DISNEY INFINITY Starter Pack PS3

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I assume we're going to see a lot of negativity with the nickle-and-dime approach this game has taken so let's knock this out of the way right now.

1) You will have to buy companion characters to play couch co-op in the themed levels, but the toy box can take any combos.

2) I've seen at least one area in the cars playset that can't be unlocked without buying all 4 available cars figures, so there are probably more of these areas.

Bottom line: Its going to take an investment to get the most out of this game just to warn you.

Now that's out of the way the game is pretty fun. The starter pack comes with Jack Sparrow, Sully, and Mr. Incredible all with their respective levels. The individual worlds are nicely detailed and fun to explore with a lot of vertical space to transverse. The missions in the levels rely on the "fetch quest" type a bit too much for my tastes, but younger kids should have no trouble jumping right in.

The toy box is the main draw. You start out with a pre-made world that you can change to your hearts content. Create racing games, battle, build your own castle. There is a system in place where you get tokens where you can buy more pieces to build with. The main problem here is its a gambling type unlock. Each token gives you one spin and the chances you'll get what you want aren't great without banking tons of spin tokens.

The buidling itself is very easy. I found it more intuitive than LBP. Its very similar to create-a-park in the old Tony Hawk games. Essentially pick you pieces ans drop them in place.

I'm having a lot of fun with the game and my daughter, who is still a little too young to play, loves to watch the game. She recognizes her favorite characters and yells at them as they pop up on screen.

The only other big thing pulling the score down is the game is having some trouble running. My character randomly becomes unresponsive. At first I thought moving the characters from the disc was causing this, but it turned out to be the game servers. If you're having this issue the disable your internet connection, and that should correct the problem.

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When my wife and I got this game we heard about a glitch associated with update 1.01 so we purposefully did not update the game. The game plays great straight from the disc (with no updates at all). It runs smoothly and is very fun. As of the time of this review the developer has released update 1.03. After installing update 1.03 the game still runs great and all the features are there. This game is easy as it is geared towards kids but it is very fun. My wife and I enjoy co-op games and this is our new favorite! Before our favorite was all of the Lego games (Lego Star Wars, etc). While the lego games are fun, they always feel more like mini games than actually AAA games. Disney Infinity feels like a real game, an easy game, but a real game. Plus the toys are really cool and fun to display on our shelf while not playing the game. I give this game Five out of Five stars and a 9/10 since it is (understandably) easy.

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This game is so fun! There are so many different options and building in the toy box is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.

Also Disney must have fixed the patch thing cause I was having an issue at first, but now everything seems to be working great. Totally recomend for kids and adults lots of fun and creativity.

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This review is based on a week and half of game play.

Graphics:

All in all the game has fairly nice graphics. There is some frame rate stuttering, some rough edges, and for some reason when people talk I have a 50 to 80 percent chance of their picture being blurry. Despite these flaws, the worlds are bright, colorful, and feel like the films they represent. While I'm a bit annoyed by the random spots of poor quality, the over all feel is appealing.

Music:

Most of the pieces used are from the Play Sets' respective movies. Most of the choices I like. While I haven't heard anything that knocked my socks off, I've yet to mute the TV in annoyance.

Game Play:

o Some parts are very fun, some parts are okay, some parts bore me silly, and some parts frustrate the living daylights out of me. A part of me wonders who tested the game as there are still a lot of glitches and not quite polished spots. I think the finance and or marketing guys pushed this game out before the developers were ready. Despite the flaws I'm still having fun, but I would have rather waited a couple months for the game to come out if it gave me a better experience.

o Most of your time is spent fighting, fetching, exploring, and getting frustrated at glitches and controls. Almost every character has a 'up close' attack when you use the triangle button. The R2 button is typically for long distance weapons. You can collect money to purchase packs and weapons form the toy store to change your characters abilities.

o You can't really die. You simply respawn on the spot or not to far from where you were.

o Boss battles are a nightmare. It seems like I can't make it through the battle without some glitch or freezing. If you mess up in a boss battles and die/fall/get eaten by a large squid then you have to start the battle over. When you're starting over from glitches rather than your own error it stings.

o Your enemies have better aim than you and dodging doesn't always work.

o The camera kind of works. Some times it's great and sometimes it's not.

o You walk very slowly when you carry things which can be annoying as you'll have a lot of fetching missions. You can combat this by using a vehicle/animal to travel...why walk with a golden skunk when you can ride on a horse with a golden skunk?

o You can walk, run, ride, drive, sneak, hoverboard, bike, slide, and fly.

o There is a fair amount of platforming. Most of it is very simple. I love the vertical aspect; climbing buildings, platforming sections, and flying. It doesn't feel like you're stuck in one long twisting hallway which is a nice change from a lot of the games I play. Why can't I swim though? Water is instant death unless it's just a small creek.

Co-Op:

I'd would jump on the bandwagon and complain that out of the box you can't play co-op in any of the Play Sets... but I'm happier being able to play three different worlds out of the box than one world with two people. Imagine if MU was the only world you got from the start. Would you buy more based on that world alone? I wouldn't have. That said I ordered more characters the next day so I could play with friends and my niece and nephew. I have all the available characters and Play Sets now and I don't regret it. J (My pocketbook does though. Thank goodness I'm typically frugal.)

