E3 2013: Disney Infinity Impressions – A Whole New World

When Disney Infinity was announced, nearly everyone instantly assumed it was a copy of Activison’s Skylanders. All the parts are there – you put toys (most of which are sold separately) on a pedestal and they’re in the game. However, after playing the game – the toys are probably the only thing the game has in common.

Having played played more than an hour of the game during both a guided tour at the Disney E3 booth and by myself at the Nintendo booth, its taught me one thing. This isn’t Skylanders at all. Skylanders is one game, with different characters inserted into it.

Disney Infinity is multiple games, with multiple characters from Disney’s universe and while the main campaign modes don’t allow cross mixing of franchises, in the amazing Toy Box mode, anything goes.

There’s two main ways to play Disney Infinity – there’s the Play Set mode where each Disney property is segregated off from the other. If you play the Monsters University campaign you can only insert other Monsters University characters, so no Jack Sparrow and Sully in the same level.

The campaign is mostly open world as you travel from signposted mission to mission around the games universe. The play set I played was the Cars one, despite being my least favourite Pixar property, I stuck with it. Playing as Lightning McQueen I drove from mission to mission, as you do more missions more of the world unlocks and there’s trinkets and coins everywhere to collect. These trinkets or ‘toys’ can be used in the toy box. Coins also can purchase items for the toy box. The Cars play set features (obviously) lots of car based activities such as races and stunts, but Monster University and The Indcredibles are on foot with tasks suited to their worlds.

The Toy Box is the other big side of the game, as the same suggests, it’s where all the figures, toys and trinkets you’ve collected in the main game reside. You can mix and match characters from all the different Disney properties and create anything you like. There’s ramps, pipes, teleporters, rocks, cars, weapons, even the entirety of Cinderella’s Castle to play with.

The world is massive too – it will stretch as wide and as tall as you would ever need. Playing the Toy Box, it really did feel like a Disney version of Minecraft in some aspects, however the tools available are way more advanced here. The developers told us that World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. was recreated in just a couple of hours. The Toy Box works brilliantly with the Wii U GamePad too, while on the other versions of the games interface will take up TV screen space.

The entire game can be played in split screen, you can play as friends or foes. In the Toy Box mode up to 4 people can play online and build at the same time, hopefully you have good friends who want to work together or someone is going to end up with their pirate ship looking like a Disney princess in pink.

Now the only downside – you have to pay for all of this. The Starter Pack is generous and comes with Sully from Monsters University (not Monsters Inc – so a younger Sully), Captain Jack Sparrow and Mr Incredible. Those will be the first three play sets you play through.

Outside of the Starter Pack there are different play sets to buy – Cars and The Lone Ranger are the two others announced at this stage. As I mentioned before, there’s Power Disks as well which are sold randomly in ‘booster packs’. You can stack two of these disks under the characters in the game and they are themed. You can boost the power of your character, the speed they move at or how well they fight. There’s also power disks which are your standard mounts, such as cars or even animals from the Disney universe.

Disney Infinity shocked me when I played it, it was one of the few games at E3 that I couldn’t stop talking about after I played it, it might have even been my favourite game there!