Nintendo Wii U – Matheus Pitillo

Disney Infinity

Release Date: August 18, 2013
Developer: Avalanche Software
Publisher: Disney Interactive
Genre: Adventure / Sandbox
Plataform: PS3 / 360 / Wii U / Wii / 3DS / Mobile / PC

Lets face it: everyone is a Disney fan! I honestly won't believe you if you say that at one point of your life you weren't touched by Disney's unique way of telling stories. Whether by their characters, art, animations, parks, shows, songs or even by Mickey himself. I bet you have experienced that "magic" and, if you are a human full of emotions, you probably fell in love too.

And finally the big day arrives for all of those Disney lovers: the big release of Disney Infinity, a game that - as Disney - is everywhere. Or at least in almost all platforms. The player can find it on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo WiiU - as the main console version - or even on Nintendo 3DS, following more as a "Mario Party" gameplay style. Nintendo Wii also received the game for its platform, though with fewer features, such as the absence of a co-op experience in the Play Set part of the game. And if it wasn't enough, players can also experience Disney Infinity on PC and iOS devices, offering the options to build, edit and share all of your toy box experiments at any time.

For the ones who still don't know, the game allows players to share their creations on ANY PLATFORM. It doesn't matter if you are a Nintendo player, you can easily share your Toy Box with an user that plays on PlayStation 3, for example.

WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE

Disney Infinity it is not just one game, it's a game within a game. Imagine that you have the opportunity to go back to your childhood and you are gifted with an amazing and colorful Toy Box. All you need to do is to drop all of these items on the floor and start to build your own dreams. You can do "anything", you just need to use a spark of your imagination. Who never imagined making the boring Winnie the Pooh do a quick visit to Cruella de Vil's house? Well, maybe not! Who would want to do such a thing, right? *cough cough*

The point is: while the game offers original Play Sets with original adventure experiences related to the character's Universe, it also offers a second game mode in which it is YOU who have freedom to create whatever you want, in the way that you want, to finally share with your friends and see how they will react whitin your creations. This concept allows the game to attract an even wider audience. Whether you are a big fan of the movies, or adventure games, or even if you are just a crazy action figure collector person like myself, you will always find people getting trapped inside this expensive cycle. So, by following this philosophy I will write this review in a different way than usual: find the category that best fits you and read this review. (Or, you might just read it all, since I lost loads of time writing it! LOL)

DISNEY INFINITY FOR GAMERS

First of all, Disney Infinity is not Skylanders. The only thing similar between both games is the Base that allows to have figures being "scanned" inside the game. But besides that, the games are totally different. It's almost like trying to compare Assassin's Creed with Watch Dogs, because both use basically the same control scheme. Anyway...

By purchasing the Starter Pack the player will receive three characters/figures - Jack Sparrow, Sulley and Mr. Incredible - and a Play Set with their unique worlds. Play Sets are a piece that contains the whole Universe of a specific group of characters. The player needs to place this piece on top of the Disney Infinity Base - that comes in the Starter Pack - to finally be able to access this Universe. Within the Play Set, players also needs to place their characters on the DI Base, so they can be brought to "life" into the game.

Each Play Set delivers a complete open world campaign experience - based on the Play Set theme - full of objectives and collectables. Because of the theme related experience, the players can only use the characters that are part of that Universe. So, if you want to play, for example, in The Incredibles' Metro City, you will need to use Mr. Incredible, Mrs. Incredible, Dash, Violet or Syndrome. But if you want to use different characters from different Disney Worlds, you will only be able to do it by playing in the Toy Box. And that's the good news: there is a secret Big Vault in each one of the Play Sets, that can only be opened if you use all of the characters from that Universe. By opening it you will be rewarded with an already designed Toy Box of that specific Play Set. So you and your friends can play together, without the restriction of only being able to use characters of that specific universe. Finally, there are also unique items to unlock in the Toy Box that can only be found in specific Play Sets.

