Toy Story 3 Review

12 Jul 2010 at 11:21:42 by James Chalmers
Systems used to review this title: (360)

Let's be honest, film-to-game adaptations don’t really have a storied history of being successes do they? You just have to look over the past couple of years to see the likes of the dire Terminator Salvation and the hugely disappointing Avatar: The Game to see that movies just don’t cut the mustard in video games form. Well everything is about to change with Toy Story 3.

Avalanche Software has managed to break the long running history of poor adaptations and created a wonderful fun adventure that not only can be enjoyed by children, but also the whole family.

Two modes are on offer after you play through a forced tutorial level that sees Woody fight off the evil Dr. Porkchop and his army of aliens while boarded on a high-speed train. This teaches you the basics of the game and with the game aimed at children the control system is simple yet effective.

Your character can dash, jump, throw, attack and action and these are all assigned to separate buttons and that is about it, throw in the odd special move for each character you play as in the story mode and it’s a breeze to pick up a play even for most novice of gamers.

To put it bluntly though, the story mode is so much of a breeze it’s an effortless affair. Allowing you to sporadically choose between taking control of Woody, Buzz and Jessie results in each level feeling fresh and with some stages requiring you to use all three to reach the goal you have to really think about your options for the platform elements to accomplish your objectives.

Each character comes with their own special abilities, Buzz can pick up one of the others and throw them to higher platforms, Woody can use his draw string to swing from outstretched ledges, while Jessie can land on the smallest of objects to scale up levels with ease.

With the film not being released in the UK until 19 July it’s tough to gauge how true to the film’s story the game is. However after asking one of my American contacts, who has already seen the film, about certain aspects of the story mode it seems like some of the levels are true to film while others have gone off on a tangent.

One of my particular favourites is set at Bonnie’s house. A magical toy fairy has come to life and using Woody you have to escape the house as the room slowly fills up with coffee. Later on in the level you have to power up a rocket ship using batteries that can be found after grinding magical rails around the course, fans of the Ratchet & Clank series will feel right at home doing this.

However it’s not enough to keep you entertained for long. Despite numerous deaths on some of the platform levels, mainly down to poor camera control, I managed to complete the story mode in less than ten hours. Younger children may find the platforming elements a little more challenging, but a progressive hint system using the R1 button starts by giving people tips on where they can go and then advances to telling people exactly how to do something. It can be a godsend if you are stuck on a certain element of the game but sometimes it just feels cheap being told exactly how to solve a puzzle.

The story mode is in theory an engaging affair but unfortunately it’s too short to give you any sense of accomplishment. If anything it’s over before it even began, thankfully the real winner for Toy Story 3 is the Toy Box mode.

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