Disney Infinity 3.0 - Rise Against The Empire Review

Disney Infinity 3.0 launched with a strong double of playsets with Twilight of the Republic and Inside Out, but now a month later we have gotten another fun playset in Rise Against The Empire, but is it as fun as the others?

Rise Against The Empire retells the story of the original trilogy, in a very short and sometimes odd way and while it does an admiral job of explaining the story, it does miss a lot that made those movies special. Due to the nature of Infinity and your ability to play as a range of characters, the game starts out with Luke, Leia, Han and Chewbacca escaping from Darth Vader and crashing on Tattooine, which is quite different from how the movie played out, from here players will experience a very fast past meet up with Obi-Wan Kenobi and the adventure begins in earnest. The issue with the story is that its telling something a lot of people know, it’s hard to enjoy when things not only play out a little differently, but when things never happen at all. Of course those who don’t know the story will enjoy it and there are moments of hilarity with one liners abound, the team have done a great job of taking a story beloved by many and making it work here.

Thankfully the gameplay is a lot of fun, no matter what task your undertaking, there is a lot to enjoy. When you first start up you will be running around the desert planet of Tattooine and experiencing all that it has to offer, Jabba’s Palace, Beggar’s Canyon and more, what this does is allow you to experience a variety of gameplay offerings. Exploring the base town, Mos Eisley you can interact with the people that live there, but also you can explore the town discovering hidden objects and more, to do this you need to become adept at platforming, which comes in very handy later on. One of the first missions you will get is from Biggs and he will task you with racing, to see how you go handling a speeder, this will take you out towards Beggar’s Canyon and the obstacles it contains, which will let you learn how to control the speeder more effectively. After that, the last element to learn is flying, this time in a T-16 Skyhopper where you will fly through Beggar’s Canyon, blasting swamp rats, something Luke alludes to in the movie.

Tattooine is such a fun place to explore, that when you hit outer space for the first time, it feels really empty in comparison. Even more so the Death Star is empty of things to do and places to explore, its perhaps the most restrictive section in the game, but it does present some fun platforming challenges. From there on you will go to Hoth and the forest moon of Endor and in between you will get to experience some flight sections, piloting AT-ST’s and more. Where Twilight of the Republic focused on combat more than anything else, Rise Against The Empire is more about letting you live out a range of experiences, that if you are anything like me, have probably wanted to do for a long time.

One of the most fun things for me was when I jumped behind the controls of the Falcon to avoid the asteroid field above the planet of Hoth, while that classic John Williams score played in the background. The entire experience was incredible, with the audio helping immensely, the sound of a blaster firing, or the engine noise of a Tie Fighter as it blasts past you are things that any Star Wars fan knows well and being able to live the experience is great fun. All the creatures and ships sound like you would hope they should, Tauntaun’s growl when you jump on them, probe droids constantly chatter and R2-D2 makes constant beeps and squeals as he does in the movies, from an audial point of view Rise Against The Empire is incredible, the voice actors even do a solid job of bringing the classic characters to life, if you are a fan, you will know the moment they speak that its not the actor from the movie, except for C3PO, but they all do such wonderful jobs its hard to complain, Han was a standout for me as the new lines he spoke, just worked.

From a visual standpoint, the game fits the Infinity style, which is a nice thing, but it also holds it back at points. Every main character is detailed greatly, but the secondary characters that help fill the towns and bases you explore are all bland in comparison, even the enemies are more detailed than that. The planets you can explore are wonderfully detailed, with hidden locations to be found on each, however the space around the planets not so much, sometimes there are Imperial Star Destroyers to be seen, which you can attack, but most of the time, they are devoid of anything to do. There were a few instances of my character taking longer to swap out when they were defeated, but outside of that the game ran smoothly.

Rise Against The Empire is a solid playset and is still a great step above the ones from 2.0, it offers players a wealth of experiences, even letting them build new objects and customize the denizens of the world. However as the story is severely modified from it source material fans might be upset that a section or two is not present, if you can overlook that though, the playset will grant you a wonderful time in a galaxy far, far away.