I Review Everything: Day 126 – Farewell Disney Inifnity

Disney Infinity has been cancelled. They will release no further sequels. Everything planned is now gone. All we have left are the remnants of an ambitious franchise, that failed to capture more imaginations the way it caught people like me. Over manufacturing of stock is supposedly what caused the failure. Not enough people were buying the figurines. They simply built too many.

Now I must say goodbye. At least kind of. The previous games still exist, and I still have all my figurines. I’m not losing anything really, only potential. I’ve always enjoyed Disney Infinity, even through all the clunky gameplay, boring playsets, and weird character choices. I just loved the concept. I got to collect figurines, and play games at the same time. It was awesome seeing the games progress as well. They just kept getting better, with no signs of slowing. It’s unfortunate that it had to halt. I genuinely will miss the series.

I still remember the giant box I had to carry on the bus for Disney Infinity 2.0. I remember when I only had six figurines. Looking at my collection now, I don’t regret it. Sure it was a lot of money. But I had a lot of genuine fun. In a world full of realism inspired, gritty games; Disney Infinity was a chance to unwind with my favourite Disney Characters. I could go farming with Spider-Man, racing with Luke Skywalker, and loot hunting with Rapunzel. You can’t say that about many other games.

 

Another thing I will miss is the couch co-op. A dying game feature, couch co-op is still a great way to spend time with friends, especially in a game so simple and fun. Everyone who played with me spoke of how fun the game was. Whether we were fighting robots from the Incredibles, or destroying the Death Star with Darth Vader, we simply had a good time.

I will miss Disney Infinity. But I will never forget it. I will still play from time to time, and I will continue to display my figurines. But I will never forget the series.

My bank account will surely be happy though.

7/10
The cancellation is bad. The memories are not.

 

I Review Everything: Day 95 – Ant-Man Figurine

The title probably sounds more alluring than it should. This isn’t some expensive high quality action figure from someone like Sideshow or Play Arts by Kai, no rather it is an expensive high quality Disney Infinity figurine from Disney. When I say high quality, I legitimately mean it. Sure $25 is a lot for a simple small figurine, but the detail they put into them now is actually pretty fantastic. They do still keep to the art style of Disney Infinity, but there’s just far more attention to posing, colours, and detail design than ever before.

The first thing that impresses me about the Ant-Man figurine is the posing. Very similar to the Spider-Man figurine yes, but the pose is fitting. It’s basically exactly how Ant-Man  lands whenever he does the shrinking thing in the film. So yeah, a good, effective pose for the figurine. What’s really awesome about it though, is how underneath him is the head of a very large screw. This obviously means that he has shrunken. Cool right? Yeah it’s fairly cool.

The costume looks great as well. They’ve definitely put a lot of work into making sure the replication is accurate, including all the extra layers of padding and whatnot around the suit. The best part of the costume design is most definitely the sick as lens on his helmet. Transparent red plastic sits in place of his eyes, adding a nice effect to the figurine.No other figurine has this at all, making it fairly unique really.

Figurine aside, Ant-Man is fairly average in game. Did you remember that these weren’t just figurines, and that they are fully usable in-game? What a time to be alive. Anyway, Ant-Man is on the faster range of figurines, which is a fight style I do particularly enjoy. His attacks are almost all punches, but he rapidly changes size during combos, making for some really cool fights to watch while playing. His ranged is him turning small, rushing towards the enemy, and then enlarging and punching his enemies super powered chin. While it’s cool, and fitting for the character, it really isn’t a fun way to play. Actual range always trumps the fake range that Ant-Man and others like Hulk and Drax have.

The voice acting is fine. Sounds nothing the Rudd, but is fine. I mean they did it, that’s good enough sometimes right? Biggest gameplay issue though? He is incredibly squishy. Insanely so even. Sure I probably just need to level him more, but I know for a fact that others weren’t this bad at first.

Overall a great figure that I am very happy with, but lacking in the gameplay department making for a fairly average figurine. Still love the giant screw feature though. That’s great attention to detail.

6/10

I Review Everything: Day 5 – Couch Co-op

Gaming has taken a massive shift in recent years, attempting to connect as many gamers together as possible. This shift has changed the way we play together, allowing us to join our friends at any time of day, in any location. Provided they have a good internet connection of course.

Because of this, couch co-op is becoming a thing of legend. No longer do we pack into a compact room, with all eyes glued to a single screen. Now we join each other online, communicating through headsets, never seeing each others faces. Game developers are also following this trend, removing the functionality of offline co-op, in favour of online.

Now, while I do enjoy online gaming, a part of me is always saddened when I can’t couch co-op a game at all, even as an additional feature. It saddens me that it is often now surprising to even see offline co-op in a game at all.

Just recently, an attempt to play Star Wars Battlefront on my PC with a friend was cut short when I found no offline co-op at all. What made this worse was the fact that you can play offline co-op on the console versions of the game. An omission on PC that makes no sense at all.

The only games that do seem to still have this feature, are usually more child focused. Games such the Lego series, Disney Infinity, or Skylanders. So in a spur of the moment decision today, I sent my copy Disney Infinity into my PS4, hoping for a short game to pass the time before work. My flatmate Max was in the room at the time, and he decided to jump in with me. Just like that, we had begun a session of the fabled couch co-op from years ago.

Playing as the angsty Kylo Ren, and the charmingly excited Poe Dameron respectively, we carved through waves upon waves of First Order Stormtroopers on the planet Takodana. Multiple times we set up enemies for each other, called out to be revived, and made jokes about how uncanonical what we were doing was.

Playing on the highest difficulty resulted in a lot of broken figurines on the screen, forcing us to make the painfully hard decision of who to play as next. But that was again part of the fun. Rapidly grabbing figurines, and launching them into the digital world, helped add to the excitement surrounding the entire experience.

The game made me nostalgic of the days of playing games on the couch with my friends, again, an experience that happens a lot less often these days. Partly because I am older, and I generally want more depth than offline co-op ever gives, but also because less and less games feature this old, but fun piece of gameplay.

Overall the experience reminded me of how fun couch co-op can be, even with something as basic as Disney Infinity. It is an experience I definitely want to try again.

8/10