In a recent review of mine, I made a statement that goes as follows: a licensed game is only good if it does not try to re-enact a movie scene by scene, but rather uses the license for a completely standalone game. Transformers: War for Cybertron is the perfect example: it is a very good game and even though it has the Transformers license, it has nothing to do with the recent movies. Shrek: Forever After confirms this point even further, as it is based on the recent movie and is completely awful. Toy Story 3 falls firmly in the middle. As a game it does a lot of things right, most of it does not follow the movie plotline but the movie tie-in bits detract from the overall awesomeness that is the Toy Story universe. No doubt, however, that the game will still sell like hot cakes.

Andy is going to college, and all of his toys have been stuffed into boxes and long forgotten. So how do they keep themselves entertained? Simple, Hamm creates a board game that they can all play, while the rest of the gang tries to convince Andy to play with them all one last time.

Bored game or board game?

The game plays out on the gaming board that Hamm created. Part of the board is the storyline that follows our heroes as they attempt to get Andy to play with them one last time. The other part of the board is Woody’s Roundup, an open world set in the fictional world where Woody used to be the head honcho in town. If you get bored of either part of the map you can effortlessly switch to the other. If you need a bit of a break trying to defeat Emperor Zurg, you can switch to catching outlaws in town.

The story mode, which I assume follows the movie (I am yet to see the movie), feels a little slapped together, and even though the different levels are well thought out, they tend not to fit together all too well. You will face some very mundane tasks and a few very exciting bits, as you try to do some serious platform gaming.

A few of the missions involve the characters in their original toy world. Buzz in his galactic videogame, Woody in his Wild West frontier. Even within the same levels you will face highs and lows, both in presentation and gameplay. In one of the missions you are actually playing the Buzz Lightyear videogame. This varies from a very basic and annoying flying section, to an amazing asteroid crashing section, then back to a drab fortress level that feels like a rehash of the same prefabricated section over and over.

Each character has different skills and you can sometimes swap between them to accomplish certain tasks. For example, Buzz can use his jetpack to hover over longer distances than Woody, while Woody can use the string from his voice box to swing between platforms.

Lights, camera, fail!

Some of these platform games allow a free camera, while others have a fixed camera. The fixed camera always allows a great view of the action, yet when it switches to a free camera the camera can sometimes get stuck at weird angles where nothing is visible. This could be very confusing for younger players.

While the story mode will grab your attention for a relatively short time, the majority of the game will be spent in Woody’s Roundup. This open world, fashioned after Woody’s famous TV show, consists of a few areas where little mini-games will keep you occupied for hours. Starting off you simply have to expand the town by buying new buildings, choosing their colours and decorations and placing them in the town. These buildings all have different functions, like changing characters’ outfits or jailing some outlaws.

You can also purchase more toys and have them run around this world, either giving you more missions to complete or performing certain functions in the town. As you progress and unlock more toys, you also unlock new game modes. One of these is racing around the world on Bullseye’s back or in a toy car.

All around the world characters will give you small missions, normally involving collecting a certain amount of items, delivering an item, or simply changing something in the world, for example painting the jail. All of the tasks provide you with gold, which in turn can be used to purchase more toys and buildings.

That’s “Emperor Zurg” to you!

The sheer amount of characters in the game is frightening. If you have seen a toy in any of the three movies, chances are they will appear in the game. And the PS3 also has an exclusive by including the evil Emperor Zurg as a playable character! Now you can finally exact revenge on that pesky Buzz Lightyear!

Toy Story 3 is certainly aimed at the younger generation, but as is the case with its movie cousin, a lot of the humour and even the trickier gameplay will satisfy their parents equally. There is no co-op or competitive gameplay though, and this leaves a gap for parents who like playing games with their kids. Watching can be fun with little quips by the different characters and some situations being quite funny, but nothing beats a good co-op session.

The voice of reason

A major gripe for me with movie tie-ins is also the second rate actors employed to voice the games, as if they are apparently not as important as the movies. In Toy Story 3 the game falls in between the two extremes. Some of the voices, like Hamm and Rex, are all voiced by the original characters and deliver their lines with great aplomb. However, the two main characters, both in the game and the movies, are done by other actors. Woody and Buzz sound kind of familiar, but never close enough to know exactly who it is. Woody is ironically voiced by an actor named Jim Hanks, the younger brother of Tom Hanks who voiced Woody in the movies.

Toy Story 3 does a great job of pulling itself out of mediocrity by not trying to stick to the movies too closely. The free world level allows you to play at your own pace and with a lot of items to unlock promises to keep your kids (or you) entertained for hours. The story missions can vary from very entertaining to frustratingly repetitive, bringing the whole game down a bit. Overall though, this is certainly one of the best movie tie-in games in a very, very long time! Be sure to give this a try!

The good: Easy for beginners; challenging for veterans; open world has hours of fun.
The bad: Some iffy camera controls detract from a very good game.
The ugly: No co-op is a shame if you want to play it with your kids.

Purchase: