Since the play set is situated among a bunch of islands, it includes ships. Your ship can be decorated with kits to change the beat-up vessel into anything, including a Royal Navy ship, one of Sao Feng’s ships, or a mock version of the ghostly pirate ships from the films. You can outfit the ship with different cannon types, including flamethrower and triple-barrel ones. This is important during ship combat, where you can pilot the ship and use the charged cannon barrage or man a cannon for manual firing.
This portion of the play set is the most engaging because the combat is very entertaining. Its fun to try to outmanoeuvre the opposing ships, and the game is constantly spawning ships for you to duel against while you traverse the seas.
The final included play set is The Incredibles, with Mr. Incredible. The game takes place after the movie; we catch up with the Incredible family as it’s rounded up some of the city’s major super villains. Syndrome suddenly returns to wreak havoc on the city and free his recently captured comrades. Your job is to establish a central command in the city and get all of the super villains back in jail.
Of all the play sets in the starter kit, this one most closely fits the standard open-world template. Mission givers are located throughout the city and in the central headquarters. Missions vary greatly between putting out fires, protecting people and objects, and returning people and things to their proper places. The cities are sizeable enough, and you have a variety of vehicles for transport if you’re tired of walking. What really sets this apart from the other play sets is the emphasis on combat. You can open up a training facility, which lets you know the various moves you can perform.
It is this freedom and constant combat that makes this as engaging as Pirates of the Caribbean. The use of vehicles makes the city feel bigger than it really is, and it provides the player several ways to approach the missions. You also don’t have too many moments in the city where nothing is happening. Enemies always come in, and you’ll never know if they want to brawl or set buildings on fire, so you must stay on your toes. There’s always something to do that’ll keep you busy, and the persistent activity makes it perfect for players who hate lulls in their gameplay.
There are a few issues with the gameplay in the various play sets. The game lets you complete some missions before receiving them from a non-playable character, but not all the time. You might complete a few tasks before meeting up with the right person, but they won’t register as complete until you go to the required location or redo the task. Some side-quests reset without warning, allowing you the chance to complete them again. This is a great way to get some fast cash and level up, but it makes it difficult to know what you’ve finished, and it’s a little disheartening to see your hard work reset. Some missions have poor navigation markers, but that didn’t happen too often.
If there is one grave mistake in the Play Sets mode, it’s the co-op. The game refuses to mix characters and forces players to pick characters that belong to that specific play set. Playing in the Monsters University play set, for example, means you can only use the Randall, Mike and Sulley figures. This also means that you must buy figures to complement the play sets in the starter pack if you intend to play co-op.
That mistake is easily rectified in Toy Box, the other major mode, where toys from different properties can play and interact. The game becomes a sandbox since you’re given a blank space to build anything, including gladiator arenas, obstacle courses, race courses, soccer fields and short platforming sections. You can even build monuments or re-create specific scenes from other popular media. The only real limitation is the system memory, which is referenced by a meter at the side, and the amount of objects obtained from various play sets and vault spins.
The mode works very well and is intuitive, even if you don’t bother with the building tutorials. Navigating between building and testing modes is a snap, and you can use the equipped magic wand to delete objects or change their colour, placement or texture. Changing elevations is handled with the d-pad, and object rotation is easy. One thing you can’t do, though, is change object sizes. You have the option of downloading any of the Disney-created levels, which include a re-creation of Disneyland, the Jungle Cruise, and an imagining of Beggar’s Canyon with a Tron vehicle in place of a Star Wars one.
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