I’ve had the opportunity to play both Disney Infinity 3.0 and Skylanders Superchargers now. Ideally I think one of these ridiculously expensive games would suck and you could ignore it in favor of the other, but they are both pretty great.
The new Star Wars characters and levels in Disney Infinity are awesome but I have not been able to play much of it. My boys just want to play the Toy Box mode so I’ve actually played very little of the new content. In Toy Box mode my 10 year old builds levels and sets up fun stuff for the 5 year old to do. They play it together and they are both playing the game they want. The older one just wants to build and the younger one just wants to make Darth Vader fight the bad guys from Tangled.
I tried asking my boys if they liked 3.0 better than 2.0 and Gabe just grunted at me. “uh huh, WAY better.” he said over his shoulder as he built a landing pad for Olaf to land the Slave 1.
I think I may have to wait until they are in bed to try and play the new story sets with my wife.
On the other hand, Skylanders Superchargers is a game I play with my younger son Noah exclusively. I’ve played a bit of all the Skylanders but this one is by far my favorite. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the new vehicles but they are really fun. I bought the starter set which came with a land vehicle and a couple Skylanders. There are some racing sections now which are a ton of fun but there are also vehicle exploration sections. The way they handled these zones is really smart too. You control the car in this section just like you would a Skylander. Pull the right trigger to give it gas and then the left analog stick moves the vehicle around like it was a character. Push up to move up, and down to go down. This allowed Noah to control the car like a pro! When a vehicle is in use, one player drives while the other mans the weapons. The easy controls and incredibly forgiving level design meant that Noah had a blast driving the car and I got to ride shotgun so to speak.
After the first level was over I immediately made an Amazon purchase. I was so impressed by the car gameplay that I had to buy two more vehicles. The boats and planes are just as good in my opinion with each one introducing it’s own unique gameplay. In previous Skylanders games you might have run into a zone that requires a Skylander of a particular element to open. Well now you see a new zone that’s all water and you need a submarine or another that’s up in the sky and you need a jet.
We had some traps from the previous Skylanders game and I was curious how they would get used in this new version. The new portal had a slot for the trap to fit but they don’t behave like they did in Trap Team obviously. Dropping one of your old traps into the slot now turns that trapped creature into a Skystone card that you can add to your collection. You already know my position on collectable cards.
Anyway, both games are great and these are probably the best versions of them to date. They both get played very differently at my house which is interesting. On Sunday morning I went out trying to find Lego Dimensions. The first store I went to looked like it had been looted. I saw nothing but empty pegs and one Xbox 360 starter set. The second store I went to had a decent selection left and I managed to pick up a PS4 starter set and the Portal expansion. I would love to tell you about this game but I did not get to play it at all.
Gabe had a friend over and the two of them played it for hours. What I saw looked awesome. I didn’t get to play it but two things I saw really stood out to me. First was just how much building happens while playing. I guess I assumed you would build this stuff and then play with it but that’s not really the case. The instruction booklets for the stuff you build are actually in game. One minute they are playing a rad looking Lego game and then the next time I looked there was a big instruction booklet on the screen and they were pawing through real bricks and building. I love this.
The other cool thing was how Lego Dimensions uses the portal for puzzles. You need to interact with this portal all the time. Puzzles and enemy attacks will make you move characters to different parts of the portal which has a bunch of distinct zones. I saw them playing the game and then quickly reach down to move a character on the portal to a new spot in order to avoid an attack or break out of a spell!
The sad reality is that all three of these games are cool. If you held a gun to my head and made me choose one I’d probably go with Disney Infinity just because I feel like Toy Box mode is so great and of course Star Wars. The amount of fun kids can have in there building their own games, playing with the different figures and downloading new community levels is insane. All of these games are crazy expensive but I feel like if you want to talk about “bang for the buck” Disney Infinity comes out on top. I think you could safely choose any of these games though and have a great time with your kids.
Or by yourself after they are in bed.
-Gabe out
