After much anticipation we finally got our hands on the Star Wars levels in Disney Infinity 3.0 in London last week. There's a little time before launch still but the headline here is that things feel very polished and locked down already - we came away very impressed.
Having had a play with the Toy Box game-creator beforehand, we were eager to see what the Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic play-set had to offer. This is the part of the game that comes in the Starter Pack with two characters, Asoka and Anakin.
First off, the toys themselves are pretty impressive. Maybe feeling the pinch from the quality of Nintendo's amiibo range, it seems that Disney have improved their production and designs this year. Admittedly, this could just be "the Star Wars effect" making everything look shiny, or maybe there's some good, old-fashioned Jedi magic being used here - "those amiibo are not the toys you are looking for", perhaps?
The developers on this part of the game are Ninja Theory. Maybe not the first people you think of for a family game, but its heritage of Heavenly Sword, Enslaved and DmC: Devil May Cry adds more weight to the combat while keeping things at a PEGI 7 rating - provisionally, at least.
The Twilight play-set takes game-play through four locations; each one looks the part and they also apply the toy aesthetic well. Everything looks as if it has been sculpted from plastic and is ablaze with buttons, switches, hidden ducts and compartments to explore.
Most important is that this feels like Star Wars. As soon as I heard the opening theme and placed Yoda on the Infinity Base, I was won over.
Also good is the fact this Disney Infinity 3.0 is better value this year in a number of different ways. the price of the game has come down by $10, with a similar reduction expected in the UK. It has also done away with blind bags for the power-up discs, preferring instead to offer consumers choice of predefined themed sets of discs.
Also if you own a Starter Pack for Infinity 1.0 or 2.0 you can now just buy the 3.0 game disc on its own. Of course, you will need to purchase a play-set and figurines to use it properly, but this gives much more control over how you purchase the game.
Last but by no means least, you can use any of the Star Wars characters in any of the Star Wars adventures regardless of the era. This adds more value to each additional character you purchase, and I think is a nice touch for families who might be shopping on a budget.
There are downsides of course. If you collected a full set of toys this would cost a lot. There is also no support for the Wii, like last year, even though the rival Skylanders series continues to brings games out for the older platform. Also, the additional Toybox mini games will be sold separately this year - Toy Box Speedway offers a Mario Kart-style challenge, while Toy Box Takeover provides brawling action - rather than be included in the Starter Pack, and come in a more expanded form.
These negatives really are minor, though. Disney could have easily rested on the popularity of its Star Wars franchise but instead has pushed both the production and value of this Twilight of the Republic play-set. While competition is strong with Lego Dimensions and Skylanders, Disney Infinity 3.0 is looking promising this year.
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"no support for the Wii, like last year, even though the rival Skylanders series continues to brings games out for the older platform."
Has Skylanders 5 been announced yet? Thats the series my kids like the most, and I wouldn't be surprised if even they drop Wii support this year. I bought the Wii version last year to get the DL code for the Wii U version. I would think the next logical step would be to drop Wii entirely.
Looks like they are really hitting it out of the park this year. I hope the game isn't riddled with glitches, I had to restart my 2.0 game three times before the toy box hub was fully playable. The figures and playsets in 3.0 all look so nice, glad they're also including at least one Pixar playset, my daughters will enjoy that while Star Wars will really mainly appeal to me.
Fighting looks good. Played the Spiderman playset w/ my kid last night and I wasn't enjoying it, Nova just seemed like Ironman in the Avengers playset, and that was boring as well. In contrast about a week ago we played the Lone Ranger playset from DI 1.0 and had a lot of fun, even though we've never seen the movie. And before that we played Toy Story and had a lot of fun as well. We've only played The Incredible on PC but that was also lacking.
I think the moral of the story is: plain boring gray modern cities are not a good place to base an open world game.
Lego Dimensions will probably push this aside for now but I can see us picking this up when we can get the starter pack for $25 and the sets for $15 sometime next year.
It looks interesting. Maybe I'll pick it up at some point. By the way, I hate to be that person but Ahsoka is spelled wrong in the article...sorry...
This might be my first dip into Disney Infinity.
I do hope there is still strong Marvel support for this one (not a star wars fan).
@Ryu_Niiyama Hulk Buster Iron Man and Ultron confirmed. At least one Marvel playset confirmed. More Marvel figures are likely, their bench is deep.
My wallet is crying.
Amiibo is already literally killing me one mental breakdown at a time...
I can't...I just...I can't.... /cry
@rjejr yeah it's called Skylanders Superchargers. Wii and 3DS support is still here along with Wii U
@Mega719 - Thank you, now I at least have somethign to Google besides SKylanders 5. And it sounds good so far to, even if I can't find an official anouncment, I like the name, seems promising
@rjejr Fully agree about the spidey set, such a letdown. But, unless they dramatically improved and optimized the toybox (making things slightly more intuitive, for example, and introducing perma-save, to let you play worlds you created without the "magic wand ability"), I can't see ourselves getting it this year.
@andrea987 - "Fully agree about the spidey set, such a letdown"
I don't feel too bad about it b/c it was $16 after tax, and the 2 figures are cool enough for $8 each, but I'd rather go back to Toy Story or Lone Ranger to play. My kid does enjoy playing as Venom though, which we bought awhile back along w/ the Hulk just b/c he liked the toys, so we sort of had to buy the Spidey set.
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