Hardware Geeks

Well, a few things actually, but we’ll get to the nitpicking later.  As far as the game goes, you’ll either love it or hate it as far as the actual content is concerned.

Based on the Toy Story Mania attraction at both Disneyland and Disney World, the game pretty much follows the same formula. You go through a set of shooting gallery themed stages (as well as other “carny” games) pointing your Wii at the screen and just wailing on either the A or B buttons to send your darts, water balloons, balls, etc. hurtling towards the targets. As far as it’s faithfulness to the original subject matter, it’s pretty spot on, with all of the different stages from the attraction represented in one way or another.

If you’re a big fan of the attraction, you’re gonna love the game. If you’re not or if you’ve never been to the attraction, then this will basically be standard Wii minigame fare, with Wii pointing, shooting, and waggling galore.

The game has a Story Mode and a Freeplay Mode, with games being unlocked in Freeplay mode after you’ve beaten all of the goals for each game, which is where my first gripe with the game comes from. A majority of the goals are no-brainers and will allow you to unlock the games in Freeplay with ease. Some other goals on the other hand require some work to figure out how to attain them. For example, in one of the screens, I was instructed to shake the bees out of a flower. I must have played through the screen 10 times without seeing a single flower with bees all over it.

It wasn’t until a much later time I realized I had to keep popping balloons on the rain clouds multiple times to get the rain to keep coming, make the flower bloom, and then shake the bees off. It would have been nice if I was told how to do this beforehand. Like I said, it’s a minor gripe, and one I wouldn’t have really cared about if I was able to unlock the board by just passing it and not having to beat every goal. This may be a point of frustration for some of the younger gamers playing this. On a side note, all the games are able to be purchased using tokens you win from the games, so you don’t necessarily have to beat all the goals to get them unlocked, you can just buy them. On to my second gripe, the glitchiness of the cross-hair. There would be times when I was playing that my cross-hair would inexplicably disappear while I was trying to aim at something. In most cases, this isn’t a problem because a majority of the games I’m just button mashing and throwing stuff everywhere with the hopes of hitting stuff.

But, again, there are some goals that require you to shoot specific things, and if I’m trying to aim at something and one second my cross-hair is there and the next it’s gone, then it gets to be a bit of a pain. Luckily, just because your cross-hair is gone doesn’t mean you lose the ability to shoot, so you can just wail on the button and hope to hit what you’re hitting. Third and final gripe, the “save” feature. So here I am, playing story mode, and I’m about halfway complete. It’s time for me to turn the Wii off, so I save my game and turn it off. So coming back later, I fire up the game and go looking where I load my profile or save game. Hmmmm, there is none. Oh well, I just enter my name and start story mode hoping to pick up where I left off. To my chagrin, I find myself starting at the beginning! It was after this, that I realized that saving the game doesn’t actually save my progress in the story mode, it just saves all the tokens and games I’ve unlocked for freeplay.

So that means, I have to start story mode all over again to get to the point I was at before and then continue on with my game. I wasn’t happy about that. In the end, the game is pretty enjoyable, if you can get past the annoyances I’ve touched on. You can unlock other games from the Prizes menu that weren’t even in the story mode, as well as actual 3D versions of some of the games that mimic the effect from the attraction (glasses required). There’s also a virtual sticker book which you can purchase different pages for, as well as stickers to post on those pages. Cute, but kind of a throwaway feature. There’s also 4 player multiplayer so you can grab some friends and enage in some crazy button mashing goodness. Overall, and because I’m a fan of the Disney Parks and the attraction itself, I’d give it a 7 out of 10. If you’re not a fan, I’d probably say 6.