Play Sets:

o Monsters Inc is cute, but super glitchy. I've been stuck in walls and I've had to abort missions or reboot as the game won't register them as complete even though they are. I've been locked in the tunnels twice as the gates relocked for some reason and sometimes the walls that you jump back and forth between to get to a higher platform don't register my character jumping on them at all. I HATE the bike. If I could master Cool Borders when I was 8 then why can't I control a bike in this game 20 years later? (Yup. 28 year old gamer. Nurture your inner child.) MU has no killing of any sort; just paintballs, gags, and toilet paper. I finished the storyline missions last night and I still have several bike/paintball challenges left. If the world wasn't so buggy, it would have been fun. Playing pranks is a nice change from stomping bad guys.

o The Pirates world is awesome. I love it to pieces. The only negative in my opinion is how slow your ship or dinghy seems to travel. The playing area feels huge once you get your ship. I wish you could climb some of the vines. I applaud their attempt at a puzzle with the spinning statue totem. (I've yet to find a puzzle in the other Play Sets.) I do think they are underestimating kids. If children can figure out Zelda dungeons, they can handle something more complicated than that totem. It did take forever to get bombs so you clear away rubble, but then you had a reason to revisit the islands.

o The Incredibles world is a toss up for me. The number of enemy encounters is too high. My exploring was constantly being interrupted. I love the skyscrapers and the all the vehicles; even the hoverboard that refused to work until I rebooted the game twice. Once you get the helicopter though, their world feels pretty small. The townspeople...look stupid. (Like squiggles and legos combined) I know some of you will think they are cute, but to me they just seem blah. I don't think they fit in the world. What saves the Incredibles world for me is the playable characters. Their various powers are FUN. I liked to use Violet for exploring as she could turn invisible and be ignored by the enemies. I liked being Dash as he could zoom around town and into enemies without a vehicle. I was so sad he couldn't run on water. I really wanted that as it's one of my favorite parts in the movie. I loved fighting as Helen as she kicked butt and looked great doing it. Mr. Incredible and Syndrome were just okay. (Warning: All of the Incredibles characters need to be trained at the HQ before you can use all of their abilities.)

o I don't care for the Cars Play Set as I'm not a big fan of driving/racing games and that world is basically non-stop driving, but my nephew loves it. I have to admit, there is something fun about plowing though haystacks and tipping tractors.

o The Lone Ranger Play Set is my favorite after Pirates of the Caribbean. You can ride a ghost horse, use a canon on a train, and turn into a crow... raven...a bird with black feathers...whatever. The town is set up with props to make your bullets ricochet which looks pretty cool as multiple things explode. The characters' quips amuse me. The shooting missions bored me to tears. Maybe it's simple the fact that my aim sucks, but I spent forever on that train trying to hit all the targets.

Toy Box: (I have not spent much time working with this aspect yet.)

Oh the potential, oh the frustration. The tools feel a bit clunky and the way the camera zooms out automatically makes it so I can't tell what my customizing choices look like while I'm making them. I suspect this system will feel more natural over time as I work with it. I managed to build a fairly good pirate house in a matter of minutes without too much effort though. I'm looking forward to making an entire town. Like many people have stated, you need to clock in some major Play Set time on multiple Play Sets to have a decent number of objects to build with. Each Play Set world holds several dozen to a hundred capsules (I never counted); each one containing a new item or sparks. You can collect spins to get even more items. The random spinner is ANNOYING. Even if you save up spins and you might get 1 item you wanted out of 16. Bluck.

Challenges:

What? They could only think of four different challenges to reproduce over and over in every Play Set? Really? Racing, balloon collecting, shooting, and fighting. That's it. The novelty wears off fast. Some challenges you'll beat so easily that you wonder why they bothered, and others are so hard you wonder if it's even possible to win. I curse my completionist tendencies as I don't find the majority of these to be much fun.

Toy Box Challenges:

Too many racing ones! (Non-racer opinion admittedly.) That aside, why couldn't some of the Play Set challenges offer something like the scavenger hunt, sling shot launching, or sumo? At least those are different.

Power Discs:

I loath the way you buy them. I already have three Cinderella Cars. One came with the game and I got the Toys R Us deal where you buy one pack and get one free. There was a Cinderella Car in each pack. I just wish you could buy what you wanted to buy of them and nothing else.

Going Forward:

Will I get more Play Sets or characters as they're released? Yes. I've had fun so far. That's the point of video games; to have fun.

Power Discs? No. The duplication issue annoys me too much.

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Disney Interactive finally hit the nail on the head with an actually good game. This game may not be for everyone, but once you realize what the game offers and what it's trying to do, then it's a game that is well worth the time and effort to play. Despite the fact that this game could cost quite a bit of money, the game itself is a lot of fun and the starter pack comes packed with content and is worth the price tag.

The starter pack comes with everything necessary to play the game. Some may say that in order to "collect everything" that they'll have to pay an arm and a leg. I would say that that is completely true; however you don't need to "collect everything" in order to play and have fun with the game. The starter pack comes with enough content that it makes me feel like I made out with a deal. Most games nowadays come out with a 59.99 + tax price tag. For about 15 dollars more you get 3 collectible figures and a power disc (which translate to something in-game) along with a fully featured game.

I am having a blast playing this game knowing full well that I don't have to buy anything more to continue playing. I will probably buy a few more of my favorite figures but not because I "have" to buy them to play, but because I enjoy those characters and want to collect them. My favorite part of the game is definitely the Toy Box. The play-sets are fun once you realize it's not for hardcore gamers and it's a lighthearted story driven adventure. The Toy Box is where I really get to let my creative juices flow and allows me to bring to life some of my ideas. I spend quite a bit of time in Toy Box just placing trees to decorate my scene! The Toy Box is definitely the addicting-i-will-play-for-another-30-minutes-oh-crap-its-3-am part of the game.