Everyone knows Buzz and Woody.
They’re the only names in animation that hold more clout (and have raked in more
cash) than Shrek. Created by Pixar’s talented writers, artists and animation
team – and completed by Disney, who ensured that the right voices were assigned
to this remarkable duo – Buzz and Woody are more than movie legends. One hundred
years from now, when most characters have been forgotten, the world will know
their names, and Mickey Mouse will be standing right beside them.
It’s that never-ending love that has
allowed Toy Story to enter Disney’s theme parks, not once but twice in the form
of midway-based attractions. It’s our undying appreciation for these characters
that allows Disney to re-release Toy Story 1 and 2 this October with 3D support
you can only get in theaters. (All things likely, its two-week run will net a
small fortune.)
It’s those same feelings – and our
inherent desire to watch Buzz, Woody, Ham, Rex and the gang live on through new
stories – that open the door for more than a third movie. Next year, Disney will
release a new video-game based on the third (and presumably final) Toy Story
picture.
But you won’t have to wait until
June 18, 2010 to go to infinity and beyond. In fact, you don’t even have to wait
until October 2 for the movie re-release. Right now, your favorite Toy Story
characters have found themselves trapped in a new video-game – Toy Story Mania!
Based on the theme park attraction of the same name, Toy Story Mania! is a
midway-inspired shooting game developed exclusively for Wii.
Toy Story Mania! differs from The
House of The Dead and other similar Wii shooters in that the game is not on
rails. Mania!’s playing field is a stagnant, single-screen environment where
targets appear all over the place. Therefore the player doesn’t move around the
environment at all, and the game doesn’t move for the player because it doesn’t
have to.
That little tidbit of info can tell
you a lot about Toy Story Mania! even before viewing a single screenshot before.
At arcades, this sort of experience was quite common in the ‘80s and ‘90s; when
Dave & Busters opened, they went a step further by including a real shooting
gallery that used light guns and moving props (lights, signs, dummies, etc.).
Game developers learned quickly that
not every 50-cent experience is worth a $50 game at home. Which will probably
make you think – or at the very least hope – that Toy Story Mania! has avoided
the obvious pitfalls and redefined the art of midway shooting. I, too, had those
hopes.
For a game that’s being hyped as a
family-friendly, all-ages-will-love-it Wii exclusive, Toy Story Mania! sure
sounded like it was on the right track. But what’s inside the game isn’t
much different from the stagnant shooter premise: playing as yourself
(basically), not a specific Toy Story character, you enter several worlds of
flat backdrops and cardboard cutouts. Visually, everything you see is
intentional; the developers wanted the game to feel very traditional. In that
regard, they succeeded. They should also be lauded for sticking closely to the
source material – while the voices don’t always match up (there are some
knock-offs here), the characters’ aesthetics are very well produced.
Graphics are the end of Toy Story
Mania!’s success. In the beginning, Buzz and Woody appear, each with a shield in
hand. They encourage the player to throw pies at them; mechanically, this means
you point the Wii remote at the screen and press the A button.
In a very short time, players will
visit stages where they’re throwing rings at rockets, planets, and the awesome
green aliens who are in awe of The Claw. Players will throw darts at balloons,
knowing that the number written on the front indicates how many points they’ll
acquire for making those balloons pop. They’ll throw balls in various hoops,
simulating – though by no means mirroring – the basketball games seen in
arcades. They’ll snatch plastic fish using a magnetic fishing line, break plates
that the toy soldiers are carrying, and shoot cardboard cows and other farm
animals in the name of raising their point total.
But not once will players be
consumed by this stagnant experience. Toy Story Mania! isn’t kind to the
player – it starts rehashing each mini-game right away. If you intend to play
through every section of the story mode (which is the only way you’ll ever earn
enough tickets to unlock all of the mini-games in freeplay mode), get
comfortable with the idea of re-playing mini-games you just finished.
