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Gamescom 2015: Disney Infinity 3.0 Brings Star Wars, Inside Out and More (Wii U)

by Daan Koopman - August 23, 2015, 2:05 pm EDT
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Disney's latest toys-to-life game makes me jump out of sheer joy.

I had a lot of mixed feelings on last year's Disney Infinity 2.0. While I enjoyed the Marvel stuff in some capacity, it felt extremely similar. So when the announcement came around for the new entry, I couldn't get excited for it. Now that I played it for a solid 90 minutes at Gamescom 2015, I am going all in on this entry and I am not ashamed of it in the slightest.

During my demo at Gamescom, I got extended time with three Play Sets. My journey started with a look at Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic, which is quite combat focused. The adventure takes place after Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones and you take on the roles of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano. They find a reactivated Droid factory on the planet Geonosis and the situation requires further investigation. You might assume that the combat is the same boring stuff from the last game, but that is far from the actual truth.

With the help of Ninja Theory, the people behind DmC: Devil May Cry, they made something with a big variety of combos and attacks at your fingertips. It is still easy to pick up and play, but experimenting with the attacks is heavily rewarded. You can hold one of the two attack buttons to charge an attack or string a variety of them together for a snappy takedown. It was super rewarding and made the two missions we played through quite entertaining. What made it extra special were the force attacks that you can use to pull in or fling your enemies. If used wisely, they could be used to leave your opponents shaking in fear.

The beautiful feeling of Star Wars magic continued with the Rise of the Empire Play Set. It uses stories from the original trilogy as you help Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa with their adventures. In the demo, we got to play around in two very distinct scenes from the movies. In the first part, we had to duke it out with the AT-AT Walkers. We had to climb on their gigantic metal feet and knock out the batteries that were at the sides. The scenes have been made more child friendly, but it's still a very fun experience.

Later on in the mission, we had to throw a rope around the Walker's feet and make them plunge downward, which was a cool thing to behold. The other objective saw us flying in a X-Wing as we flew over the Death Star. It was a spectacular sight with flying controls that work as well as you would expect. Rise of the Empire set really seems to put a lot of focus on vehicle play, which is honestly very compelling to see. I am already wondering if vehicles like TIE Fighters and speeders will appear in the final game!

The final set was for Inside Out, which is based on the recently released Pixar movie but actually takes place after it. After watching a terrible horror movie, Riley falls asleep and everything becomes chaos in Imagination Land. Her memories are being spread across the entire area and her emotions, the playable characters, have to go through 2D and 3D platforming levels to piece her back together. I got to play on either side of the spectrum and both modes were honestly refreshing. There was no combat to be seen and yet, the characters all feel very different. Sadness can run very fast, while Joy can stand on top of clouds without them disappearing.

These elements come more into play with the 3D levels, which feels similar to your regular Disney Infinity gameplay. 2D is, however, a new addition to Disney Infinity and they did a good job making it work. The controls are a bit floaty, but luckily it doesn't take long before you know the drill. You have to switch constantly between an upper and lower layer to overcome pretty tricky challenges, so you have to continue being on your toes at all times. The Play Set is a refreshing change in the roster and it is something that has been dearly missing from the Disney Infinity experience.

At the end of the day, I am really looking forward tinkering with Disney Infinity 3.0 next Friday. With Twilight of the Republic and Inside Out at launch, there is plenty of content to go through. There are also additional games and Toy Boxes to play through and that is going to make that initial weekend a fun one for me. With more Star Wars and Marvel in the future, the line-up has never been more diverse, which makes collecting them again very tempting. Disney Infinity has a good future ahead!

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WiiU

Game Profile

Genre Action
Developer Avalanche Software

Worldwide Releases

na: Disney Infinity 3.0 Edition
Release Aug 30, 2015
PublisherDisney Interactive
RatingEveryone 10+
eu: Disney Infinity 3.0 Edition
Release Aug 28, 2015
PublisherDisney Interactive
Rating7+
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