Disney Infinity Chronicles: Hoverboard Blues

Hey all, this is more of an introduction to a new regular feature that will hopefully run for quite a while (though by it’s very nature, there is an endpoint of content) before I start regularly writing it.

I’ve talked about Disney Infinity before. Basically, if you like video games and are a Disney fan, you should probably own it. Granted if you don’t already own the game and a good chunk of figures it can be a hassle and consume a lot of time and money to play it on a console. However, if you have a decent PC, you can get the whole deal, all the versions, playsets and characters in one very reasonably priced digital package that also often goes on sale for under $20. Considering the insane amount of content you get, that is one hell of a steal.

I bought the package on one such sale, and while I played around with it some, I kind of had to put it aside for other things more pressing which including an additional writing gig I recently gave up. But I wanted to really deep dive into this game, see how everything plays, the ins and outs, what worked what doesn’t and how it evolved over time and definitely to turn that into content of some sort. A stream seemed like a natural idea, but honestly, my laptop and streaming software have been incredibly uncooperative the few times I’ve tried to stream this year so that idea never really got off the ground.

So instead, in order to play Disney Infinity on a regular basis and do the deep kind of dive I really wanted, I thought a regular monthly entry where I play it regularly and talk about my experiences would be a good idea. So going forward, this will be a regular once-a-month feature until essentially I run out of content or just get tired of playing Disney Infinity. I do honestly believe I will get tired of it before I fully run out of things to do, but I don’t feel I’ll get tired anytime soon so this feature could run for a couple of years at least.

So all in all since I have decided to really get on board with Disney Infinity being part of something I am regularly playing, I’ve logged about 6 or so hours, all in the Incredibles playset playing as Mr. Incredible himself. I do plan to stick with the 1.0 playsets and characters not necessarily until I’ve done everything but definitely until I have experienced a large chunk of what I can with each.

The combat is pretty simplistic but functional. The coolest thing thus far about the Incredibles playset is the “toys” you get that have more in common with a James Bond film than your typical superhero movie. You can unlock a glider, a couple of different cars with gadgets, and even a hoverboard!

I think most of us know the deal with hoverboards. It’s very clear that Disney Infinity takes most of their cues from how a hoverboard works directly from Back to the Future II in fact:

In concept, this is pretty cool and it is fun to just go around the city in on the hoverboard. However, there are a couple of big problems with how it works:

Firstly, you can’t do anything offensive while on the hoverboard, so anything to do with combat you have to get off the hoverboard and fight which while not a dealbreaker, is a bit of a pain, you should be able to like clothesline enemies or the hoverboard has missiles or lasers or something, it’s pretty high tech.

But the real problem, as evidenced by Marty in the clip above is that the hoverboard can’t really traverse water. This holds true for the hoverboard in Disney Infinity as well. Well ok, no problem, I’ll just not try to cross water with it, right? But ah fellow Disney fan, you should know I wouldn’t be bringing this up if the game, in fact, did not compel you to in fact still try to cross water with a device incapable of doing so!

Yes, you have a hoverboard incapable of crossing water, yet there are missions where you have to use it to get to islands. How does it expect you to do that? By a technicality. See, if you can get enough air while on your hoverboard, then touch a surface, you can keep going. But all this really leads to is a ton of frustrating attempts to try and get from one surface to the next while you’re just falling in water dozens of times. It’s not just a matter of it working properly; this is an abysmal design decision. Who thought this would be fun? It’s not rewarding on a challenge level at all, it’s just incredibly frustrating and makes me not want to even engage with any side quests that require it and I really hope there are not main quests that do (I have not run into that so far).

So anyways, this is where I am at with Disney Infinity thus far. Basically I will check back in with this next month, and have more to talk about. This and another regular feature I’ll be starting next week will help vary the content on this blog quite a bit and that way I won’t be relying too much on just say reviewing old games. That’s all for now, see ya real soon!