That, sadly, is not the only time
that re-playing mini-games becomes an issue. Toy Story Mania! uses an auto-save
feature, but it doesn’t work very well. If you choose to bail on a mini-game in
the story mode, don’t count on picking up where you left off at a later time.
The game won’t allow it, despite the save icon appearing on the bottom left
corner of the screen after every mini-game is complete. In any other game,
that’d mean your current progress was saved. Here, it only seems to mean that
your points/tickets are saved. The rest goes out the window, which again leads
to a greater rehashing of mini-games that have already been rehashed.
Toy Story Mania! is also hurt by
technical problems that are initially minor but very intriguing. I am seriously
intrigued to know why the developers didn’t bother to label each section of the
story mode. I am also curious to know why the freeplay navigation menu is so
unclear. Most of all, I wonder why you can’t restart any of the mini-games. To
play them over, you have to either finish the current mini-game or lose. If you
pause the game and try to quit, the game will send you right back to the
beginning.
Just as you’re starting to get
really annoyed by the minor technical issues, the bigger, more significant
problems begin to appear. As a Wii shooter, it is vital that you can see your
on-screen targeting device at all times. Without it, you’re just a guy pointing
a remote at a screen – and no, remotes do not have the accuracy of an actual
gun, let alone a toy gun.
For the most part, Toy Story Mania!
gives you a targeting device. But for some unexplainable reason, there are a few
stages where the device disappears. It usually happens when there are targets in
the foreground and in the background at the same time; in technical terms, one
would have to imagine that the game industry should be able to get around this
seemingly minor issue. But Toy Story Mania! was unable to, thus leaving the
player with endless exasperation whenever the target disappears.
The real kicker, however, isn’t the
repetitive stages or technical issues – it’s the fact that you can win this game
every single time by repeatedly pressing the A button while pointing all
over the screen. This isn’t a strategy because, let’s face it, any such act
would be the shooter equivalent to button-mashing your way through an action
game.
There may be some kids out there who
are so amused by the Toy Story license that they don’t care about Toy Story
Mania’s! many problems – they merely enjoy the game for what it is. And if those
kids wake up Christmas morning and find this game under their trees, then I will
be very happy for them. But you know, I was a kid once too, and there was a year
when I asked for and received the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game (not
the arcade classic) and one of the Simpsons games for the NES. Both were
attractive because of their licenses, nothing more. Neither of them turned out
to be much fun; both were frustrating, had numerous technical issues, and were
two of the only NES games I never cared to finish.
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Gameplay: 5.0
Toy Story Mania’s! point-and-shoot gameplay is unforgivably repetitive. The
game tries to add value with other mini-game options (such as basketball), but
they’re just as weak as the shooting. If you were hoping the 3D stages could
save the day, don’t count on it; they’re the same as the other stages but with
red and blue color separation. It’s an old, highly flawed 3D tech never really
worked.
Graphics: 7.9
Graphical glitches aside, Toy Story Mania! is a solid recreation of its
respective movie characters and its popular theme park attraction.
Sound: 5.0
Only a few of the film’s actors are featured in the game; the rest are
knock-offs. That, however, is not as troubling as the weak dialogue or silly
one-liners that were thrown into Toy Story Mania! If Cars can get a clever and
funny storyline in a game (as it did a few years ago), why can’t Toy Story?
Also, despite the musical similarities between Toy Story Mania! and its movie
predecessors, the soundtrack is bland.
Difficulty: Easy
Jam the A button and move the remote aimlessly without a care in the world.
Concept: 5.0
Shooting galleries are nothing new to gaming, especially on Wii. Nintendo’s
latest system has had more than its share of on-rails shooters (like The House
of the Dead), stagnant-screen shooters (such as Chicken Shoot), and everything
in between.
Multiplayer: 5.0
The same repetitive gameplay spread across multiple players instead of just
one.
Overall: 5.0
This October, the world will indeed experience a case of Toy Story mania
when the first two films are re-released in theaters in 3D. But unless you’re a
collector of all things Pixar, Toy Story Mania! is not a game you’ll want to
own.
