If you've been anywhere near a channel that shows childrens TV programs recently, (or been to Disneyland Paris) you'll most likely have seen the adverts for Disney Universe, showing four little blue-faced men dressed up in suits that seem to resemble a load of Disney characters, and, well, not much else. From the adverts alone, Disney Universe is something of an enigma - but at the recent gaming convention, Gamescom in Germany, we got the chance to go hands-on, and find out for ourself what the game was like.
Your gang, in Disney Universe. Not sure what the giant fork's about, though.
In terms of a storyline, the tale behind Disney Universe goes something like this: in the context of the game, Disney Universe is a virtual world created for fans of Disney, and, as the lucky owner of a special behind-the-scenes pass, you've been enlisted to be one of the first people to try things out for yourself. Upon entering, however, you quickly discover that the world's been corrupted by a mischievous hacker, who's re-writing the various Disney stories.
Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the LEGO series of games (which is never a bad thing), Disney Universe lets up to four players team up, and "suit up", to make their way through levels based on a variety of different Disney and Disney/Pixar films, collecting shiny trinkets, solving puzzles and taking part in the odd punch-up. Like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, players can either work together to reach the end, picking up and carrying struggling players past the difficult parts, or they can turn it into a competitive race to the finish, attacking each other, and even throwing the other players off cliffs. Scattered through the levels are little Mickey-head-shaped coins to collect for... we're not really sure what reason - we imagine they can be spent on upgrades, new costumes and the like, but at the moment, it's not clear. They do manage to add a bit of competition to even the most co-operative of games, though, as, when taken together with the amount of bad guys you've defeated, and the amount of times you've died, they'll determine your ranking on the all-important podium at the end of the level - an award sought more highly than even Top Gear's reasonably priced car leaderboard. Sadly, as we found out, the amount of times you've died seems to matter a lot more than the amount of coins you pick up, as we were shamed into last place, thanks to our general uselessness at games. So, being the sporting types we are, we leapt up onto the top spot on the podium to shake the hand... or head, of Mike, beating him up, knocking him off the podium, and stealing his place reclaiming our rightful spot on the podium.
A question that often gets asked in families around the world is - who's your favourite Disney character? With any luck, it'll be (at least) one of the forty characters available for you to dress up as in Disney Universe, which range from oldies like the original crew of Mickey, Goofy and Donald, to the new breed of Stitch, Wall-E and Sully - with a few more unusual characters like TRON, Jack Sparrow and Tim Burton's Mad Hatter thrown in for good measure. Each character even comes wielding their own specific weapon, which can be upgraded as you play through - as an example, Pumba has a bug to bash people with, Stitch comes armed with an acoustic guitar, and TRON uses an identity disc (glowing blue frisbee thing).
Some people have been at that shrinking mushroom again...
There are a total of six different worlds for you to play through - we only know about The Lion King, Monsters Inc, Wall-E and Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland so far - and each world has nine different levels in it, making a total of fifty four levels just on the disc. There are also plans to release extra worlds and characters as downloadable content post-launch for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions - and with Disney's massive back catalogue, there's a potential for you to keep your Disney Universe game going for a long time.
We played two different levels during our time with the game, one from Monsters Inc and one from The Lion King. The Monster's Inc stage was set in what seemed to be the bedroom door storage area, with rails of doors flying past, ready to knock you off a platform if you timed your jump wrong, and was geared much more towards competitive play. For example, there was a bridge made of doors, straddling a bottomless chasm, which you needed to cross in order to make your way through the level - the only problem being, there was a big, glowing, attractive button, waiting for one of your mean-spirited so-called friends to push it, and send you falling to your doom. It's interesting to note that, unlike on the LEGO games, which now go into split-screen, on Disney Universe, you're all limited to one, meaning it's possible to accidentally drag your friends who're lagging behind off a cliff, which could make for some sneaky tactics for those players who really want to win... We actually prefer this way of doing things, but we're aware that some might not.
Watch out Stitch! Evil Nemo's behind you.
The Lion King stage was a little bit more sedate, with less of an emphasis on platforming skills. This time, you're working together to collect and plant some seeds, which - once watered with a water bomb - will grow into a bridge to let you cross over to the next part of the level. That doesn't mean there's any less opportunity to bully people though, as you can still pick up your friends and chuck them around.
Like the game, the controls are simple, with the A button jumping, X attacking and Y interacting with objects, while the Left Stick moves your character, and massive arrows show you where you should be heading next. At various points in the levels, enemies appear, and are able to interact with the environments, setting traps, building cannons and barricades as well moving key objects to try and hinder your progress - like hiding one of the scream power cells you need to power up a bridge in Monsters Inc. Therefore, it's a good idea to dispatch the baddies as soon as you can - and there are a variety of power-ups scattered around the levels, hidden inside blue and red cubes, which house good and bad power-ups respectively. These include things like a snowman, which lets you freeze enemies, a Medusa head which turns enemies to stone, shotguns, giant boxing gloves and something that temporarily turns you into a chicken.
Disney Universe was probably one of my favourite games we saw at Gamescom in Cologne a few weeks ago - I'm a sucker for cute and colourful LEGO-like co-operative collect and brawl-athons. And I have quite a few fond memories of a lot of Disney films. So at the moment, I'm looking forward to when Disney Universe blasts into stores on the 27th October this year - until then, here's a trailer featuring the world and characters based on one of my favourite Disney films of recent years, Wall-E:
Disney Universe is available on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii, as well as a download for the PC. We previewed the game on the Xbox 360.
