A Closer Look at Disney Infinity

When Disney Infinity was first announced a few weeks ago, I couldn’t decide whether it was a childhood dream come true or a terrifyingly efficient money-spinner. To be totally honest, it’s both – it’s going to make a ridiculous amount of money, but Disney Infinity is not a cynical or exploitative exercise. It’s creative, playful, and preserves the soul of the cherished characters and places that it brings to life.

When you look at how kids play with their toys, they’re born genre alchemists. Spider-Man can fight against Creepers from Minecraft; Hulk and Barbie can drive around in the Batmobile together; Iron Man and Buzz Lightyear can form a crime-fighting superteam in space. Disney Infinity taps right into this impulse, harnessing the imagination in a way that licensed kids’ games seldom bother to do.

One source of the waterfall of cash that Disney Infinity is sure to generate is the sheer amount of plastic stuff that you can buy for it. Where Skylanders comprises just figurines and an NFC portal that translates them into the game, Disney Infinity is more complex than that: there are power discs, playset pieces and hexagonal skin and item discs as well. The playset pieces unlock themed levels, the power discs add buffs and abilities to characters when stacked underneath them, and the hexagonal discs unlock vehicles, items, wallpapers and more to use in creating your own levels.

Playset pieces and characters will be sold individually or in packs of three, and the power and item discs will come in blind packs, like trading cards. This is a faintly frightening prospect for anyone with kids, as it opens Disney Infinity up to both playground trading for the discs and parental pestering for the more expensive figures. But given that these toys will be played with in both the real world and Disney’s virtual space, and that each themed playset will offer a good 15+ hours of gameplay by the developer’s estimation, there is decent value to them.

As a bit of a miniature-plastic-stuff addict, the quality of the figures themselves was a primary concern for me. Happily they’re such lovely-looking objects that you almost feel alright about their $12.99 individual price-tags (Brits can prepare to be screwed with a ￡12.99 retail price for individual figures, if Amazon’s pre-order pages are any indication). They’re made in conjunction with the same Chinese firm that manufactures Square Enix’s exquisite Play Arts figurines, and the quality is self-evident. They’re much better-looking and better-made than most of the overpriced merchandise you’ll find on the shelves of Disney stores.

There’s a unifying vinyl-cut style to them that makes each character look just similar enough to the others that they seem at home in the same universe. This carries over into the game itself – Disney Infinity’s style is definitely its own, though its versions of Jack Sparrow, Sully and Mr Incredible are far closer to the source material than, say, the LEGO games’ characterful minifigures.

There are two sides to Disney Infinity’s gameplay: the playset levels, which play out much like any other Disney-themed kids’ game, and the toybox creative mode. The playset levels are themed around particular movies and are only playable with characters for that movie. Each playset is essentially a self-contained game, each with its own unique mechanics as well as its own look. The Incredibles scenario is mostly about bashing baddies with big fists, and it does that very well – everything is destructible and enemies explode in a shower of parts, making you feel like you’re smashing toys to bits.

Just picking up and throwing things proves unreasonably entertaining – all the other characters have that vinyl-cut look as well, so you can throw them through windows/at buildings without fear of bloody repercussions (in the game, that is - in real life you'll probably regret it). The Monsters University playset has a totally different feel – Sulley and Mikey run around a bustling university campus, setting up pranks and elaborate chains of traps that send passers-by flying across the quad, launched by a spring-loaded manhole cover. It’s playful and friendly, with a smattering of gentle platforming puzzles and a lot of humour.

I ran out of time before testing out Pirates of the Caribbean, but it looks more action-orientated, with sailing setpieces and piratical sword-fighting for Jack Sparrow and co to get up to. When you place a villain character down on the Infinity Pad, the game doesn’t change,Other companies want a piece of that iPhone headset action so theoretically you could have Davy Jones fighting Davy Jones, or Syndrome facing himself in The Incredibles. The different character figures all have different powers that unlock different parts of the levels – you can complete them with anyone, but to see everything you’ll need all the characters.Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person.

As a bit of a miniature-plastic-stuff addict, the quality of the figures themselves was a primary concern for me. Happily they’re such lovely-looking objects that you almost feel alright about their $12.99 individual price-tags (Brits can prepare to be screwed with a ￡12.99 retail price for individual figures, if Amazon’s pre-order pages are any indication). They’re made in conjunction with the same Chinese firm that manufactures Square Enix’s exquisite Play Arts figurines, and the quality is self-evident. They’re much better-looking and better-made than most of the overpriced merchandise you’ll find on the shelves of Disney stores.

There’s a unifying vinyl-cut style to them that makes each character look just similar enough to the others that they seem at home in the same universe. This carries over into the game itself – Disney Infinity’s style is definitely its own, though its versions of Jack Sparrow, Sully and Mr Incredible are far closer to the source material than, say, the LEGO games’ characterful minifigures.

There are two sides to Disney Infinity’s gameplay: the playset levels, which play out much like any other Disney-themed kids’ game, and the toybox creative mode. The playset levels are themed around particular movies and are only playable with characters for that movie. Each playset is essentially a self-contained game, each with its own unique mechanics as well as its own look. The Incredibles scenario is mostly about bashing baddies with big fists, and it does that very well – everything is destructible and enemies explode in a shower of parts, making you feel like you’re smashing toys to bits.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?

Just picking up and throwing things proves unreasonably entertaining – all the other characters have that vinyl-cut look as well, so you can throw them through windows/at buildings without fear of bloody repercussions (in the game, that is - in real life you'll probably regret it). The Monsters University playset has a totally different feel – Sulley and Mikey run around a bustling university campus, setting up pranks and elaborate chains of traps that send passers-by flying across the quad,Wear a whimsical Disney ear cap straight from the Disney Theme Parks! launched by a spring-loaded manhole cover. It’s playful and friendly, with a smattering of gentle platforming puzzles and a lot of humour.

I ran out of time before testing out Pirates of the Caribbean, but it looks more action-orientated, with sailing setpieces and piratical sword-fighting for Jack Sparrow and co to get up to. When you place a villain character down on the Infinity Pad, the game doesn’t change, so theoretically you could have Davy Jones fighting Davy Jones, or Syndrome facing himself in The Incredibles. The different character figures all have different powers that unlock different parts of the levels – you can complete them with anyone, but to see everything you’ll need all the characters.

It’s a lot more like LittleBigPlanet 2 than it is like Minecraft – and it riffs on Media Molecule’s create-play-share philosophy in a way that 2011’s Disney Universe - which invited plenty of LBP comparisons of its own - did not.We've got a plastic card to suit you. Disney hopes to encourage creators with competitions, challenging them to make the best racetrack or the best castle and then redistributing the winners as level packs (for free, obviously).

Disney Infinity has “several” more worlds on the disc that will be unlocked with future playsets and characters – but instead of releasing levels based on new movies (or other Disney properties, like Star Wars) as DLC, Disney Interactive will be releasing a Disney Infinity 2 when the time is right. This is a little disappointing, but given that the game is out on all platforms, there was no way to design a framework for all of them that would allow the developer to add in levels that weren’t on the disc.

Disney Infinity’s trump card over Skylanders is its potentially universal appeal – where Skylanders are designed for 6-10-year-old boys, Disney has characters that appeal to everyone. That’s reflected in the gameplay, which keeps things simple and kid-friendly but varies between puzzles, platforming and action. It’s the creative aspect that really animates Disney Infinity, though, and that makes this more than an inspired lesson in cash conjuration.