One of Disney Infinity‘s unique draws is its sandbox mode called the Toy Box, where you can use any of the toys you’ve unlocked to build your own worlds. The logic tools it gives you access to are surprisingly powerful, and can be combined with themed objects to make levels and minigames. While combat and platforming are fun, sometimes it can be just as enjoyable to make your own little town and fill it with Disney characters. Disney Infinity 3.0 will build upon the foundations established in the previous games with new tools and toys, some of which I got to check out.
Something that was introduced in 2.0 was Toy Box Game discs, which unlocked Marvel and Disney themed dungeon crawler and tower defence modes. This concept has been expanded upon in 3.0 with two new Toy Box Games – Toy Box Takeover (another dungeon crawler/beat-em-up style mode) and Toy Box Speedway (a racing game using your characters and vehicles). This time, there’s no restrictions on the characters you can use in these modes – Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars characters are all fair game, regardless of what world you’re jumping into. These won’t be available at launch (although Takeover is a pre-order bonus at EB Games), but they will be available some time before the end of the year.
I got to take a look at Toy Box Takeover, starting with the introductory cutscene. The premise of this game mode is that Syndrome from The Incredibles has stolen the Magic Wand that you use to create worlds in the Toy Box. He uses it to bring all the worlds together and fill them with enemies and traps, causing chaos for the heroes (basically he’s me when I’m playing co-op with my sister). You have to fight your way through various Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars worlds, leading up to a confrontation with Syndrome himself.
With a choice of any character, I leapt straight for the Hulkbuster. In addition to your playable character, you also get to take a Sidekick with you. These are smaller toys who look like other Disney characters such Launchpad McQuack and Clu. I couldn’t go past the Muppets so I chose Gonzo, who I equipped with an Imperial Officer’s hat and a magic potion. Equipment grants your sidekick new abilities, but requires their stats to be high enough. To raise your sidekick’s stats you need to delve into a new Farming minigame inside the Toy Box, which will reward you with stat-boosting food. It’s worth it, because you’ll be able to give your sidekick equipment from a variety of Disney-owned properties, like Captain America’s shield. There’s a variety of abilities to upgrade your sidekick with, and you can eventually turn them into a Builder who will create terrain and structures when you take them into the Toy Box. There’s also a new Affinity system, which will make your Sidekicks more powerful as they spend time with the same character.
The level I played was based on Pirates of the Caribbean. The level design is much more interesting than the previous dungeon crawlers in 2.0, feeling more handcrafted and interesting. The action took place in a port town, requiring you to climb forts and board pirate ships. There were also sections where you had to throw your sidekick into cannons in order to destroy enemy ships or break through walls – such a Gonzo thing to do! At one point I was fighting enemies in melee combat on the ground, but was soon simultaneously attacked by other enemies tossing grenades from up on top of a wall. I had to multitask between the two groups, but if I were playing co-op then one of us could have taken the grenadiers while the other focused on the sword-wielding enemies. So if other levels have similar designs then it could spice up co-op play a bit.
Toy Box Takeover was a good chance for me to try out the new combat systems, which I didn’t get to see much of in the Star Wars Original Trilogy playset. Ninja Theory was brought in to assist with improving the combat for 3.0 due to their experience with action games – you might know them as the developers of Heavenly Sword and DmC. Holding down buttons or leaving short delays in between your button taps will allow you to perform different moves and combos. Mathew Solie, the game’s producer, illustrated some of these inputs by drumming them on the table – it’s not every day that you get a musical performance while previewing a game! Most characters share the same combo strings but will perform different attacks with varying effects, however some characters will have unique strings. For example, blaster-wielding characters will have combos focusing on ranged attacks.