Gameplay wise Play Sets also offers different types of gaming mechanics and experiences. Although all of them follows for an open world adventure idea, each one of the Play Sets focus more on a different concept. Monster University is all about pranks, scares and competing. They even have a school points scale, that reminds me the whole idea of House's competition in Harry Potter series. LOL. Pirates of the Caribbean introduces swordplay combats, ship battles and even ship customization. Yeah, you can customize your own ship! And, finally, The Incredibles gives you loads of melee combat, with super powers and small missions around Metro City.

Each Play Set can take around 5 to 7 hours to complete, plus the hours that you will spend by searching for all unlockable items. Since the Starter Pack comes with 3 Play Sets, you can easily calculate 15 to 21 hours of experience to complete the whole game of this first wave. Of course the player can always place a new character and search for all the specific missions and items related to that character, increasing even more their gameplay.

Not everything is perfect, though. Even offering different mechanics, story lines, environments and experience, all the starter play sets end up giving the feeling of lack of something. The stories are not very strong - compared to the original movies - and the missions tend to not vary too much, differing only on basic mechanics, for the same theme/idea. But don't get me wrong! I am not saying that the game, or these Play Sets, are bad. They are actually very good. But not perfect, you know? I was actually quite surprise with The Incredibles in specific, because I felt like they had a bigger variance of characters vs. powers, compared to Pirates of the Caribbean for instance. But on the other hand, in the Pirates Play Set I found that the universe looked bigger, and with more stuff to do, while the characters themselves were almost the same.

Regarding the controls, while the Nintendo Wii U seemed to be the best option to play the game - considering that the player could easily use the gamepad to navigate through the items, objectives and menus - if the player decides to play on Co-Op, the only controller that will actually work for the second player is the Wii Remote. This kind of sucks, considering that it's a mess to move and rotate the camera, or even to use special attacks etc. Luckily Disney already announced that they will soon release a patch giving support to the Pro Controller as well. Besides that, all controllers are pretty easy to learn and it seems to be very intuitive, even with loads of options to do.

Finally, if you are a gamer who loves to create your own Worlds, quests and stories, the best game mode for you will definitely be the Toy Box.

The Toy Box is this empty environment/level to be filled up with your imagination, using the items you collected in the game. By playing the main campaigns - or the characters specific Adventures - and leveling up your character, the player is rewarded with Spins. Spins can also be found in capsules, around other pre-made Toy Boxes. Those Spins can be used in the Toy Box Vault which randomly rewards the player with one item, out of 16, per spin. Every time that you want to increase the number of items to use in your Toy Box, you will need to rely on your luck and in your progression with Spins. The other option, of course, is to collect those items around each one of the Play Sets, as I said before.

It is not hard to create your own adventures, but it might require a little bit of patience. You just need to change between pages of categories and items, and finally place it on the environment. You have the option to rotate and move those pieces until you achieve the best spot for your adventure. To change textures or even to delete something, you can use the Magic Wand that offers more options to the player. There are also items that help you to quickly change the sky just by pressing a button, as well as to spawn new enemies etc. But talking about "patience" one more time, what I found a little bit frustrating is the low speed between menus and items. Maybe it's just me, but every time I decide to move from gameplay mode, to building mode, it drives me crazy because of the delay between options.

Triggers, events box and links can also be used in the Toy Box. if you are familiar with some Game Engines such as UDK or Unity, you will find that to "script" the events on Disney Infinity is very easy. Players can connect special items together and give them basic rules. You can easily link a button that, when pressed, will activate fireworks, open doors, start a song or spawn new objects or enemies. There are even cameras to unlock in the Toy Box Vault that allows you to change from top-down to side-scrolling games. And the character will also follow this pattern while locked inside this camera mode. It's awesome! And, the best part is that for the new players, the game also offers tutorials teaching the basic mechanics of the triggers and objects.

After creating your own Toy Box, you can easily share it online between your friends, or even send to Disney to wait for a review. If approved, your Toy Box can be downloaded directly from their Original Database. Players can play any toy box in any of the platforms.

