Disney Infinity Chronicles: Avengers Assemble!
With the release of the first major game starring Marvel’s Avengers in many years that doesn’t bear the LEGO moniker coming up this week, I thought it might be a good idea to at least spend a few hours with the last time they were represented in video game form, which was Disney Infinity 2.0, which while it brought in some new core Disney/Pixar characters, the major addition was Marvel characters. This also represented a very important shift as previously, Sega had the license for Marvel video games and used it to make a bunch of terrible games based on the first round of Marvel movies. Now Disney had the licensing rights, but rather than make separate games, at this point they were pretty much all-in on Disney Infinity (which would lead to them eventually not making games in-house at all), so they included those characters in the next iteration.
It wasn’t just the addition of Marvel characters with Marvel adventures that were the only big additions though. Now, characters had skill trees that you could level up with, and while you couldn’t do something as wacky as have Donald Duck taking on Loki in the Avengers playset, there are pre-built toybox adventures that allow you to have Aladdin in the world of Brave, for example, so finally, that dream of having Disney characters in other Disney properties exists in some form without you having to do a ton of work in Toybox mode, which I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever engage with at the rate I’m going (at least not until I’ve really explored the pre-built stuff). Reportedly, the Toybox mode is actually much improved as well again I just haven’t had the drive/time to dive into that part yet.
So back to The Avengers Playset in Disney Infinity 2.0, honestly, in a lot of ways, it does share some big similarities with Square Enix’s upcoming game. The characters all have skill trees, they all feel super similar except the ones who can fly can get around way easier (and flying is really fun), and you repeat a bunch of tasks to gain levels and unlock mostly cosmetic items though occasionally you’ll get like a car or a sky-cycle all while collecting several different kinds of loot (which are sparks). It’s simpler, and with the Gold version on Steam you aren’t paying anything to unlock anything but in principle, a lot of it is the same.
I was having a pretty ok time until I had to actually fight Loki. I’m not sure if this is the first time you fight him in the set or there are other times yet and maybe I needed to level up more but I went through almost all my characters beating him. Not because he’s hard, he’s just incredibly cheap. He’ll split off into multiple versions of himself, only one of which is real, as well as spawning Frost Giants, and while you are busy fending off Frost Giants, Loki cheap shots you off-camera. It also takes an incredibly long amount of time for your character to get up when they are knocked down, and when you are finally back up Loki is totally capable of just knocking you down yet again. It is a massive exercise in frustration and while not enough to make me stop playing 2.0, I may go back to 1.0 for a while anyways because I still haven’t had time to dive too deep into that.
So, TLDR of my several hours with the Avengers in Disney Infinity 2.0: Great flight, lots of similarities to the upcoming Square Enix game in some ways for better or worse, Loki boss fight sucks. I’ve had a pretty busy time this month and with the new Avengers game looming I’m sure that will consume at least the next couple of weeks but I will definitely try and get some serious time in on some aspect of Disney Infinity whether it’s further exploring sets I’ve already dabbled in or trying out something new so I’ll have something more to write about next month. See ya real soon!
