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Toy Story Mania!
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Graphics & Sound:
While it's been many years since Woody, Buzz and the rest of Andy's toys have seen the big screen (well, not counting the current screening of the two movies in 3D, that is), a new Toy Story movie is on the horizon, and Disney has a fairly new attraction featuring the entire game in a series of midway-style games, and it is that attraction that Toy Story Mania! is based on.
Given the lower graphical capabilities of the Wii when compared to other current-generation systems, it's not surprising to say that Toy Story Mania! would look better on the PS3 or Xbox 360, but what this game puts out is pretty good, all things considered. The character models are dead on, and besides some slightly jagged edges on the characters themselves, you can't really ask for more.
Audio is also top notch. It sounds like pretty much every one of the original voice actors have reprised their roles for this game, and if anyone has been left out, then the replacement actor has done a great job of mimicking the original's work. Everyone from Buzz, Woody, Bo Peep, Rex and Hammy all sound just like they did almost 15 years ago when the first Toy Story movie hit theaters. Outside of the voicework, the sound effects really do a solid job of setting the feel of the game. Everything from beeps and bings surround your gameplay experience as if you were really at a midway arcade. |
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Gameplay:
Toy Story Mania! is a collection of midway arcade-themed mini-games that all take place in Andy's room. Each game fits into one of five themes: Animal, Tea Party, Space, Western and Army. But the games within each theme can range from shooting and ring toss galleries to Skeeball and even Pinball, though I have to say, most of the games involve shooting of some sort (either darts, balls, rings or suction cup arrows).
The game's Story Mode starts you off having you play through every mini-game in a preset order, and once you've progressed past each of the games (by completing some number of objectives set at the beginning of the mini-game), you can then unlock areas specific to each theme. Each mini-game will have several objectives, and it is the number of objectives you complete in a particular game that lets you progress to the next mini-game or even possibly unlock the mini-game to be used in other modes. For instance, in "Army Men Shooting Camp," the objectives are "Earn 20,000 Pts", "Break the Airplane's Gold Plate", "Sink 4 Submarines", "Break 4 Plates On The Hill" and "Find the Hidden Bunker." If you get two of the five objectives, you will be allowed to progress to the next mini-game, but if you manage to get all five, then that mini-game will be unlocked in the Free Play Mode so that you can play it either by itself or in a combination of mini-games of your choosing.
And quite frankly, its in Free Play Mode is where the game really shines. Sure Story is where you experience all of the mini-games for the first time, but Free Play gives you a few interesting options. In Quick Play, you can play any one game that you've unlocked instead of stringing several together like the other two Free Play options let you do. The Play All option is a way to just put on a long string over every available game for a marathon of Toy Story Mania! fun, while the Build feature lets you take unlocked games and place them in any order you want to create your own gauntlet of midway fun.
The other Main Menu option is Prizes. Here, you use tickets you earn by playing the other games to either buy pages and stickers for a sticker book, or buy midway games that you don't complete all of the objectives for so you can use them in Free Play Mode. Besides the fun of having several people crowded around your Wii playing these games, its the Prizes section that will encourage players to go back and play this game over and over again since this is the core of Toy Story Mania!'s reward system. Any young completist gamers out there are bound to be overcome with the desire to unlock all of the games, stickers and pages to the sticker book.
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Difficulty:
For the most part, Toy Story Mania! isn't a hard game. In order to progress to a new mini-game, all you have to do is achieve only a fraction of the total number of objectives in the match. This means that even if you can't do everything the game asks of you, you will still be able to move on and try your hand at another game without any real penalty. Because of this, shooting and ring-tossing games, while a lot of fun, don't take a whole lot of effort to actually pass. That being said, there are quite a few that are tough to beat completely and unlock in Free Play mode (without having to buy it outright). In fact, one of the earliest games, a space-based ring-toss, still has one objective left uncompleted in my save. But there is enough variety that after your initial play-through of all of the mini-games, you are bound to have several games unlocked. And even if you didn't, you can spend the tickets you've earned in those games to buy them and play them anyway.
So yes, Toy Story Mania! isn't all that hard of a game. You will be able to play through all of the mini-games in a couple of hours, but this game is geared more towards a multiplayer experience where four people use their Wii-motes to shoot targets, pop balloons, toss rings, ring bells or dance with Hammy. And when you introduce the other human players, it's all about beating their scores, not just the high scores preset in the game. |
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Game Mechanics:
Toy Story Mania! has some of the more inventive uses of the Wii-mote that I've seen in a long time. Not only are the standard point-and-click to shoot mechanics seen in many of the mini-games, but there are plenty of other game-types that add to the control-schemes as well. In a skeeball-styled game, you line up your shot with the Left and Right buttons on the D-pad and flick the controller just like tossing a ball down the shoot (it actually feels a lot like Wii Bowling). In another mini-game, you use the Wii-mote's tilt sensors to rock a maze back and forth trying to maneuver a ball around obstacles and holes in an attempt to make it to the end of the maze. When using a hammer to hit the bell at the top of a pole, you hold down (A) and shake the controller building up pressure, then you swing it down like a hammer to hit the big button. If you've timed everything right, the little green alien will go flying up the pole and hopefully all the way to the top. Like I said, there is quite a variety of control-schemes available in Toy Story Mania!, more so than most other mini-game titles out on the market. With the others, you might find one or two, maybe even three variations on a theme, but I was constantly amazed by the different ways the game had me using the controller.
Toy Story Mania! is a solid mini-game collection, and outshines most (if not all) similar games for the system, and considering how many companies have put out games like this, that is saying something. Plus, the Toy Story theme isn't just a license attached to some generic mini-game collection. The lovable characters are used throughout the experience, which should definitely please any Disney-fanatic out there.
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
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