Head to any games section in Tesco or Sainsbury's, and the odds are you'll see boxes and boxes of figures as far as the eye can see - Skylanders, LEGO Dimensions, even Nintendo's amiibos have all become a bit of a phenomenon in recent years, combining people's love of collecting with their love of games. Newcomer LEGO Dimensions may have blown the others out the water this Christmas if the sales charts are to be believed, but that doesn't mean you should discount the other brands just yet. While both Skylanders and LEGO Dimensions are slowing down now, in preparation for whatever comes next for each, Disney Infinity is still going strong - as this latest expansion pack shows.
Iron Man's really let himself go since Disney Infinity 2.0...
At a recent press event in London, we got to sit down with Marvel Battlegrounds, the latest Play Set expansion for the game, and one that marks a period of change for Disney Infinity in general. With no main series revision (i.e. Disney Infinity 4) coming this year, Disney Interactive have decided to fill the gap with more Play Sets and figures to keep things ticking over - and if Marvel Battlegrounds is anything to go by, they could be a bit more experimental, and use more characters than ever before.
Striking out with a load of firsts for a Disney Infinity Play Set, Marvel Battlegrounds is a four player (first!) beat 'em up (first!) set in the Marvel Universe. That's interesting enough in itself - but what's perhaps most significant is that Battlegrounds will let you use any and all of your Marvel figures. Whether they're Disney Infinity 2.0's Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, or a hero from the new range of Disney Infinity 3.0 Marvel figures, any and every Marvel figures will work in the new fighting game-inspired adventure. Each and every super hero has had a bit of an overhaul and their moves have been reworked and reimagined too, tweaking them to make the most of Battlegrounds new fast-paced beat 'em up gameplay.
Past Play Sets have tended towards a largely self-contained story mode that lasts a good 5 or 6 hours, maybe more if you want to find and do everything going - but not Marvel Battlegrounds, which tries to craft a shorter, but more replayable, story mode instead. Weighing in at around an hour or so long, Battlegrounds' story is very much like the arcade style story modes of Street Fighter or Dead or Alive, and splits the story - which sees Marvel villains Loki and Ultron teaming up and unleashing a load of robotic replicas of the Marvel Super Heroes on the world - over a number of beat 'em up stages. Depending on which character you play through as, the story will subtly change, encouraging you to take it on again using your other figures, while character-specific challenges test your skills outside of the story.
Hulkbuster vs Hulk - who will win?!
But the meat of Marvel Battlegrounds lies in it's multiplayer mode, and this is where we spent most of our hands on time. With support for up to four players locally, we squeezed ourselves onto a sofa with the producer and a PR and picked up a controller to begin the agonising decision of which character to play as first - Groot or Hulk. With a huge spread of Disney Infinity figures out before us, we could have gone for anyone from Spider Man and Thor to Rocket Raccoon and Iron Fist, but we have a bit of a weakness for the big, burly, smashy characters. Which you could undoubtedly tell by our penchant for pink, girly and all things cute.
So, Groot it was, and we kicked things off with a couple of rounds of the standard everyone-for-themselves, most-kills-wins mode, with a five minute time limit, as we strived to get to grips with things. Luckily, it's a lot easier than you'd think. Despite the action coming thick and fast, characters now have much simpler, more streamlined controls over your average Disney Infinity Play Set, with one button performing a standard three-strike combo, another picking your opponents up and throwing them, and the left trigger doing Groot's signature ground punch, which sends a tree trunk spiking up through the ground nearby to take our your opponents - a move that proved particularly deadly in multiplayer, given that it almost seems to 'home in' on the other players. Essentially, players simply duke it out in the tight, crowded arenas, whacking each other with their attacks (and whatever scenery you can lay your hands on), until their health reaches zero. Each of Battlegrounds' eight arenas, all themed after famous Marvel locales - such as Guardian's of the Galaxy's Knowhere, Thor's home land of Asgard, or Black Panther's territory in Wakanda - has it's own set of perils and traps to avoid too, whether it's a train that ploughs through the train yard at top speed, an electrocuted floor, or traps that freeze whomever has the misfortune to step on them. Adding to the chaos, any Marvel Power Discs you place on the Disney Infinity Base also drop into the stage as power ups and special attacks too. This even includes costume change discs, which have been reworked to give you shields and other such buffs instead.
Looks like Vision spent a bit too long out in the sun...
And if you're wondering how we got on - the answer is, shockingly well. Maybe it was a testament to the game's pick up and play appeal, or maybe it was because Groot's an overpowered tree-beast, but somehow, we managed to win - thanks in part to his overpowered ground punch attack, even if the second round as Hulk didn't go quite as fantastically, (we only came second).
Reminiscent of years gone by, where we crowded round the Dreamcast's Power Stone to settle arguments the good old fashioned way, Marvel Battlegrounds shows that local multiplayer isn't dead yet. How Disney approach their roster has changed too, and, even though the game comes bundled with just one figure, of Captain America in his new First Avenger guise, you won't be stuck playing such epic matches as Captain America versus Captain America versus Captain America versus Captain America, ad nauseum (although you can do that, if you want!). A new 'trial character' system means that, on a weekly-ish rotation, three or four other characters from the roster will be unlocked to play as, regardless of whether you own the actual figures, while 'character trial tokens' can be earned through play, letting you temporarily rent any other character from the list, for the duration of the match. It's a nice system that gives you the chance to try out all the characters before you decide to plump for the figures yourself, and lets you mix up your multiplayer sessions a bit more, going beyond your current stash of characters.
Next, we tried out one of Marvel Battlegrounds' more co-operative multiplayer modes - pairing up into teams of two versus two, the aim of the game was to stand in and defend a circular patch of floor, gaining points for every few seconds your team managed to stay inside the circle. Proving that a team of Star Lord and Groot are as unstoppable in Disney Infinity as they are in the Guardians of the Galaxy film, we totally whooped everyone, for a final score of 50-12. Our secret? Spamming Groot's ground punch meant no-one could get anywhere near the circle, and should they somehow manage to slip past, they'd be picked off by Star Lord's handgun. Our winning streak continued into the second round too, although the team of Hulk and Nick Fury didn't fare quite as well - or perhaps the PR and the producer simply got their team work in order.
Watch out for the big Disney Infinity buttons in stages - they trigger all kinds of traps and effects.
The final mode we got to test out eschewed teamwork once more, going back to every-super-hero-for-themselves instead. This time, one character, chosen at random, was earmarked as the 'Super Hero', with boosted stats and stronger attacks, and it's up to the remaining three players to take them out before they rack up too many kills themselves. Once more, we proved ourselves a formidable foe, this time playing as Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, who, along with not being a princess, used his speedy dual dagger attacks to deal so much damage in the 'Super Hero' state that our score was leagues ahead of everyone else's. Thor gave people a bit of a run for their money though, thanks to his ability to fly up out of harm's way and spam thunderbolts - thankfully, Disney have balanced the flying characters out a bit by only letting them hover for a short time before it needs to recharge, otherwise they'd be unstoppable.
As an add-on for Disney Infinity 3, Marvel Battlegrounds will be hitting pretty much every platform imaginable (Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Wii U) at the end of the month, on the 25th March, and we're hoping it paves the way for some more experimental Play Sets with much looser figure restrictions on them. All too often you buy a Stitch, Olaf or Jack Skellington, only to find they're only playable in the Toy Box component - being able to take them on a larger, Disney themed adventure would be the dream.
