Following my battle against the groundsmen, I was told to use my Jedi’s agility to scale a large AT-AT. The goal? To destroy all four of its batteries before landing a finishing blow on its cockpit. Needless to say, the idea of climbing an AT-AT and taking it out from up close is something that every Star Wars fan has daydreamed about at least once. It’s a classic Jedi move, after all, and one that Disney Infinity 3.0 manages to capture with elegance.
That wasn’t the end of my demo, though, because it was designed to conclude with some air combat.
During this particular segment of the battle, my goal was to channel my inner Luke Skywalker in order to take out several nearby AT-ATs before they could cause any real damage. This was, expectedly, accomplished just as it was in the movie, by using the snowspeeder’s size and speed to tie a rope around the walker’s legs, thus restricting its movement and causing it to fall to its ‘death.’ It was badass and worked quite well control-wise, using a simple system that utilized arrows as indicators as to how close or far away I needed to be.
After failing the first time, I managed to get a grasp on the simple but accessible mechanics, and took out the next five AT-ATs without an issue.
Now, that was just one of the four demos I got to go hands-on with during my time at the Disney Infinity 3.0 booth. The second one was, as you may have guessed, the Starter Pack’s Twilight of the Republic play set.
What you’ll want to note about this Clone Wars play set is that it’s more lightsaber-based than its peer. That meant a much more grounded demo, wherein on-foot combat was the key to success. It wasn’t as memorable as the other play set ended up being, but it was still quite polished and enjoyable nonetheless, making the wait until fall even tougher.
I didn’t get to spend as much time with this particular set, though, and it wasn’t long before I was moved to another demo unit, where racing awaited me.
If you’re thinking back to the racing in the previous Disney Infinity games and cringing a bit, I completely understand, but you needn’t worry about Disney Infinity 3.0‘s car-based mode. In fact, what I saw and played was very impressive, marking a notable turnaround for the secondary mode. I actually had a lot of fun playing it.
Much like the rest of the game, racing has received a healthy coat of polish and feels a lot better than it ever did in the past. It’s fast, fluid, frenetic and a lot of fun, borrowing elements from popular kart racers like Mario Kart and Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. It’s not easy, either, as I actually had to battle with the AI for most of my race, and just eked out a victory prior to the finish line.
The weapons were fun to use, too, but not as memorable as I would’ve hoped. Then again, maybe I’ll find some favourites once I get more hands-on time with the mode, which must be purchased separately from the Starter Set itself.
Last but certainly not least, is a new mode called Villain Takeover (or Toy Box Takeover, depending on who you talk to).
Villain Takeover, or whatever you want to call it, is a scenario wherein The Incredibles‘ villainous Syndrome threatens world disaster. How so? Well, it seems that he’s gotten his hands on the Infinity Wand, which is what players use to create their own worlds and what he’s using to chaotically mesh them together with.
Somehow, despite being a villain himself, Vader was my playable character and a badass one at that. However, when I got to a boss battle against the pack’s evildoer, he ended up glitching in a way that prevented me from defeating him. It was disappointing, but being that this is an unfinished version of an unreleased game, I understood. After all, Disney Infinity wasn’t the only game to have experienced bugs and glitches during E3.
Bugs aside, demoing Disney Infinity 3.0 was an impressive and thoroughly entertaining E3 experience, and one that will stand out when I look back on the show in the future. That’s because not only is it exciting having so much Star Wars action to look forward to, but the game has received such a noticeable amount of care and polish that it now feels worthy of the A-tier label that we tend to attach to it.