Toy Story 3 – Recensione

Guybrush Review 89

To infinity and beyond…

THE BIG ESCAPE

The story mode refers a bit to what is the plot of the film where the toys of Toy Story are taken to a kindergarten so as to be useful for some children. However, the toys are not going to stay in that place because small children are destructive and the other toys that were already there are fighting for supremacy over the whole kindergarten. So they decide to escape, hence the subtitle of the story "The Great Escape", ending up in an old landfill where they risk plastic among the machinery of the place. The developers have also added several toy "fantasies", meaning that Toy Story characters will often imagine adventures they have with their friends and that we will be able to play:
In the train assault in the west, Woody and Jessie must free orphans from a train that is about to fall into a ravine while the pig pig Hamm attacks them with a flying saucer.
In the Buzz video game, on the other hand, we will have to face deep space up to the spaceport where various traps and pitfalls will try to block our way to our archenemy Zurg.
After the story ends, the toys will come together to face a stuffed witch and her terrifying army of Muffin Zombies. In short, the story of the title is full of unusual and funny situations that range from different genres of gameplay, but the highlight comes now….

Towards infinity and ... then running to the bathroom that I ate heavy !!!

In the Toy Box mode the story is different, this game session is in fact set up as a free roaming where Woody, Buzz and Jessie will be able to run freely, completing the missions of the various villagers. Continuing with the missions you will discover a great hidden treasure that will be stolen by Mayor Hamm, who turns out to be your enemy, and who will use the treasure to create a giant spaceship with which to rob your city. This, broadly speaking, is the main story of the Toy Box which however consists of many other small stories, plots and sub-plots that each mission will give by generating a real game in its own right that will entertain more than the main story.

THE STYLE OF THE PIXAR

The graphic sector of the title is, of course, one of the greatest qualities of the game since Pixar, having always worked with computer graphics, has not missed even a small drop of the style that we find in its films. The world of Toy Story 3 is colorful and shiny, each character is equipped with excellent animations and the stylistic choices made in the game only confirm the talent of Pixar and the developers. In Toy Box mode it seems to live in a real city made of its own life where everything can be customized and recolored to your liking. An example of the great animations is given to us by the GOO, a green or purple slime that thrown at any object can make it shrink or enlarge without the slightest imperfection in detail.

Hey, do you have any problems because I parked in the middle of the street ???

It must be said that Pixar was not very generous in anticipating something about the film, in fact all the movies you will find during the main adventure will be videos created especially for the game so as to leave an aura of mystery on the film.
The sound sector is hilarious and entertaining and the dubbing of the protagonists is faithful to the film, the song “A friend in me” (soundtrack of the film) has even been introduced, which you can listen to in the main menu.

A WORLD OF TOYS

The gameplay of the main mode leads us to follow the story through 8 levels that we will face using Woody, Buzz and Jessie, which will be chosen by the game depending on the level. Each of our heroes has a specific ability that allows us to perform different actions called "Special Move" that can be used in certain places:

Woody: Our cowboy will have a lasso with which to swing between a grip and the other so as to reach any platform.

Jessy: The little cowgirl will be able to use her rotating leap to jump higher and climb walls with darts, nails, pins etc ...

Buzz: The space ranger, on the other hand, will be the brute of the situation, being stronger than the other characters, he will be able to lift them and launch them so that he can reach the highest points.

the various skills of the characters will be essential to continue the adventure, in fact you will have to change your hero often so that you can find or clear the way to continue.
This, in addition to adding a small factor of strategy to the game, will lead you to clear every possible road so that you can collect the Nacosti Citizens, the Cards and Andy's Memories that will be the various collectibles hidden in the game.

Come on guys, adult magazines should be in here !!!

Having said that, the adventure turns out to be the classic platformer interspersed with some minigames such as the challenges in the kindergarten, which range from timed races to "hit all the aliens", the launch of the toy soldiers, which will see us throwing these verse paratroopers. of designated targets, and the level in which you will have to escape from the kindergarten, which will turn into a real stealth-platform where we will have to free our friends while paying attention to the guards and alarms.
The few enemies of the title can be killed thanks to the balls that you can throw at them and the Buzz laser.
in short, the main adventure consists of a nice mix of genres that lasts too short and turns out to be really very simple, for any type of gamer.

The Toy Box gameplay is a whole other game. The various abilities of the characters are eliminated but they are given the opportunity to indulge themselves in customizing the city: you have to think of the Toy Box as a sort of large lego box that you can assemble and disassemble by customizing each of its inhabitants and buildings as you wish, even re-coloring and changing windows, doors, vases, etc. of any construction. All this is accompanied by many free roaming missions seasoned with minigames of all kinds: obstacle course, timed racing, treasure hunt, poison ball, there will even be an immense track for cars complete with loops, GOO rings for make the cars bigger and smaller, areas where you can do stunts and much more but… ALT… in the beginning it will be just you, the mayor and a few houses. The world of the Toy Box must all be unlocked through the various missions and then bought in the toy shop that in addition to selling you your Bullseye horse on which to wander around the world, the cars for competitions, new weapons such as the alien gun, new inhabitants, new objects such as the camera and new buildings, it will even sell you new gameplay areas such as the Track for cars, the House of Ghosts, the Spaceport of Zurg and the Enchanted World that will be real worlds in themselves to be explored and in to complete other missions.

