Disney Universe (PS3)
You would think that most games try to provide a quality game experience as their main draw, but the cooperative action game Disney Universe feels like it was designed with a different purpose. Rather than being the kind of game you’re expected to sit down and play for a while, Disney Universe seems more like it’s meant for situations like a birthday party for a bunch of kids. Set up the PS3 and four controllers and you can distract some children for a while, the familiar branding earning some attention but the shallow gameplay makes it easy for them to put the controller down without fussing when it’s time for other events at the party like gift opening. If you don’t need this game for that rather specific use case though, be prepared for disappointment as Disney Universe feels almost like it was made specifically to be repetitive.
The name Disney Universe actually refers to the game’s setting, a virtual theme park of sorts set up where people can log in, dress up as beloved Disney characters, and interact with spaces based on a few of Disney’s famous franchises. Before you ever get to see what this version of the game world is like though, it ends up corrupted by a malicious entity known as HEX who warps the robots meant to be harmless helpers into dangerous attackers. It’s up to one to four players to try and clear out HEX’s corrupt influence by going through the six Disney-themed worlds on offer and beat back the robots, some of which have taken on forms close to the main villains from the associated films. While mostly a set-up to explain why things have gone wrong in the virtual Disney wonderland, one interesting aspect about HEX is he’s always technically there, the intended guide for Disney Universe, VIC, actually swapping between his normal friendly self and the ruder chaotic virus on occasion, sometimes even in the middle of sentences. Most of the Disney worlds will count on your familiarity with the source films for any sort of cohesion and the only scenes you get are robots doing some slapstick comedy to kick off a new level that at least has a few decent ideas, but VIC and HEX can make even the load screens a little interesting as VIC provides a tip only for HEX to suggest a bad idea or curse you for trying to oppose him. Sometimes in a stage you clear a goal and VIC cheers for you, but other times HEX will instead sarcastically praise you, there at least a touch of personality to be found in a game world that can otherwise sometimes feel quiet and a bit empty.
The game features six worlds to explore, each one containing three larger levels made up of three segments each. When it comes to the movies these worlds are based on, Disney Universe does feel like it made some smart picks. There are worlds based on Aladdin and The Lion King, The Pirates of the Caribbean one is specifically focused on the then recent prequel film On Stranger Tides but still provides a pirate adventure, and the oddness of Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland also ensures the levels at least have some interesting visual theming. The odder choices though are WALL-E and Monsters Inc., not because either film is a poor choice, but because Monsters Inc. ends up being a lot of factory settings and an icy mountain while WALL-E’s trash filled world and space cruiser can sometimes feel more generic or outright drab and sterile compared to the strong set pieces found in worlds that leaned more fantastical. You do only start with one world unlocked and need to spend your gold to unlock others, this barrier not feeling too meaningful but it does keep you from more readily buying the costumes unless you do make sure to scrounge up cash often in the stages.
Six movies being represented might seem a little small for a supposed universe of Disney brands, but others show up by way of the costumes your little digital characters can dress up in. Many of these are certainly meant to be a bit goofy looking, and beyond the obviousness that is the Goofy costume looking silly, you also have ones like Timon the meerkat having a rather silly appearance thanks to his wall-eyed googly eyes and your own face peering through his wide open mouth. Many of the costumes do tie into the levels on offer, although if you want to play dressed as someone like Aladdin or Simba you’ll need to beat their world first with the initial offerings not being the greatest, and generally costume unlocks are going to be slow and some like the very similar looking and not exactly recognizable cast members of Tron: Legacy pollute the pool a bit.
The important element of the game and where its true failings start to show though is in the gameplay. While your costume of choice will impact the look of your weapon, all characters in Disney Universe wield a weapon that generally follows the idea of a stick they can wave around to batter enemies and break decorative objects. You do have special attacks like a jump slam and a rising slash and some enemies you can grab and twirl around with, but mostly the best way to fight in Disney Universe is just to hammer that attack button or repeatedly do the jump slam. One reason this holds true is that the enemy variety is severely lacking. Each world has its own version of the standard simple attack robot, a flying robot, and the tougher to take down brute, and while most worlds add a new big robot type like one that acts like a tiger and another that spins around a lot and you have to wait for it to stop, these new types mostly just take longer to slap around with a special move or two you need to flee from.
Disney Universe does include a few boss fights that usually see some of the more involved action in the game in general at least, the boss fight with Jafar’s snake form actually fairly involved while the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland has you solving a ball rolling puzzle repeatedly. More often than not though, a battle is going to be pretty empty and mindless and yet it can feel like sometimes a mundane enemy will instantly kill you with an unexceptional attack. This might be because your health displays in a subtle ring around your character’s feet so in the visual chaos it can sometimes not be clear how much damage you’re even taking, but if you die you just drop some gold that can even be picked up quickly on revival, not really incentivizing carefulness in many situations. There are power-ups to grab that can trivialize battles further as you can get things like temporary ice powers, a laser gun, or instant kill attacks, and they at least can speed up these repetitive and shallow battles so their presence is at least appreciated.
