By Ian Crump
Genre: Action
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Disney
Classification: 7 (PEGI)
Movie tie ins... Blah blah blah... Never very good... Blah blah blah.
We've been down this route what seems like a million times already, yet scarcely does a game ever break the chains of tradition. Toy Story 3 though is an exception to this age-old videogame rule.
From the moment the game loads up and players are presented with the familiar sounds of You’ve Got a Friend in Me- the music straight from the Toy Story films, the recognisable tones are comforting and familiar.
There’s a story mode that keeps true to the events of the film and provides a nice flowing game. But in despite of this, the star of the show and everybody's favourite toy is undoubtedly the Toy Box mode.
The Toy Box is a large, dusty and arid wild-west style open world that is largely customisable and a hive to many mini-games and missions. These missions range from anything like decorating toy buildings that you've previously erected, to dressing up your toy townsfolk in a particular way.
For carrying out these missions, you're rewarded with gold, which can be squandered on a selection of toys, ranging from cars to help get around, and buildings that serve various purposes. So as you progress through the game, the town becomes more populated with both structures and people, and it gains more character and colour as you decorate along the way.
The style of open-world gaming is like a child friendly version of Red Dead Redemption. Sure it’s often far too easy for adults, but it doesn’t ever stop it from being fun, intuitive and very well made.
There's just so much to do in Toy Story 3, that if variety really were the spice of life, the toys would have even more life than anybody could have imagined.
The amount of collectibles is impressive, and could easily be an obsessive collector’s heaven/nightmare – it takes a long while to find everything.
With the welcome added bonus of co-op play, there’s little reason why I would not recommend this to people with families. I’d even recommend it to people without – after all, a good movie tie is a rare spectacle.
SCORE: 8 / 10
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/trade_directory/