It’s no secret at the Stevivor offices that I am pretty much in love with Disney Infinity. I pretty much wrote it a love letter after my first hands on so when the chance to play it again at E3 I jumped at the chance (I may have even shoved Steve out of the way in the process).
Once again I jumped into “Toybox”mode and was pleased to see that it functioned just like I remembered, except now it was even better. There were a huge number of new items, objects, skins and toys. The team have done an incredible job of unifying each of the unique Disney properties in Infinity and the passion they have for the project is evident in the playing.
I opted to play as Barbossa during my time in the Toybox. His standard equipment is his flintlock pistol and a sword, but feeling adventurous I equipped him with Buzz Lightyear’s jetpack and Carl’s (from Up) walking stick. The Toybox had been populated by previous players and all manner of enemies (including robots from The Incredibles) were swarming all over me. Running to the nearest vehicle I found myself in Cinderella’s carriage albeit altered slightly to be raised up on four monster truck wheels. I escaped the horde only to be taken out by Sully from Monsters University. That’s when I realised that I was playing online with the people around me on other units. We were all playing separately, yet together. Each creating and changing the Toybox on the fly. It’s a simple yet powerful aspect of Infinity that’s sure to be one of it’s strongest features on launch.
After Toybox I moved onto the newly announced The Lone Ranger play set. Only recently announced, it’s clear that the team at Avalanche have been working on the play set for some time. Feeling every bit as complete as any of the other play sets — Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, The Incredibles — The Lone Ranger throws you into the wild west and lets you play as either the titular hero or his sidekick Tonto (now the second Johnny Depp inspired figurine for those playing at home).
The main hub of the play set is your typical western town complete with main street, hitching posts and ne’er do wells ready to draw at the drop of a 10 gallon hat. Gameplay follows the established Infinity norms with missions and collectibles scattered around for you to find. Some new additions create some depth though and separate The Lone Ranger from other play sets. Firstly, the combat difficulty has been increased slightly and enemies are more crafty, taking cover behind objects and around corners. Thankfully, both The Lone Ranger and Tonto have the ability to ricochet their ranged weapons (a six shooter for TLR and a tomahawk for Tonto) off of metal objects, like pots, horseshoes and the like and hit enemies hiding or taking cover. The action is never too strenuous though and I found myself simply ricocheting my shots to see how far they’d go. It’s simple, but effective and fun.
Secondly, The Lone Ranger introduces mounts with both Silver and Scout — TLR and Tonto’s horses respectively — available to ride. The Lone Ranger’s world is fairly sizable so it’s necessary to use the horses to get around to some of the further out missions. Scattered around the hub world are some simple checkpoint races to tackle while on your horse. These get progressively harder as you complete them and are a nice little distraction from the missions.
The Lone Ranger play set also includes trains and railroads. Players have the ability to construct their own custom railroad which will carry resources to areas which are in need. A key part of the play set is the railroad system and like everything else in Infinity it’s simple and intuitive. Of course everything in The Lone Ranger is playable in the Toybox as well, so now you can build railroads, ride trains and horses and take on bad guys with your friends as Tonto or The Lone Ranger himself.
Expect more play sets to be announced as we get closer to the launch of Disney Infinity, I for one couldn’t be more excited.
Disney Infinity will be available for 3DS, PS Vita, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on 20 August 2013.
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