Maybe my hat shop didn't come out as manly!

The setting of the Toy Box really hides many prize capsules in which you can find customizations (costumes, haircuts and objects) both for the city and for the characters that populate it, in fact you just have to take one and throw it into any clothing store or hairdresser to start customizing it however you want, and of course there will be little easter eggs like the costumes of Wall-E, Monsters & Co. And many other Pixar films.
Customizing the characters will not only serve to give vent to your creativity, in fact, always purchasable in the toy store there will be Pict-o-Matic, a sort of device that will show you some skits to recreate, for example there is an image in which Buzz kick an alien between a cactus that looks like a football door, to recreate the image you just need to take an alien in the city find a cactus similar to the one in the image and jump kicking the alien between the two poles and trying to score, if everything has been done correctly, a short cut-scene will inform you that the mission has been successful.
The discs of the Pict-o Matic are 6 and they expand the images to be recreated that touch everything in the game, often it will be enough for you to find a certain place, other times you will have to customize the characters in order to make them identical to those of the image that the device will show you, in a nutshell, an immense sub-mission that will accompany you throughout the Toy Box. But if you still don't have enough, you can try your hand at photographic missions: once you have the camera you can start taking pictures around the setting trying to get as many points as possible, each photo will in fact be evaluated according to different factors that you they will provide points and money.
Often the photographer of the city will ask you to find particular subjects for his newspaper such as the snowman who will often appear in the upright places or a giant dragon that you can create with the GOO.
After having mentioned it so often, it is time to explain well what this GOO is: located in a container placed in various areas of the Toy Box, the GOO is a green liquid, to enlarge, and purple to reduce, any object of the Toy Box that is it will simply magnify or shrink or undergo some transformations, throwing the green GOO on a toy car it will grow into a Monster Truck, throwing the purple GOO instead the car will become a small remote controlled car where even your character will struggle to stay.

Sorry, don't you have some green GOO? My buttocks got stuck in here !!!

If you try to mix the 2 types of GOO you will have a green and purple mixture that, when thrown into any object or character, will make it jump around the setting until the GOO is ejected.

By facing the alternative worlds such as the haunted house, the spaceport etc ... you will be able to obtain new items that will provide different abilities to the characters:

-Scepter of the haunted house: thanks to this scepter we will be able to cancel the curses and bring back to normal people transformed into stone by the Gargoyles and also we will be able to destroy statues in the shape of a chess horse to get a prize capsule.

-Magic wand of enchanted world: thanks to this wand we will be able to cancel the curses and bring back to normal the people transformed into worms by the Pixies and also we will be able to open the rainbow chests to get prize capsules.

-Alien gun: Thanks to this gun we will be able to place purple luminous markers on any character so that a flying saucer arrives and bombs the marker.

-Spaceport Laser Beam: thanks to this wand we will be able to destroy Zurg's robots and also open the purple space crates to get prize capsules.

The Toy Box is a really exciting and rich in content mode that will lead you to unlock the Gold Stars, which represent additional objectives to complete such as kick ten people, collect all the prize capsules in a given place etc ...

Ultimately the title is beautiful on its own but even more beautiful with a friend because both the story mode and the Toy Box are fully Multiplayer so much so that another player can join at any time in the game by simply pressing start on their controller.

AN UNEXPECTED GAME

Music: 8,0 - A good audio sector accompanied by a dubbing faithful to the film making the title even more beautiful to play.
Graphics: 8,5 –Pixar's mastery of computer graphics work reaches a high point in this title that flows as fluid, bright and colorful as the movie.
Playability: 9,0- Crazy gameplay not so much in the main story but in the Toy box that amazes more and more from mission to mission.
Longevity: 7,5- You will finish the main story in a few hours, but the Toy Box offers several hours of fun so that it can be a game in itself.

Final grade: 8,3

Toy Story 3 The Great Escape really amazed us very detaching from the usual games taken from the movies, based only on the main storyline and little else, and creating a complete mode from scratch, the Toy Box, where the player can really indulge in anything and do almost anything. This free roaming, even if it has a aftertaste very childish because of the characters and graphic choices, manages to capture even the greatest by making them explore, entertain and customize anything and often leaving them with a lot of trouble. G.iocandoci it almost seems that the main mode is the Toy Box and story is a secondary mode to finish sometimes just to unlock the achievements / trophies related to it. Unlike similar titles, Toy Story succeeds in hitting the player who will be satisfied with the purchase, especially if he is looking for a game to play with a friend or girlfriend, having fun with a platformer that hides more than meets the eye and that does not live only in the shadow of the film. Recommended product for all gamers also due to the reduced price of a few tens of euros already from the release of the title.