Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes Preview

How to play Disney Infinity the Marvel way!

 

At a special reveal event in Hollywood, Disney Interactive unveiled the next phase of their smash hit “toys to life” game Disney Infinity, introducing Marvel Super Heroes into the mix.  As soon as the house lights dimmed, a special transmission delivered by Samuel L. Jackson, reprising his role as Nick Fury, started talking about the "Infinity Initiative." He then kicked it to actor Clark Gregg, better known as Agent Coulson from both the Marvel films and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series. Clark then proceeded to introduce the president of Disney Interactive, Jimmy Pitaro.

Before getting into the details of the new game, Pitaro shared stats of the original game, noting that it has outsold competitors with more than $500 million in sales globally and 3 million starter packs sold across all platforms. More than 10 million free Toy Boxes have been downloaded, many created by the Disney Infinity community. The official name of "Disney Infinity 2.0" is Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes”—​and it looks huge! Some of the characters to be included in the new game will be The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Thor. A quick gameplay teaser also showed Spider-Man and villains M.O.D.O.K. and Loki.

Then Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment Joe Quesada took the stage to explain how involved Marvel has been in the development of Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, taking its tremendous comic book history and applying it to the new video game. Joining him was Marvel Comics writer Brian Michael Bendis to explain how he’s been tasked with making sure the video game will blend seamlessly with the rest of the Marvel Universe. They showed some character development images, revealing the evolution of the artwork, blending the Marvel style with that of Disney Infinity. Quesada called Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes “one of those evolutionary leaps” for the company into video games.

Just like the original figurines for Disney Infinity, the Marvel characters will arrive via physical figures that interact with the game, and it was teased that there are “over a dozen” more figures to come.  Disney Infinity players and especially their parents will be happy to hear that all the currently available figures, power discs, Infinity base (cough…Skylanders…cough), and Toy Boxes from the original Disney Infinity will be fully compatible with Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes.

More than 80 new power discs will be released as well, including new features such as team-ups where additional non-player characters (such as Iron Patriot and the Winter Soldier) will appear and help as well as provide alternate costumes. New vehicles will include the much-requested motorcycles, a pint-sized Helicarrier, and even Agent Coulson’s “Lola” from “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

The Starter Pack comes with three heroes plus an “Avengers” playset piece. In addition to the classic gameplay, there will be Toy Box Games added through new power discs for new gameplay modes, including tower defense and dungeon crawler options.

The “Avengers” play set will feature Marvel Manhattan, six times larger than the previous version’s largest play set (The Incredibles), and include recognizable locations from Marvel movies like Stark Tower. Gameplay is enhanced with more locomotion options for each superhero. There’s hover and forward flight modes, both featuring combat, plus a super jump feature and wall climbing for certain characters like The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man.

Combat is further enhanced with special moves for each character with new animations that match each character’s abilities. Black Widow is a melee character while Thor and Captain America are brawlers, while Hawkeye is a ranged character whose combat is of course focused on his bow. As you suspect, the Marvel cast have upgradeable abilities, particularly to Hawkeye’s bow, Cap’s shield, and Thor’s hammer.

The Toy Box mode in Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes has been altered with the addition of structured play. A new brush system allows easy creation of cities, race tracks, dungeons, and other widespread structures. New “builder” characters will help players build up worlds in the Toy Box automatically, though everything they create will be fully editable. Interiors are also added to Toy Box mode, enabling further customization of elaborate structures, both inside and out, filling them with props and decorations. New tower defense levels include Asgard from “Thor”. Dungeon crawler levels are automatically generated each time the power disc is placed on the Infinity base, allowing players to explore, scavenge, and battle through vast randomly created worlds, all within the Toy Box. Game creation within the Toy Box mode will be more robust and easier to use, allowing players to develop their own unique play modes.

There will be more user-generated content to come and Disney Interactive is beginning to hire expert Toy Box builders to work for them to develop even more downloadable content. In addition to all the Marvel goodies, it was revealed that more classic Disney characters are on the way for Disney Infinity 2.0 as well. Brief glimpses of Maleficent, Merida, and Stitch are seen in the presentation slides.

Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes will be released this Fall 2014, launching on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC, and the iTunes app store.