So, if you are included in the GAMER category that I said before, I would recommend Disney Infinity if you like an easy-to-play adventure experience, with building and customization options. If you are a big fan of Little Big Planet and Minecraft you will probably love this game.

DISNEY INFINITY FOR FANS

It's pretty clear how much love the effort the team put into this game. Disney Infinity was made by Fans for Fans. Each one of the Play Sets features a whole new storyline in parallel with the original one shown in the movies. And it was confirmed that Avalanche Software and Disney worked directly with Pixar to make these storylines as good and complete as the ones seen in theatres. It might have not succeed 100% - as I said earlier in this review - but it was pretty close to it.

You can easily recognize the personality of each one of your favourite characters. The voice acting is stunning and the animations make them be extremely alive. It's nice to have the option to see how their lives existed after the movies and how we have total control on top of that now.

Right in the beginning of the game the player can experience one of the most beautiful introductions I have ever see in a game. All the first part is actually playable - and without spoilers - you will learn the first mechanics and controls, and also be enchanted with the beautiful Universe that Infinity is part of. All the possibilities are introduced right there, and it just make us, fans, even more excited to start building everything that we always dreamed as well.

As a fan, if there is a negative point in the game I would say that it is the lack of classic characters. Of course this problem can easily be solved soon, in the next wave of characters and Play Sets. But the thing is, as much as I love Monsters University, The Incredibles, Cars or any of other Pixar movies, I really miss the classic characters from the first Disney animations. Where is Simba? What about Ariel, Mulan or Pocahontas? One Play Set about Aladdin would be amazing as well, you know? I understand that the developers can add it, if they decide to, but I really don't get why there was a lack of this content for the first wave of the game. I just hope they are not planning to do only Play Sets related to Pixar movies...

DISNEY INFINITY FOR COLLECTORS

Now comes the best part - And also the most expensive one! If you are a crazy collector like me, you finally found the perfect game. Man, no words describes how well done each of the figures are. The quality is amazing! Their unique poses represents perfectly each one of the characters and all that I want is to buy them all, even if I don't end up playing the game anymore or bankrupting myself in the process.

And if it wasn't enough, everything related to Disney Infinity comes in waves, bundles, accessories and pieces. You will not only collect figures, but also Power Discs, albums and cases. To have the most powerful character, or the most complete Toy Box, the player can add Power Discs on top of the DI Base, to increase a character's stats, or add tools and characteristics to your own Toy Box.

For the first wave of items, there are 20 official Power Discs - 3 of them are rare pieces - while stores like Toys R Us and GameStop have their own exclusive Power Discs as well. So, if you decide to have all figures and all Discs, expect to spend at least 200 hundred dollars, if not more.

Knowing about this huge marketing, Disney Infinity created a special feature inside the game that they call the Hall of Fame. Every character or Power Disc that the player purchased and unlocked in the game will appear in this Hall of Fame as a physical statue. The statue can vary from Bronze, Silver to Gold, according to the level experience of the character. The Hall of Fame constantly evolves, growing walls, celling, flowers etc. It's a very beautiful and stunning experience to face. And you end up having your original figures in hand, but also inside the game.

So, if this review is for you - a collector - don't think twice and go buy your figures. Take zillions pictures of them. Place it inside protection cases - available from all major retailers for a small cost - and show it to your friends or enemies, so they can envy you too. LOL. Yeah, it's awesome and I love it! And since Disney knows exactly how to sell more dreams, a new wave of characters are coming soon, with new Play Sets. You will be able to find characters such as Rapunzel, Skeleton Jack, Woody etc.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Disney Infinity has everything going for it to be one of the biggest hits for the ending of this generation of video games. It's a game that allows for the mixing of any type of genre, with the ability to create anything that only relies on your own imagination. It's a game which also puts friends and family together, with infinite fun and choices. To know for sure how long this game will last, it only depends of how long the developers will give support to it. But I would guess that it will take a long, long time, to disappear from your shelf, or from the stores.

