Toy Story Mania

I have to confess, a few games were becoming a grind and I hadn’t had a completion for a while. Toy Story Mania was able to remedy that quite quickly though.

The game is basically a rail shooter that is advertised as being ‘Better with Kinect’ and I do not doubt this for a second. The pointer moves very slowly with a controller and I certainly felt that if I was armed with an actual gun (or variant), I would have been able to hit the targets a lot quicker.

That said, getting all of the achievements quickly did not present a problem with just a controller and due to the simple nature of the gameplay, it kept the glitches to a minimum which is something else to be grateful for.

Visually, it’s what you’d expect from a game set in the Toy Story Universe – everything looks like CGI cartoons except in 2D as the targets are cardboard cut-outs. There are five different shooting galleries to play in, each belonging to certain Toy Story characters.

Backing sound effects are typically awful to the point of wanting to turn it off. Having to listen to both Buzz and Woody give you time updates in exactly the same way become monotonous and makes you hate the sound of their voices. This is becoming more and more apparent with games – it’s like listening to the same CD over and over again. You used to love all the songs, but now the thought of listening to them makes you want to vomit. Toy Story Mania is a slight exception to that in that I wanted to vomit after only three hours of playing.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 49 Achievements

Generally speaking, each level has its own achievement where you have to do something specific and most of them can be cheesed. For example, the Bombs Away achievement for not hitting any bombs in Planetary Slash n’ Defense can be done by not slashing anything at all.

There is one level-specific achievement which could be slightly painful. The Crack Shot achievement requires you hit two targets at once by shooting another target into them and while I managed to get this on my first attempt (which doesn’t happen a lot, believe me.) I can see how luck can play a massive part in actually getting this one.

In addition to the level specific achievements, there are achievements relating to the power ups, mostly for scoring 20 hits while they are active.

There are two relating to avoiding and getting hit by pies and another pointless co-op one which can be done by plugging in a second controller and doing nothing with it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Toy Story Mania is a quick completion but it’s not really that fun. I can’t comment on the Kinect functionality, but hopefully it adds some replay value that is sadly lacking from playing it with a controller.