Disney Infinity 3.0 review: a new hope

Disney Infinity 3.0 made me laugh so hard I nearly threw up.

Weird noises escaped my mouth as I fought to gain composure and a little air.

My 14-year-old son, already writhing in paroxysms of laughter, rolled onto his side giggling as if trying to escape the vortex of hilarity, but his attempt was futile.

Finally, we both managed to stop. Wiping tears from his eyes, Tristan looked at me and asked, " what was that noise you made?

Tristan and I spent hours laying on the floor of our den, propped up on elbows, feet wavering behind us and an army of colorful Star Wars, Disney, Tron, Inside Out and Marvel figures standing at attention in front of us. They seemed to watch us as we watched them cavort, fight and joke on the television while we played through Disney Infinity 3.0.

Three years in, Disney Interactive still manages to deliver new surprises with its annually iterated toys-to-life Disney game. The biggest, most obvious draw for 3.0 is its Star Wars theme, delivering the ability to play and create games in the universe of Sith Lords and Jedi Knights. But the developers didn't stop with a new cast of popular characters; as with last year's version, the pre-created campaign is just a taste of what the full game has to offer. New additions to creation modes, new ways to share and play online, ability-boosting sidekicks and farming massively expand the game's design.

While the bulk of Disney Infinity 3.0's play is found in the game's Toy Box Hub and Toy Box creations, the game's flashy introduction does a fine job of giving you a taste of what all you can expect from the game's developer-created campaigns, both the one included in the box and those you can buy as expansions. The game opens on a scene from Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic, the playset included with 3.0. It quickly sets the tone for the playset as well as giving you a chance to learn some of Anakin Skywalker's basic moves, which include double jumps, light saber fighting and use of the force both in combat and for puzzle solving.

A fast cut moves you from an epic showdown between Skywalker and a fearsome enemy to the familiar faces of Star Wars Rise Against the Empire's playset — an add-on — stuffed inside the Millennium Falcon. After a short section of space combat against TIE fighters, the scene cuts again, this time to Disney Pixar's Inside Out — which has a stand-alone playset for 3.0. The very short platforming level ends with a final cut to my personal favorite of the openers: Mickey and Minnie Mouse driving along a road in a colorful countryside. The short race against Donald Duck is most likely meant to give players a sense of what Toy Box Speedway — another add-on that introduces Kart-racing to the franchise — has to offer.

I'm certain that some aspect of the scene-hopping introduction was to market more things for players to buy, but it's done so well it didn't really bother me. This introduction is also, by far, the best intro the franchise has ever had, pushing players through a number of unique short missions while both training and entertaining them.

Once you're introduced to the game, you have a choice to make: Play the game's campaign or hop into the Toy Box Hub. I elected to drop the included figures for Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano onto the Disney Infinity base and make my way through Star Wars Twilight of the Republic. Older Star Wars fans, like myself, may be disappointed to learn that the playset included with the starter pack (which also comes with Toy Box 3.0, the two figures and a base) is set entirely in the Jar-Jar-Binks-infested world of Episodes 1 through 3. The good news is, that despite the inclusion of Binks in one whole mission (yes, he remains as annoying as ever), the campaign is packed with well-crafted missions and even a bit of on-world and in-space exploration.

Between the space exploration of each planet and planet-side exploration and side-missions, this playset offers up much more play than any I've tried before. And it's a healthy mix of platforming, fighting, searching and flying.

While the game delivered an eclectic mix of solid playtime, it didn't do so without some issues. About two-thirds of the way through the campaign we noticed that some sounds started to act up. It started with the buzz of the lightsaber disappearing occasionally. Then we missed an entire plot point because the voices stopped working for a scene. Later, while tinkering with other elements of the game, this issue persisted causing total silence, or areas where we only heard the score, or the odd sound of background effects and nothing more. The sound always returned eventually, but it took a lot away from the experience. All of Infinity 3.0's added elements bring also new technical issues and unwanted holdovers from 2.0. Chief among the distractions were load times that often approached two minutes.

While the relatively short Star Wars campaign is fun, it's not the biggest draw of the game. We spent the bulk of our 30 hours playing in the Toy Box.

None of the Disney Infinity games really come with a step-by-step written manual on how to use the immense collection of toys, doodads, decorations and interactions to make your own thing. In 2.0, the game delivered instruction on those methods through characters spread throughout an instructional world. While it was a neat concept, the delivery was a bit flawed, making it hard to find exactly what you were looking for and cleaning breaking the fun of play and the need for instruction into two separate areas. While 3.0 isn't without its flaws, the addition of the Toy Box Hub is a big step in the right direction.

The Hub is a massive world where players can run around in pre-created, themed sections racing, blasting each other and generally having fun. If they want, a player can also make their way to the center of the world and chat with one of a number of characters about combat, vehicle use, exploration, interior creation, game design and even farming — one of the game's new additions.

This ability to seek out instruction without layers of game loading is a big plus, though ultimately, Tristan and I found the nitty-gritty of game design instruction with Toy Box wanting.

Each instructor sends players to a color-coded teleportation door, which then allows them to select, specifically what they want to play and learn about. So the vehicle door, for instance, offers a chance to race against friends and AI-driven vehicles, build tracks and experiment with trick jumps, while the exploration door is packed with densely designed lush worlds and neat games. (Our two favorites were a Frogger knock-off and a themed race to the top of a platform-and-trap laden mountain.) Playing through these lessons accomplishes a number of things: You learn some basic design, get some neat ideas and earn both new items and the "sparks" needed to unlock what you haven't found.

Ignoring those instruction doors and the myriad of levels they include, it's easy to waste an hour or two just roaming around the Toy Box Hub itself. Enemies randomly pop-up to attack you, there's a giant racetrack, a haunted dungeon and Cinderella's castle, to name a few big set pieces. Tristan and I even discovered an entire Ewok village in the trees of one forest, complete with adorable mini-Ewok.

Of course, Disney Infinity 3.0 is packed with new toys, settings and game design additions. You can, for instance, now stream a live Radio Disney broadcast directly into the game, a clever tool.

Most useful to me, is the addition of a new path creator. This little toy allows you to create an invisible path and then spawn enemies to patrol along it, or use it to make theme park rides or even script cutscenes. It's a fantastic addition to Disney's system of play.

As the number of toys in the game continues to grow — remember all of the toys from 1.0 and 2.0 move forward — Disney Interactive continues to tinker with how you access those toys. This time around, you don't have to unlock anything through gameplay. Instead you can use all of those sparks you've been gathering up in campaigns and play to unlock whatever you want. It's a smart move, though I wish they'd add a search function. I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to locate or relocate that one piece I needed for a creation.

After spending most of a day playing through the Twilight campaign and dipping our figurative toes into the Hub world, Tristan and I went to bed inordinately late, only to get up the next morning and spend another day — 13 hours long — playing through all of the Hub world's games and then, finally, working on our game design masterpiece.

It was, of course, Tristan's idea.