Beyond Infinity: Disney Infinity 2.0's mechanical evolution
Disney Interactive Studios isn't content to stick with what works after the success of last year's figure-driven action game Disney Infinity. The studio will overhaul its gameplay mechanics in the upcoming Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes, improving on its established formula in several key areas.
The changes are necessary to accommodate 2.0's new playable cast. When Marvel Super Heroes launches later this year, players will have a wide variety of playstyles at their disposal as they take control of Spider-Man, Captain America, and other famous characters with distinctive movesets.
Disney Infinity 2.0's open-world gameplay is much more vertically oriented than last year's debut series entry. Skyscrapers tower over the player, giving them a daunting amount of ground to cover. The hub city where Spider-Man's missions take place is four times larger than the original Disney Infinity's largest playset, and missions are more plentiful and varied, offering interior areas and multi-objective story arcs.
Disney Infinity 2.0 equips players with an array of movement-oriented skills to help them traverse these expanded environments. A great deal of time was spent perfecting the controls for Spider-Man's rooftop swings, and other characters are able to hover and fly long distances in seconds. Like the original Disney Infinity, players also have the option of swapping to a melee-focused character like Iron Fist as missions shift their focus to brawling, and all characters are able to take advantage of flying cars found throughout the city if they need to travel quickly.
Characters also possess a number of attack moves in addition to their expanded traversal abilities. Attacks evolve over the course of an expansive skill tree, and players will learn new melee moves, ranged attacks, and combos as they defeat enemies and earn experience. Marvel superhero Nova, for instance, can level up to earn a dual-wield attack and a charge move that stuns enemies, suspending them helplessly in mid-air.
Disney Infinity's sandbox-styled Toy Box mode has been significantly overhauled as well, in response to player feedback. The mode's open-ended approach to gameplay left some players at a loss regarding where they should start in last year's game, and some of the more detail-oriented options only revealed themselves after hours of experimentation.
Toy Box mode in Disney Infinity 2.0 now offers auto-generating content, giving stumped players detailed, pre-made layouts that they can then edit and build upon. Disney Infinity 2.0's Toy Box can summon randomly-generated racetracks, towering treehouses, and gigantic city areas using unlocked components. Significantly, Toy Box mode can also auto-generate fully-fledged platforming levels, complete with traversal challenges and mini-missions.
Toy Box mode also offers pre-made pinball, racing, and item-collecting mission templates, in addition to tower defense challenges and dungeon-crawling adventures with editable game design components and progression. These levels can either be made from scratch or edited based on auto-generated content, letting players build and customize their own content faster than ever before. To demonstrate the depth and variety of content the expanded Toy Box mode offers, Disney Interactive has hired standout Disney Infinity community creators to build new Toy Box levels, and plans to release them as free downloadable content on a weekly basis.
While first-generation Disney Infinity toys and characters cannot be used in 2.0's Marvel-specific story mode, all series characters are compatible with the new Toy Box mode. Players can also use existing playsets and Power Discs to import content from the original Disney Infinity into 2.0. In addition to legacy content, players can unlock new Toy Box toys and level components through a freeform unlock system that replaces the original Disney Infinity's roulette-based unlocks.
Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes will hit store shelves later this year for the PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, and PS Vita.