The combat has an interesting feel to it – you can certainly tell that it evolved from the combat of previous Infinity games as it has a familiar air to it, and yet it feels much more involving and empowering. It’s not as button mashy – you’ve got to be more controlled with your inputs in order to pull off the more effective combos. Before too long I was bashing enemies through the air, pulling them in with tractor beams and continuing the combo. Special Moves return from 2.0 and can be activated once the Special Move metre is full, but a new addition is Finishing Moves. When you finish a combo string you can hold down Square (X on Xbox) to unleash another kind of powerful move that different between characters. These are those flashy Force moves that you might have seen the Jedi characters using in trailers, but non-Jedi have their own kinds of finishers as well.
Toy Box Takeover is one of Mat’s favourite parts of the game because of the new story elements. “Now that we’re not doing procedural generation we can put in more of that story, more of that scripted stuff that you see commonly in other games. And that was more of a conscious choice, because when we started doing the first dungeon crawler [in 2.0] we were like ‘This is cool, but it’d be great if we could add more elements to it’.”
Mat then began to set up the Toy Box while I had a look at the toys he brought with him. I noticed one of the new power disc packs, and asked about those. Power discs are small toys that unlock smaller additions to the game, like vehicles and weapons. “Yep, we finally listened to all you guys and they are not blind packs anymore!” Mat exclaims excitedly. This was a change that I was surprised the team was able to make, because the random pack system would no doubt have been a huge money maker due to people needing to buy multiple packs until they got the discs they wanted. “At first it sounded like a cool idea, you know, with chase discs that you have, and we wanted to encourage trading and community like that, and then everyone was like ‘I just wanna know what I’m buying!’ So yeah, I’m glad you guys are digging that – everyone I’ve shown them to has been like ‘Ohhh, THANKYOU!’ – we listened!”
We jumped into the new Toy Box Hub, which is an area that’s designed to teach you how all the different aspects of the game work and to help you interact with the rest of the community. The Hub is split into different sections, such as a Nightmare Before Christmas area that teaches you about combat, and an area that teaches you about constructing interior environments. The Hub is also where you can participate in the Farming minigame mentioned previously. The area we looked at, however, was Main Street, themed like the area of the same name at Disney parks. Iconic buildings like the El Captain Theatre, and Flynn’s Arcade from the Tron series allow you to do things like download some of the best community creations and participate in online matchmaking with other players. But before we could check anything out, we came under attack from Fear Tech students (straight out of the Monsters University playset from the original Disney Infinity) and had to fight them off. Random events like this can happen as you begin to unlock new areas of the Hub – Mat described one where Star Destroyers come down from the sky, launching TIE Fighters onto the world below. The aim was to have a large world that players will have a reason to keep returning to.
Mat then accessed a portal that went to prebuilt Toy Box worlds. The one I was shown was one he was really excited about because it showed off the Spline Tool. This tool allow you to make a path in the Toy Box that objects will follow. When I heard of this tool I thought it would just be for character toys, so you could make tower defence games and the like, but the reality is much more exciting. In this Toy Box, the spline tool was used to create a fairground, with splines governing the behaviour of the rides. The focal point was a big rollercoaster, on which square blocks raced around like rollercoaster carriages, but there were other rides like a Ferris Wheel and a fast fall tower. You’ll be able to attach a variety of objects to these paths, including vehicles and cameras.
There’s not just tools being added though, there’s also plenty of new toys to place in your Toy Boxes. I got to see some of the Star Wars toys that you’ll unlock while playing the game. Some of them are a lot bigger than previous ‘set piece’ toys – seeing a big toy Jabba’s Palace there for me to plunk down in my own worlds and play with was making me audibly freak out, and there’s even a Sarlacc Pit with moving tentacle-y bits! As Boba Fett soon discovered, it’s totally functional, but will instantly ‘kill’ characters that enter it rather than slowly digesting them over thousands of years. I get the feeling that I’m going to spend a lot of time losing my mind, feeling like a kid playing with my chests full of Star Wars toys again.
Disney Infinity 3.0 launches September 3rd in Australia on Wii U and non-Nintendo platforms. Make sure to check out our hands-on preview of the Star Wars playsets, and keep an eye out for one last preview article yet to come this week.
