If you take anything away from this review then please take this; Disney Universe is a whole lot of simple fun.
You jump from Disney created world to Disney created world, trying to defeat bad guys and liberate the worlds from evil. The worlds are broken up into Disney movie themes, such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Wall-E, Alice in Wonderland and The Lion King (just to name a few). Each world has its own flavor that corresponds with the movie it represents. For example, in the Pirates of the Caribbean stage, you have a port town overrun by bad guys, you get to battle a ship from shore and you get to take down an evil mermaid, so that you can collect her tears (actually, that sounds quite sad). There’s a nice variety of things to collect and do, such as challenges, that keep the levels interesting and good for replayability. Each theme level has three stages to it, as I stated above with Pirates, and they each bring their own clever variety to the theme. In other words, you won’t be repeating the same thing over and over again in each stage, which is a great thing.
The big draw for kids, the one huge motivating factor to play Disney Universe is the ability to win and collect costumes. Your blue dude/dudette is going to win boss fights and gain access to costumes. Costumes such as Goofy, TRON, Quorra and Wall-E are obtainable in the game. Each costume comes with its own unique weapon. For example, when I obtained the TRON costume it comes with disc attached to a stick, which is unique to that character. My daughters and son played this game to death simply to gain as many costumes as they possibly could. Item and costume gathering does have that LittleBigPlanet flavor to it, but maybe not quite the amount of depth that LBP has in that department. This is more for kids who love Club Penguin (also by Disney), which is an MMO of the same nature. Smaller challenges and contests gain players in Club Penguin the ability to purchase costumes, hats, wigs and whatnot to customize their character. Kids who like that game will have the same drive to collect these things through various challenges in Disney Universe. Outside of defeating bosses and completing challenges, gamers can also unlock goodies through collecting Mickey Mouse ears (like coins) throughout stages in the game. At the end of the stage, players can use these ears to purchase extra items to make their players unique, as well as purchasing new levels to play.
Going back to weapons, there are a variety of ways you can use your weapons, but ultimately the controls in the game are super simple. You slash with your weapon and you can do ground pounds as well. There’s nothing incredibly complicated about weapon usage in the game, which is fine because it’s made for kids. Things can get interesting, though, as you can gain power-ups throughout the levels to make the game a little bit more fun. In one level, you can obtain the Midas Touch, which allows you to turn enemies to gold. You can obtain the power of Medusa, which allows you to turn enemies to stone. You can even obtain a Pooh Bear power, which involves sporting a beehive on your head as you shoot honey. The power-ups last a short amount of time, but are nonetheless entertaining to use and watch.
Speaking of watching, the visuals for this game are overly cute. You have a lot of kid-friendly character models and environments that kids will latch onto without a second thought. The costumes represent the Disney characters quite well, and are detailed enough for people to recognize from afar. For example, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow comes with the infamous hat and dreadlocks that he sported in the film. It’s a cuter, spot on version of the character (like he could get any cuter — tee-hee). Each costume is like that and it has a little spice of playfulness in the designs.
As for the levels, the structures in the game are incredibly simple, as you’re not going to find any intricate details using the CryEngine here. The levels are a cross between any LEGO game and LittleBigPlanet. Details where there need to be details, but for the most part simple and fun. Very smooth textures that are detailed enough to get the idea across. For example, in the third stage of the Pirates of the Caribbean level, you see multi-level structures in the foreground and distant cliffs in the background. There is a canal of rippling water in the foreground as well that makes for a very adorable environment. There’s nothing too detailed, but there’s enough here to understand the location. Simply put, it’s very Disney when it comes to environment details. Of course, that just goes along with the young at heart motif of the game.
At the end of the day, there’s plenty to like about Disney Universe, but it may not be completely satisfying for an older audience. Since the release of LEGO everything and LittleBigPlanet, there’s little that Disney Universe can offer, outside of Disney costumes and stages, to make it outshine those titles. It’s not online and it doesn’t have that endless charm to it. It does have DLC coming in the near future from Disney, so it does have that going for it. On the flip side of that coin, this game is made for kids. Kids will absolutely eat this up. I had to wrangle the game away from my kids because I needed to review it. The game, while short in stature for us adults, will keep kids occupied well after all six original levels have ended. My oldest daughter must have replayed Pirates of the Caribbean in the game nearly six times. She enjoyed the complexity of the puzzles and the fact that you could hop in a duck boat and fire goofy balls of flame at enemies. It’s enough for her, and it will be enough for any kids in your household.
Check it out, especially if you have kids.