Disney Infinity 2.0 - Hands On Preview

I recently had the chance to sit down with one the developers of the upcoming Disney Infinity 2.0 Marvel Super Heroes Edition and I learnt a whole lot more than I thought possible.

Having had the chance to play the game at E3, I was not too sure how much more information there would be for me to learn, turns out that when you have almost 90 minutes with a developer, you learn so much more. John was the developer who was kind enough to answer my many questions and over the course of the time, showed me a lot of the new additions in detail. First of the rank, Guardians of the Galaxy.

With the movie having just been released today here, it was awesome to see Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot running around causing mayhem as only the Guardians can. A few weeks back at San Diego Comic Con, Ronan the Accuser was announced, which means the Guardians now have a baddy as well, always a welcome sight. Each of the characters played differently, with Star-Lord using his blasters to hit things from afar and the rocket boots to clear larger gaps; Drax however is a brawler, so he got up close to attack.

After that, John jumped into a blank toy box and show cased all the new items and features, which have been designed to help players create even more amazing worlds and games. The biggest additions are the tools to help players create racetracks, platforming courses and more. If you want to create your own racetrack, but don’t fancy having to scroll through the many options, selecting the racetrack creation tool and placing the starting point will have the game create a random track for you. The best part is, that it is not some small little track, the one that the game created for us had massive bank turns, dips and hill climbs and even created bridges, all with a simple click of the tool.

John then proceeded to create a castle, just by selecting the area he wanted to take and it was done, creating anything in the all new toy box mode is really simple and the best part is that if you think you would like to change one small piece of the pre-constructed kit, you can. All the things the game creates for you is from the same pieces you have access to. To showcase some more cool items, John placed down some builders, these little guys will run around and add things to your world, based on the type you have selected. Eve, the white robot from Wall-e is the one you need when you want to fill your world with plants. She will make her way around and throw down plants where there is space, never replacing or destroying anything else already in the world.

It was now time though, to see the new game making tools. In the first game you were able to create side scrolling games, or top down games and have your player character run around. With the new game you can do that and so much more, in fact the amount of options available to you are so massive, listing them here would take up almost all of the screen space. Let’s just say, you can create a survival game, a mystery title, puzzle game, pinball game, 3d platformer, 4-player battle game and many, many more. If the game came packed with a 2 hour introduction to what you could do, it would not be enough.

John then showed me something, that I had not had the chance to see yet at all, player spaces. The INterior’s are places where you can create your own stronghold, decorate the rooms with artwork from Disney history, maybe hang the Avengers logo from the wall. Place down a giant bean bag chair that looks like Venom and sit in it. You can add almost everything from the regular toy box mode and even a few things you can’t access there, like a working version of Tron, the original arcade game. Players can earn that machine by completing feats, which are in game achievements designed to help you try as much of the game as possible and once you have completed these feats you can unlock new toys, toy box pieces and even characters to add to your toy box.

The final moments of my time with John were filled with myself asking as many questions as possible, including trying to get information regarding unannounced characters. What John could say was that everyone working on the game has characters they would love to see in the game, even if they don’t make it in this time as playable characters, they could be included as NPC’s or used on Power Discs.

Disney Infinity 2.0 Marvel Superheroes Edition is released in Australia on September 18th for Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A PC and an iPad variant will also be released for those wanting to explore the toy box mode.