My Personal Score: 4/5

[button type="icon" icon="paper"]Written by Matheus Pitillo.[/button]

Published by Matheus Pitillo in Game Articles, Reviews

ZombiU

Release Date: November 18, 2012
Developer: Ubisoft Montepellier / Ubisoft Bucharest
Genre: First Person Survival Horror
Plataform: Nintendo WiiU

To play as loads of different people in a very small time interval was never so fun and yet so "frustrating" at the same time. I felt terrible to see my first character dying in the middle of a zombie horde, and losing all the weapons and equipment that I collected in the first few minutes of gameplay. But, even worse was when I started with a new character, Liz, who died right before she was able to recover all the items that I lost some minutes before. And the worst part: against the same zombie! At that time I realised that I should get used to the idea that I would be losing all "those people" during the game and that I should accept it or, If I didn't want to feel so frustrated any more, then perhaps the best idea was to take the game out of my WiiU and focus on New Super Mario Bros U again. So, this review is for you if, like me, didn't give up on playing ZombiU just because of one frustration or, hmmm... maybe 30 others. LOL.

Wii U Game Pad features right in the first minutes!

Talking again about my first minutes of game, the first impression that I had with ZombiU was how immersive this game is. Without revealing any spoilers, the game starts with the first survivor in the middle of a zombie attack, in one of the numerous streets of London. The action starts without giving you any clues, or even a moment to catch your breath. This first minutes work as a tutorial, but they don't pause at all for you to learn it too well -- your only option is to hear the voice that talks with you, and follow his instructions, running away from that attack and hiding yourself in the safest and nearest room available. This "tutorial" ends up being a good option, since the normal human reaction for this situation is always to run away, trying to figure out the controllers by themselves. And yeah! I did it. HA!

The game brings to you the best working example of the WiiU since the launch. A lot of the features are presented right there, showing what the Gamepad is capable of. I would say that if you are a new owner of the Nintendo WiiU, you should start with ZombiU. It's a great choice! 🙂

It's impressive how immersive the game can be having the Gamepad as the main controller. In the game you control a lot of things directly through the Gamepad. Your map is always visible on it and by pressing a radar button you can scan to see if there are zombies nearby. It's scary some moments in which you are in a total darkness and you turn on your radar and can see zombies ominously approaching you. By the way, another very nice feature - which may sound a little bit silly - is the lantern. With one click you can turn it on or off. While on, the battery will decrease, but if you turn it off again it will recover very fast. The strategy is to use it in a intelligent way, because if a zombie sees your light you can be sure that the game will be even harder. They will hunt and try to kill you at any cost.

The Gamepad also offers different features such as the innovative Scanner that you have probably already seen in one of the videos online. The Scanner is used to identify hidden items around the environment, as well giving you a night vision, or even the capability to hack some cameras and systems in London. The player can move with the Gamepad in any direction around itself to actually see the real environment in-game, or you have the option to just rotate using the right analog stick. After scanning objects, they will be fixed in your map forever so it is easy to search for later.

Another exciting moment is that every time that you need to get an item from your inventory the game does not pause. You need to select everything directly in the Gamepad in real-time, being sure to always keep in mind that you could be mauled by a zombie at any time. LOL.

But, surprisingly, one of my favourite Gamepad features are the voices that come directly from the Gamepad. Everything that I hear from my "guide friend" - speaking in English, with his amazing British accent - comes directly from the Gamepad, making me feel like I'm even more inside the game. The quality of the audio is AMAZING! You feel like someone is there, in your "hands", trying to help you. You can only understand this feeling after you finally play it. So, for now, just believe me.

Besides that, ZombiU offers more than 20 different features to show off what the Gamepad is capable of. Between those features, the most common are: the aforementioned Sonar; the Weapon Crafting, that gives the option to upgrade, tweak and customize your weapons and gear to give you a much needed edge over the zombie hordes; the precision sniping, that makes the GamePad transform into a scope that enables the player to zoom in for headshot; the hack door systems; the lock picking, the blacklight, the turret, the mini map, the inventory management, the shooting skills, the personal notebook, the barricade system and others.

