Given the success of Activision's Skylanders, it was only a matter of time before another publisher paired plastic-molded playthings with a videogame. Disney Interactive Studios isn't just “another publisher,” though — and so their recently revealed Disney Infinity doesn’t merely revolve around a handful of Happy Meal toy–esque figures. This ambitious “gaming initiative,” as the studio calls it, has not only the mascot mouse behind it, but also all his big-screen buddies and theme-park pals.
Executive producer John Vignocchi reveals the project's scope: “It's been a cross-collaborative effort between Pixar, live-action film studios, and Disney Consumer Products; even Parks and Resorts got involved. Everyone around the company has touched this.”
Swimming in that same creative pool is Avalanche Software, developer of film-to-game titles Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 — and it’s the former's popular Toy Box mode (which let players loose in a do-what-you-want world overflowing with toys) that serves as the inspirational force driving Disney Infinity. While Disney Infinity does resemble Skylanders in that it also brings collectable figures to in-game life via a portal-like peripheral — which Disney has dubbed the “Infinity Base” — the ability to play with the virtual toys just as you would real ones on your living room floor is what sets Infinity apart from the competition.
In Toy Box mode, players can access all items that come pre-packed into the game, as well as goodies they’ve unlocked via Play Sets — structured, story-driven experiences based on a specific property, such as Pirates of the Caribbean or Cars, that you can access by placing a small block on the game’s Infinity Base. (More on those in just a moment.) What do you do with all this intense Disney goodness, exactly? Let your imagination run wild in a world populated with your favorite Disney characters and their corresponding props, vehicles, and accessories, of course. (You’ll even be able to toss in theme-park props like the Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle or the cars from attractions like Peter Pan’s Flight.)
Some examples of what you can do (as shown to us by our demoers) included pitting Captain Jack Sparrow against Phineas Flynn in a sword fight, matching Monsters Inc. 's Sulley against The Incredibles’ Mr. Incredible in feats of strength, and placing Lightning McQueen and the fleet-footed Dash on the same race track. You can do much more than face-offs between Disney characters, though — with others able to join in on your fun (2 locally, and up to 4 over Xbox Live), you can spend whole afternoons trying to shrink your buddies with ray-guns, battle through combat scenarios, or tackle platforming challenges — just like when you were little and would invent all sorts of adventures for your mixed assortment of toys.
Budding game designers can even unleash the full potential of their creativity with what Avalanche is calling “logic toys.” Through combining creation tools with the various toys and architectural pieces (like blocks, ramps, and walls), players can affect the environment by calibrating challenge conditions, tweaking cameras, altering physics, and even setting enemy spawn points. Combined with all the other elements you’ll have control over, this means you’ve got, well, infinite possibilities for what Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer John Lasseter calls “creative play.”
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