Been seeing the commercials, reading the reviews and watching you tube videos of the game. Was hesitant at first thinking it would get boring and we would just be running around aimlessly with nothing to do. Went out last night to rent it and they didn't have it to rent. Was talking with the DW about if we should wait until the holidays and get it for our DD6. Well i couldn't wait any longer. We aren't going back to Disney World until Feb 2014 and I needed to get a Disney fix. Last weekend bought 4 vinylmations and then yesterday I ran to Best Buy with DD in hand and we bought it for our PS3. Picked up a booster pack with 2 discs in it and the game guide. $108 later we were walking out grinning ear to ear. Rushed home popped it in and unpacked everything. After about 20 minutes of updates and installing we were ready to play.
Gotta say this is the coolest game. Disney basically took all the best features from the best games and put them all into this one. Its an Role playing game, racing game, adventure, puzzle, mystery game, it has a kid like grand theft auto feel since you can do your missions or roam around exploring. Then it has the Minecraft, Sim city, Little Big Planet feel where you can create your own world. I was worried it was going to be to easy for myself but I found it easy at times and challenging at other times. The graphics are great, the game play is smooth. I was pretty impressed at times. For example I was playing as Cpt Jack Sparrow. I completed some missions and then bought a ship. I was out on the open ocean and the water went from calm to wavy the farther out I went. The waves seemed so real, with the roll they had and the water reflection. They really did a great job with the details of the game. I played for about 3 hours and completed what looks like only a small portion of the Pirates adventure. We still can do the Monsters and Incredibles adventures that came with the starter pack as well as create our own world in the toy box or visit or download others toy boxes. I kept thinking when playing the game why would I buy other characters when I am doing just fine with the one I am playing until I started coming across hidden treasure chests that had other characters on them and you needed them to open the chests to unlock more toys, gadgets, tools, etc... Sometimes you stumble across a vault that will have 3 characters on it and then you get a ton of stuff but you need to have all 3 characters on had to unlock it. So Disney figured out a way to make me want to buy the complete set so I can unlock all the cool stuff.
Overall my DD6 enjoys the game and said she can't wait to get out of school and come home and play it. She has never been a big gamer. Plays the wii from time to time, but never fully engrossed herself into a game and became attached the characters, worlds, and everything else. Some may say this is a bad thing and some may say its alright. Obviously you know my take on it. It gives our family our Disney fix, we have fun doing it, and we can't wait to see what they have planned for it.
A couple of interesting notes. I was able to link our Disney account that we use to book tickets, resort, etc.. to the game. I don't know how that will effect game play or traveling at all but it would be cool to incorporate something in the park to the game back at home. Like exclusive power discs only found in the parks and you get them after you complete the Pirates adventure thingy, or things similar to Sorcerer Mickeys. So you can continue the game in the parks in a sense and keep adding exclusive content. hey we can dream right?!!?
Another cool thing is they can keep adding and adding. They can add content from future movies like Frozen and anything else in the works, They can add content from previous ones like Nemo, Wreck it Ralph, or classics like Aladdin, or Snow White. So this was more of an investment for us. We see this game growing with us. It won't be the typical play the game, beat it, and you're done. I see many many years of game play and exploration.
They have announced they already have planned 3 waves. The first wave was the starter packs and characters and power discs that are out. They are expected to launch wave 2 which will release more play sets, characters, and power discs, and then wave 3 has already been planned to launch even more. I doubt they will stop there. We are already planning on building a nice shelving unit to store all the characters in and their power discs, they sell cases for the characters but they seem bulky and like they would be a pain to store, and they are plastic and i see them getting scratched or eventually getting broken, they sell cases to hold the power discs which my DW picked one up today so we don't lose them. Since they are small mostly clear plastic discs.
So hope you enjoyed my little review of it. If you have any questions ask away and well what are you waiting for... go buy yours now.