Disney Infinity 3.0 Marvel Battlegrounds - Review
Disney Infinity is the game that has constantly given
players adventures they might not have ever expected and with 2.0 Marvel fans
got their very first taste of how Disney Infinity and Marvel would work
together. When Disney Infinity 3.0 released, it was very focused on Star Wars,
but we were told that Marvel content was still coming and now that it is here,
is it any good.
The simple answer is yes; the long answer is a little more
complex. Marvel Battlegrounds has three distinct gaming modes for players to
enjoy, there is a story mode, which takes players through a linear series of
battles, Versus mode, which as the name suggests is about battling against
friends, or foes and finally the Challenge mode, which offers up some very
specific challenges and provides special rewards. Each mode on their own are
all well done, but at its core Marvel Battlegrounds is pure fan service and it
shows.
The story mode is what most players are going to experience
first, while the length of the story mode is short, the advantage is there is
no filler on hand. Each chapter of the story tells a singular element and then
moves on, while that may seem bad, it allows for new characters and locations
to be presented to players, allowing players the chance to see more characters
in action. The story is pretty basic, Captain America and Rocket Raccoon are
responding to a call about disturbances in a train yard and Iron Man, flying in
his Hulkbuster suit notices and lands to help, Groot and Hulk then bust through
a train and initiate a fight, Hulk is taken elsewhere by Hulkbuster leaving
Captain America and Rocket Raccoon to fight Groot, once the battle is won, it
is revealed that Groot is a robot and that he is made from Vibranium, which
means a trip to Wakanda is in order, home of Black Panther.
The way the story introduces the characters is really well
done, no one single character just shows up for the sake of things, Ant-Man
appears because they need to inspect the tech the robots are created of,
Star-Lord as Nowhere is under attack from the villain behind the threat. All of
the Marvel characters that are available to purchase in shops, all make an appearance
in the game, with the only new addition being Maria Hill, who provides intel
throughout the story. While short, it is still a fun addition to the Infinity
line up and worthy of your time, for me the bulk of the fun came from the
challenges that were offered.
Each challenge has a required character to complete with, if
you want to unlock the reward linked to that challenge, so while you can
complete each challenge with any character you want, you will need to replay
them with the specified character if you want the goods. These can be character
costumes for use in Versus mode or something for the toy box, which can come in
handy if you want to create your own destructible levels. What can make the
challenges fun is that each has two power discs assigned to them, which will
appear in the battle at random times and if you collect them, you shall be able
to get some power up for yourself, or deal damage to the enemies, but be
warned, the same can happen for them, if they pick them up. The challenges are
all based around defeating a bad guy, but sometimes, you will have to play as
the bad guy, which can change the tone up a bit. Each Marvel character has
their own challenge, so unlocking everything will require you to have each
character in your collection. Where you won’t have to worry about that part
though, is the Versus mode.
In Versus, you unlock character to play as by scanning your
collection, this is a separate scan to the challenge mode, so you will need to
have them handy twice. Once you have scanned them, they will be selectable on
the character selection screen, should you not have all the characters, then
you will be able to use time trials of selected characters, which change daily,
allowing you to sample them, but there is also a third way, as you play through
challenges and the main story you will earn trial tokens, which you can use to
unlock a character for the length of the day’s play, granting you access to
characters you don’t own, so as long as you have those tokens, you can play as
all characters. In every other aspect of Disney Infinity, you need to have a
character on the base in order to play as a set character, that restriction has
been removed here, as long as the character has been unlocked previously, you
can select them, which is how you can do four player battles.
What game type you play within Versus mode is entirely up to
you, there is the standard fighting match, team battles, king of the hill and
more, each mode has different rules, so you will need to understand them, if
you want to win. What is consistent is each arena, most of them will be unlock
as you play through the story mode, the others from the challenges, but in each
case the arenas will be the same, from mode to mode, meaning that if you know
where the best place is to trigger an arena action is, you are better off. You
can also select up to six power discs to be used throughout the battles, if you
want to, you can place them on the portal if you want to provide yourself a
potential boost. When you select your characters here, some of them have
alternate costumes, if you unlocked them in the challenge mode, these don’t do
anything but offer a different look for the characters, basically, if the
character has a power disc costume, you can unlock it here.
The combat is also different here than it is in the rest of
Infinity, which will likely throw some people off at the beginning, sure while the
attacks and abilities are still present, none of the levelling that you have
done on your character has any impact to the fights, which gives all players
equal ground, at least when they start. Each mode will earn you xp, which you
can then give to any character you choose to, which means your hard work
playing with a level 20 character can help any lower level one boost up. Most
of the locations have an arena action, a large button that when depressed will
trigger an event that can cause damage to any player caught in its effect,
these can be something like turning on a rocket engine to calling in a ship to
attack multiple spaces. While the spaces will appear very basic at first
glance, you can actually cause a lot of destruction, changing things up, on the
Lunar Base, you can destroy the ground, sending all players plummeting down to a
lower level and on nowhere, you can literally remove the very safety of the
ground, making a much smaller space to fight on.
Sadly, there is a pretty big issue with the arenas, there
are a few spots where the characters can get stuck, where you should be able to
jump up to a higher level or walk past an obstacle, results in characters
getting stuck. Of course it’s not just my player character that it can happen
to, there are also AI driven characters that have gotten stuck, which in story
or challenge mode, did allow for some easy wins. As the arenas are the big
stars of the show, these issues should not be present, they don’t distract from
the fun if you don’t get stuck in them, but getting stuck does require the
breaking of the object to get free. The other issue that proved to be a
distraction was that Nick Fury is no longer voiced by Sam Jackson, something
that was true in the 2.0 playsets, the problem I have is that the voice is not
even the one used from the cartoons that are currently running, which brings in
a strangeness not found elsewhere. The existing characters all have new voice
work, provided by their original actors, which keeps the continuity running,
the animations when a character defeats another, helps sell that. Visually the game
does not look any better than the rest of Infinity, but it does get extra
points for the destructibility of its environments.
Marvel Battlegrounds is a welcome addition to the Disney
Infinity line up, it changes up core combat, keeping things fresh there, but it
also adds in an entirely new way to play the game. While it might be very short
on story based content, it does bring in all the existing Marvel characters
into the game in a way that makes sense. If this game mode became available for
all Disney Infinity characters, then the game could be unstoppable.
Luke Henderson
