Disney Infinity 3.0 – The Good and the Bad
If you’ve read any of my previous articles you’d know that A) I love Disney Infinity and B) I’ve always been completely honest about what works and what doesn’t. I want the franchise to get better and it doesn’t help Disney/Avalanche at all if we write article after article saying everything is perfect. That being said, I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Up until now I’ve always maintained the best playset in Disney Infinity was the Pirates of the Caribbean from 1.0. As fun as 2.0 was, none of those playsets came close. But now…
Disney and Avalanche knocked it out of the park.
After playing through both the Rise of the Empire and Twilight of the Republic playsets I can honestly say they are probably the best work they’ve put out. They have the gameplay and story progression that Pirates had and they have the storytelling (actually better) and fun of 2.0. If you are a Star Wars fan, such as I am, at this point there isn’t a better game out there for it right now (come November Battlefront will probably change things though). The lightsaber combat is fun and the force powers, while not the best implementation I’ve seen, are still pretty good.
THE GOOD
Characters
In terms of Star Wars we have basically all the iconic characters; Luke, Leia, Vader, Yoda, Han, Chewbacca, Obi Wan, and Boba Fett. You seriously could not ask for a better lineup. We’re basically only missing C3PO and R2D2. We were also given Anakin and Darth Maul which were also nice to have. I didn’t really know who Ahsoka was but it turns out she’s a great character in the game and incredibly fun to use. I think the only decision I didn’t initially agree with was the inclusion of the Star Wars Rebels crew. I literally had no idea who they were. But because of this game I bought the first episode on iTunes. It was fine, albeit nothing great. Then I tried the second, then third, and then the fourth and the show started getting progressively better. I ended up buying and finishing Season 1 Volume 1 and I now love the show. I also now love playing as those characters in the game. I would even go as far to say either Kanan or Ezra might be in my top 5 figures (I go back and forth as to who is better).
On the Disney side you round out the figures with Mickey, Minnie, Sam Flynn and Quorra and it’s basically the best lineup I could ever ask for. If they had included TRON (retro version) and Goofy it basically would have been the perfect lineup.
At this point I’ve bought every available character and have enjoyed using almost all of them (I’m not a huge fan of Olaf, sorry!). The upcoming characters look promising overall as well (Peter Pan!!).
Playsets
Genuinely fun. That’s the best way to describe all of them. I thought I would be partial to the Rise of the Empire playset because those are the stories I grew up with but Twilight of the Republic really surprised me. Since finishing both I’ve gone back more to Twilight because I’ve been replaying the Jedi Temple training with various characters. I also went back and did more of the pod-racing.
At some point I will restart both from the beginning, probably on extreme difficulty (which I wouldn’t recommend anyone do until their characters are properly leveled). I do wish they would allow you to restart the story mode (without having to redo the character coins); however I do like that they added the ability to easily redo some of the story missions.
While this article is Star Wars focused I do want to mention the Inside Out playset is also fun and seems like a cross between a Super Mario game and Little Big Planet. I have not completed it yet however I like that they changed the format to a platformer. It really shows what the platform as a whole is capable of. The side scrolling levels are probably my favorite and I wish it had more of them.
Powers
I had two fears going into 3.0. First, that they wouldn’t get the Force powers right and second, that the lightsaber combat would be mindless button mashing. I’m happy to say both implementations are pretty good.
By adding combos to the lightsaber combat, it deepened the experience. You can button mash if you want, but by performing the combos you get much more powerful (and cool looking!) attacks. The only change I would make to the system would be to replace the pauses in the combo with a (different) button press. I can’t tell you the number of times while performing a combo it would get broken up because the combo itself called for a pause.
The Force powers themselves are fine. I do find myself using (or at least trying to use) the force finishers quite a bit. I wish there had been more choice about which characters got which powers but overall they did a decent job.
Hub
I love the Hub! It’s almost exactly what I wrote the game needed a while back. It’s a great place to run around with your characters and explore. I love that there is easy access to your Interior, your farm, online gaming as well as several other things.
I can’t say enough how happy it makes me to see the Disney castle every time I log in (and adding the partners statue right in front makes it more special) as well as Flynn’s Arcade! I think they have something really special here that I hope they expand on.
Toy Box Discs
Toy Box Takeover is essentially a more polished version of the Toy box discs we got last year. It’s actually fun and I like that I can use any of my characters to complete it. It’s great for leveling your characters as well as unlocking sidekicks and toys.