Most battles in Disney Universe kick off right after you completed an objective or walked into a new area, and sadly, the objectives in Disney Universe are constantly recycled and not always inventive. The game has a pretty strong focus on cannons and throwing bombs even in worlds you might not expect them to, The Lion King in particular oddly defined by them after you’ve already seen them enough in the more thematically appropriate Pirates of the Caribbean world. Both are used to blow up marked barriers or rocks and sometimes knock things into place, but even as levels start moving away from this heavy focus on explosives, you’ll easily see objective similarities between them. A lot of levels involve dragging an object to a spot to trigger something, items like a magic lamp and boot with a plant in it both basically just keys, although the actual keys are for treasure chests that contain stars to upgrade your costumes for what seems like only visual changes. Every section of a level has three collectibles to find, a suit upgrade star, and an arcade machine that presents a challenge, the arcade machine having a range of different formats but many are survival tests or power-up slaughter fests. Still, playing as a chicken and being asked to take out a range of enemies with a strict time limit is often better than the slow level exploration that tends to undermine new stage concepts by making sure the ones it has run into the ground like item dragging and cannons appear alongside them. Almost any other goal is just going to be a matter of time to complete it, even shooting gallery challenges allowing you to just keep going until you’ve eventually shot enough targets rather than having a real failure state.
Levels are littered with little golden Mickey Mouse symbols that serve as the game’s currency that you’ll need to look out for, many destructible objects and enemies dropping them but what you spend it on feels like poorly gated content. You unlock costumes by beating levels, but you’re actually unlocking the option to buy them, and every level needs to be played twice if you want both costumes available in the shop. Already it felt odd to gate off the worlds for a game clearly meant to be played casually by children who may want to dive into a favorite movie world first, but gold collection adds another task that is more rote than engaging to the level exploration. When even a seemingly exciting concept like outrunning a lava wave still allows you to slowly putter around scooping up the gold it does feel like Disney Universe hobbles itself for a reward system that could have been designed better. The multiplayer actually feels a bit hostile too, players able to harm each other and even earn power-ups for the explicit purpose of messing with your supposed co-op partners. This does give the game room for that birthday party hypothetical where little kids can just smack the other players around for some idle entertainment and it is technically the only point where multiplayer impacts things beyond speeding up the action, but it can also draw things out more with the actual fighting between players inevitably as basic and bland as fighting the robots.
THE VERDICT: Rather than the virtual amusement park its story positions it as, Disney Universe is actually a slog through worlds dressed up as famous films and yet still often reverts to the same objectives and battle types. The same goals that aren’t even hard to complete are thrown at the player and any that seem like they would have teeth are undermined by the game being designed to push you forward with no penalty for failure. Moments with creative set pieces are dragged down by still often giving way to the same boring tasks that weren’t hard or engaging when they first appeared, and with slow unlocks and a hostile design for multiplayer cooperation, it’s hard to see Disney Universe holding many player’s attention for the full six worlds.
And so, I give Disney Universe for PlayStation 3…
A TERRIBLE rating. Going back to the hypothetical of Disney Universe being a birthday party distraction, it can at least sit above something like pin the tail on the donkey but will probably lose out to the pinata. The pinata is at least rewarding, quick, and can be involved and a little tough. Disney Universe is often toothless, even the enemies who can hit you with a surprising quick kill invalidated by how easily you pop back in and can get back to smacking them around. They’re made more annoying by dragging objects away from where they belong too and if you ignore them they’ll build up cannons or spike traps to mess with you, so ignoring them isn’t even a valid option when you don’t want to do another stick swinging skirmish. Disney Universe does have some ideas on how to diversify, and your hopes may get up a bit when you see something like invisible floors that only appear when you have the right item with you or sections where you walk on the ceiling. Then you keep walking on the ceiling across multiple worlds or realize that the invisible floor item dragging is just another case of needing to ferry an item about. The boss battles are usually where the game can actually shine a touch, its concept reuse not dipping so low that it would repeat a battle style that is only really appropriate for one foe. Overall though, the game blends together into a haze of cannons, bombs, glorified keys, and gold collecting that need to be slogged through to get the costumes and levels that should have been provided from the get-go considering the young player base who probably want to see their favorite Disney content up front.
Disney Universe seems to be a part of an unfortunate formula that was popular with children’s games of the time, games like SpongeBob HeroPants using a similar formula of easily smacking about foes and doing basic platforming but with even less care. Disney Universe’s incredible repetition and general shallowness can sometimes be shaken off when it does deign to introduce a new concept before it grinds that one down too and the Disney movies it used sometimes inspire it to be a touch more creative. The fact you need to play through every level twice to get all the costumes does again make it feel less like the game was meant to be approached like a regular game, these unlockables coming as a matter of course if you have a bunch of kids popping in and out to play it rather than actually sitting down to see what it has to offer. Still, there are plenty of better ideas on how to keep a crowded kids’ party occupied, so don’t let the Disney branding fool you into a multiplayer game that feels like it’s meant more to distract than entertain.