, these vending machine capsules are opened to give you a new toy in the game.

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The Toy Box is where all of your unlocked toys find their home. In the toy box you can create anything from a whole new world to a competitive event for you and your friends. The creation is different than that of LittleBigPlanet, and you can't create just any object or thing you want. Toys are static and you set them up in your toy box however you desire. Your creativity and imagination then takes over just as using your childhood toy box. As you are leveling up and completing missions in the play sets you are earning spins for the Toy Box Vault. In the vault are numerous toys you earn in a random shuffle and spin style setup. One spin per item and some items come with bonuses. Items you earn in the toy box vault range from Ducktales and Robin Hood to Tron and Aladdin. It has a great initial selection of items to earn. Toy boxes you create can be played with friends using any Disney Figure character they own.

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Collectors of all things Disney Infinity can visit the Hall of Heroes to see their figures and power discs represented in a beautiful digital way. As you level up your character, their statue in the Hall of Heroes goes from bronze to silver then finally gold. The Hall of Heroes itself actually levels up as you earn more gold stars from missions and leveling up characters. These upgrades make for more decorative statues and foliage in addition to raising the height of the hall.

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I also really enjoyed how you can stack up to three items on each part of the Infinity base. You can combine round power discs for your character and get bonuses or even stack toy box environmental elements with your hexagonal power discs.

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Out of the box Disney Infinity gives you three different franchise figures and a play set for each. This is a great package until you want to play a play set co-op. Since characters can only play in a play set if they are from that Disney franchise you will have to purchase an additional figure to do any co-op. This makes sense because certain characters belong in certain play sets. While in the toy box everyone is welcome.

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Collecting them all will be costly. The Lone Ranger play set will give you all the characters for the set, and makes it possible to unlock all the toys for your toy box. Whereas a playset like The Incredibles will require you to have all 5 figures to get all the toys. The pricing is fair for the content you get, but just be careful because the cost can add up very quickly. And if you're a trophy collector, you're gonna bump into another problem with the toy collection; console games with trophies are required to allow the player to obtain all initial trophies with the standard game. In order to obtain all trophies in Disney Infinity the starter pack will not cut it. You will need to purchase an additional character and most likely a round power disc.

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Minor bugs pop up throughout the game, like not being able to see your next mission or a little loading stutter. These usually remedy themselves pretty quickly. If you end up building something in the toy box that has you falling through walls, they were smart enough to have a "reset gameplay" option that brings your character to a safe place.

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The Pirates playset has you sailing across large bodies of water, but your character can unfortunately not swim in Disney Infinity. I hope this is something added in a later version just for the fact that we need a The Little Mermaid play set one day.

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Everybody loves Pixar, but Infinity is really heavy with Pixar properties at the start. Four of the six confirmed playsets for this year are from Pixar properties. There are no announced playsets for any of the "classic" Disney properties. By the year's end there will only be one Disney princess figure available to play in the Toy Box. I know it is very early on and Disney has plenty of stuff to supply nonstop content, but it just would have been nice to see a greater balance of launch playsets. That being said, all the sets available as of launch offer up a great variety of play styles.