I’ve gotten to demo the Toy Box Speedway and it’s a fairly solid racer. With a few tweaks to the steering/handling it could compete with Mario Kart. At the moment it’s not quite there but it’s definitely a good start. If they add an online component where you could race, say, 8 to 12 other players it could turn into something really special. We’re talking close to 100 characters you’d be able to choose from with an infinite number of tracks. No other racing game comes to mind that can compete with that.
They also eliminated the blind packs! I consider myself a DI collector, however after the pain of trying to collect all the discs in 1.0 I decided in 2.0 I would only collect the ones I had any interest in. However, by the end I decided I would stop collecting them all together. They weren’t adding a ton to the experience and frankly weren’t worth the cost. The new disc packs are fantastic. I can now purchase only the ones I want without wasting a ton of money on repeats. I think this is a great way to reward the fans. My hope is fans respond in kind and make the disc packs lucrative enough for Disney to continue with them and not have to resort to the blind packs.
THE NOT QUITE AS GOOD
Unfortunately it wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The worst parts of the game are fairly bad.
Software Quality
First I believe the amount of defects in the game is higher at launch than the previous two iterations combined. It’s not just one version either. The most complaints I’ve seen are coming from Xbox One users but as a PS4 user I’ve experienced a lot. The game has crashed several times. My character seems to run randomly sometimes (I have to level the controller to get it to work properly again). There are a lot of visual glitches and all of a sudden, figures I had previously used were getting the Share Ownership prompt again. As someone in the Software Quality Assurance field, either A) a lot was missed, B) they found the defects too late into the timetable and didn’t have time to fix them, or C) were still developing too close to release and didn’t have time to properly test everything. In any case, all that points to a timeline that was too aggressive. If the goal is to continue to make this an annual franchise like Skylanders, Disney should consider adopting their strategy of having different studios do a version on alternating years. That way it would give each studio 2 years to come out with a game and we’d get one every year. Let’s not forget they spent years doing the first Disney Infinity, and it certainly showed. They had probably a little over a year to make 2.0, and that showed as well. We got a lot less content and what we did get was repetitive.
Story Changes
The story was changed too much. Star Wars is basically an institution in the same way Disney is. We all know the story of Star Wars. Disney takes its icons like Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, etc. very seriously. They also take Walt Disney’s legacy very seriously (as they should). They need to add Star Wars to this list.
The best way I could describe it was the playsets were too loose. In the movie, the moment where Luke find outs Darth Vader is his father was a gut-wrenching moment where he loses his hand and ends up throwing himself off the platform. In the game, it was reduced to what felt like a minor moment. What’s more, you didn’t even get to fight that battle. That was a singular moment for Luke and to have it reduced to the point that it was was really disappointing. That should have been a battle that you fought with Luke and then lost.
Also, they placed characters in scenes that they weren’t even remotely in. I believe I remember reading somewhere that this was going to be done but for me it did slightly detract from the experience because I found myself saying, “They weren’t there!”
The final battle in Return of the Jedi with Luke and Vader was iconic as well. They fought in front of the Emperor, on platforms with seemingly bottomless chasms, etc. but in the game it felt like any other battle with any other boss. Actually I would go as far as saying the battle with Darth Maul was executed far better. The moments where you were separated by force fields and couldn’t get to him were fantastic. It took me back to the movie. The battle with Vader should have included scenery changes and cutscenes and more just all around dramatic moments.
Also, not including the battle between Anakin and Obi Wan in Twilight of the Republic was an odd choice. It would have made a good segue for the Rise of the Empire playset.
And I hate to say this but I think having original trilogy characters being able to show up in the prequel playset bothered me a bit. It’s funny because I complained about the restriction in 1.0 but eventually I came around, thinking that was for the best. And then they change it for Star Wars!
Playset Duration
The playsets are far too short. If you thought 2.0’s playsets were too short you’re in for a major disappointment with 3.0. These are even shorter! Without doing side missions you can probably finish the playsets in about 2-3 hours a piece.
I think what frustrates me is that the playsets in 3.0 are so much more fun than 2.0 that I wanted more to do! Rather than tackle each trilogy with one playset they should have done one playset per movie (and perhaps started with the first movie in each trilogy). This would allow them to release additional Star Wars playsets in subsequent years and have them make sense within the context of the game.
Final Conclusion
While 2.0 was a bit of a misstep I think Disney Infinity 3.0 is shaping up to be the best in the series. I think the remaining two playsets will dictate whether it surpasses 1.0; however 3.0 is on its way to being the best one yet.