The Demon's Souls of Nintendo?

As I said at the beginning of this review, if you are not a hardcore gamer, or if you hate how hard a game like Demon's Souls can be, you should maybe avoid using time playing ZombiU. Maybe I'm over exaggerating and the difficulty is not THAT HARD, but believe me when I say that it is at least comparable. ZombiU offers two different game modes: Normal Mode and Survival Mode, and both modes are pretty hard.

In Normal Mode, every time you die you start as a new character, with only a pistol with 6 bullets and a piece of wood in your inventory. If you want to recover all the items that your last survivor collected, you need to find him on the map in his zombie form. The game registers each one of your survivors during the game, as well as your name, last name, gameplay time and other small information. This way you can keep a track of how many survivors you have played with during your campaign and how long each one survived. That's not a joke when the Game X-Statement is: "How long will you survive?"

For Survival Mode the game is even more insane. If you die, the game is over! Like, really over! At least the player has the chance to choose between two modes inside Survival Mode, the chicken one and the hardest one.

The difficulty of the game is impressive. There are some moments with a slower pace, with some environment exploration and chance to search for some items or small "puzzles", but for the most part the game follows a faster pace and when a battle starts you can expect at least eight more zombies to come to attack you, all at the same time. Some of them possess different characteristics and attacks, creating different types of combat situations with close combat or long range attacks. For example, there is a zombie that spills a powerful vomit that burns the player or a guard zombie that uses a helmet, making his resistance to attacks higher.

Despair in the streets of London

If you have ever been to London this is another aspect that will make amaze you about this game. It is unbelievable how faithful the game is with places of London. It's awesome to see the same places that you've visited before in real life, but this time all destroyed, in flames and populated with hordes of roaming zombies. There are some moments in the game that you will need to visit places such as the Buckingham Palace while you are facing a huge storm. You will also find and read some of the letters written to the Queen. It's AMAZING!

But this is not a huge surprise, since Ubisoft is well known as a company that creates environments very similar to the reality, e.g. Assassins Creed Trilogy. While the game shows a lot of huge and very beautiful environments, it loses some points for repeating little aspects of some of those environment in a way that can make you feel as though you have already been there before. But not to an extent that actually makes you feel too bad about it.

Talking about the feeling of despair, ZombiU does a great job. Mixing a gameplay style that features Survival Horror with a First Person Game, you will feel excited and scared for the majority of the game. A lot of the environments in the game will be in the dark, allowing you to make good use of your lantern in the right moments of the game, as well as creating a better horror atmosphere. The game makes sure to create some specific fright moments that make you jump behind your sofa, or at least almost that. LOL. Maybe one of the reasons to be so scared to die are the controls of the game. And that is what I will be talking about in the next part of the review.

Level Design, Objectives Directions and Controllers

You probably read somewhere online or heard one of your friends saying that the Controls in ZombiU are probably not the best. I mean, after some minutes of gameplay, you can easily learn how to aim better by utilising your weapons or understand the best combat strategy for a situation according to timing. But even so you might hate how at some moments of the game the controls feel like it is playing with you! I can't say very well how I would make the controls differently, since the conceptual idea for the game was to focus on the Gamepad new functionalities, but definitely I can imagine that new First Player games will have the same critics focused on how inefficient it is to play with the Gamepad. But again, nothing that you can't get used after some time. Aside from that, all the other controls seem to work well and the control scheme seems to be easy understandable. You can make your character run by pressing the left analog stick while you move it forward. And this is one of the things that you will be mostly using in the game. Oh, yeah!

