Disney on Deck: Disney Infinity 3.0 Gold
If you want a game that’s really representive of everything Disney, it’s hard to think of something that covers most everything under the company’s umbrella (pre-Fox acquisition anyways) than Disney Infinity. It’s a shame then, that it was the last gasp of Disney really trying to develop something significant in-house in the videogame space before they decided they’d just let this die after three successively improved editions and let other companies do the hard work of actually making games featuring Disney IP.
Support for all things Disney Infinity stopped in 2017. This makes collecting the physical things produced for this Toys-to-Life series a giant pain. The good news is if you have a PC, there are “Gold Editions” of each version of Disney Infinity that have everything in them digitally minus a few updates applied shortly before support was completely discontinued.
But the more surprising update post-mortem is that hey, at least 2 versions of Disney Infinity Gold are playable on Steam Deck, which wasn’t even released until 2022, several years after no one should have even bothered (and frankly it’s kind of a miracle these games just haven’t been pulled from Steam like has been the fate of many licensed games on digital storefronts).
Disney Infinity 3.0 specifically isn’t just playable, it’s “Steam Deck Verified” so that is the version I’ve chosen to check out. Probably someday in the future, I’ll check out 2.0 which is listed as “playable” but not “verified” and see if there’s much of a notable difference, but today we’ll just focus on the last release of the series.
I have played some of Disney Infinity 1.0 (if you are a longtime reader, for a little while I was actually doing a monthly column on my experiences in Disney Infinity and had intended to go through each game but honestly game releases started ramping up and the gameplay in 1.0 was not super engaging so after awhile I just dropped the feature not sure if I’d ever come back to it.
While this won’t be a full-on review of the game, and I’ve only played a few hours, you can very quickly tell the jump from 1.0 to 3.0 (I did skip 2.0 entirely for the time being so maybe the jump from 2.0 to 3.0 is more iterative). While Disney Infinity 3.0 has the same basic structure and style of previous releases, everything is just snappier, especially combat, which is probably thanks to Ninja Theory working on the game.
But this feature is about Steam Deck and how well games run on it. Because sure, the game is listed as “verified” but that often means the game has full controller support and runs at best as well as it runs on consoles, which often is still bad if the game is older or wasn’t a great game to begin with (see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland). So, is Disney Infinity 3.0 a good experience on your Steam Deck?
The answer is a resounding yes. Disney Infinity 3.0 Gold runs fantastically on your Steam Deck. Controls great, no hint of stutter or glitching, and the Toybox mode and curated content actually fits perfectly as something to play for quick sessions here and there, so I can confidently recommend it. My only caveat would be it’s not on sale right now and all the Disney Infinity games occasionally go on sale for 75% off so it’s probably worth holding off until you can get a significant discount.
There are other more modern things you can play to get a Disney fix like Kingdom Hearts III or Disney Dreamlight Valley, but Disney Infinity 3.0 is more freeform and the only one that also incorporates Marvel and Star Wars characters and rarely do these things mix in videogames, keeping Disney Infinity 3.0 the ultimate representation of all things Disney in a videogame form and an easy recommend for your Steam Deck.
That’s it for today, I will most likely have another entry coming up this weekend so see ya real soon!