As the Level Design and Objective Direction in the game, I can say that ZombiU works very well. At any time, by pressing the button "-" in your gamepad, the missions will be displayed on the gamepad screen at the same time. And all the time, by starting a new mission, a direction mark will show on your map in the gamepad, helping you to not feel so lost during the game. Honestly, I just felt lost for two moments of the game, and mostly because I was more distracted with a fire environment that made me fail to notice that there was actually a path right in front of me! But generally speaking the missions work very smooth, as well as directions, in-game information etc.

Hunting other Online Zombies

ZombiU offers a very simple Online Gameplay Experience. According to the game idea, I believe the online experience is quite good enough actually. The game does not offer an online campaign mode against your friends, or anything like that. Mostly, the way it works is that during your main campaign, if you are playing online, is allowing you to find other players' survivors that have turned into zombies. So, by killing them, you can loot their items and also have their gamertag registered in your gamepad, showing how many other online zombie players you have killed during your campaign. I agree this is not as much as fun as they could have done - for example, if other online players could control their zombie against you, but again, I believe this is to create foster the idea that the game wants us to feel loneliness in the chaotic universe they have created.

Another online function present in the game is the In-Game Online Messages. After around two hours of gameplay you will find a spray paint can that gives you the option to leave messages on the wall by using some default drawings that the gamepad offers. You can see those messages during your campaign by searching with your scanner. You also have the option to like those messages or not, making them have more realistic value if the information is trustful.

The King of Zombies: A "blah!" Multiplayer Experience.

I'm not sure if the reason that I disliked the multiplayer was because I played with my roommate while he was using the WiiRemote + Nunchuck instead of a Wii U Pro Controller, but the game play was pretty hard, and not to mention somewhat annoying. Well, both game modes are nice, actually, but the gameplay experience is frustrating.

Basically ZombiU Multiplayer features two modes: the King of Zombies and the cliche Capture the Flag Level. In the King of Zombies the player with the GamePad needs to use their energy points to summon zombies around the level, trying the best to kill the survivor. All his strategies need to be done directly on the GamePad screen, making each decision a mystery for the other player. The player controlling the WiiRemote (BLAH!) or the Pro Controller needs to survive as long as he can, killing the zombies summoned by the King of Zombies. With time, the King of Zombies can summon new types of zombies, increasing the difficulty.

The second multiplayer mode is the Capture the flag Level, in which the King of Zombies needs to again summon zombies before the other player captures all flags in the level. Both Game Modes offer different types of levels and conditions.

The problem is that the player who is controlling the survivor will face a lot of frustrating moments, since the control layout used on the Wii Remote are a piece of junk! It's super hard to aim and shoot using the Wii Remote. The controls are difficult to memorize and to feel right, considering that the player is in a fast paced situation. But talking about the King of Zombie the experience is quite exciting, offering a new type of gameplay style and a very intelligent one as well.

Again, maybe the problem was the controller that I used. At least I'm hoping for that.

Nintendo Wii U first option game!

Finally, to finish this review, I would say that if you are planning to buy a Nintendo Wii U, or if you already bought one, you should get ZombiU. Of course there are a lot of small issues, as well as some control problems and repetitions, but definitely if you want a great introduction to what the Nintendo Wii U can do in this generation, ZombiU is the best option to show you that.

Nintendo made an excellent choice by releasing the game with the début of their new console. Maybe the game does not have the best graphics ever, but for sure it has a innovate and uniquely immersive gameplay experience, with a reasonable length, very challenging game difficulty and environments with amazing lighting and scary moments.

As a final score, I would need to take 0.5 points from ZombiU because of the confusing Multiplayer Mode that didn't please me, even though it featured a nice concept. But what is a nice concept without good execution?

My Personal Score: 4/5

[button type="icon" icon="paper"]Written by Matheus Pitillo.[/button]

Published by Matheus Pitillo in Game Articles, Reviews

Tags: 2012, articles, features, First Person Survival Horror, game release, Gamepad, gamepad features, king of zombies, Level Design, Matheus Pitillo, Missions, mode, multiplayer, Nintendo Wii U, online, review, Ubisoft, WiiU, ZombiU

Review: Disney Infinity

Review: ZombiU