Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!

Release Date: November 17, 1999

"You can deathslide down washing lines and zap hovering robots..."

Remember “to infinity, and beyond!” from the first time round? Then you've probably too old to be part of Toy Story 2’s target audience - but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. In fact, like Pixar’s masterpiece of computer¬ generated cinema, there’s plenty in Toy Story 2 that’ll appeal to those who still think Star Wars starred Indiana Jones and not that bloke out of Trainspotting.

Only a year or so back the term ‘3D platformer’ was hardly fit to sit in The Big Videogames Dictionary alongside entries like ‘racing simulation’ and ‘beat ’em up.’ These so-called ‘3D’ games weren’t really anything of the sort as they failed to deliver the freedom to look and move wherever you liked. What Toy Story 2 shows, post-Ape Escape and Spyro, is just how far this kind of platform game has come. Taking control of suburban spaceman Buzz Lightyear you enter a seamless 3D world that stretches out in every direction. Chairs can be climbed, car bonnets can be bounced on, you can deathslide down washing lines and zap hovering robots in your mission to rescue your new best pal. Woody.

It’s the ease of getting about that really strikes you. There are very few of those ‘I should be able to do that!’ moments of seething frustration. Leap at a pole and you hang on, jump near enough a beam and you swing round it like some demented gymnast. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that the game itself is easy. Getting from A to B is one thing but finding out what to do and how to do it when you get there is another. Like all good platformers you’re forced to explore before you can collect useful items, and solve puzzles and defeat bosses before you get to visit the next level. While clues are passed on by the Toy Story cast (Hamm The Pig, Bo Peep) the game holds your hand much less than you might expect. You’ll exhaust yourself trying to out-race a toy car without bothering to ask and then discover that you’ll never win without your jet boots that must be earned on another level.

There’s no getting away from the fact that many of Toy Story 2s levels don’t feel that big. if you’ve just been flying in Spyro 2 or catapulting stones at dinosaurs in Ape Escape a spot of claustrophobia might set in. Yet compact as they are there’s plenty to do in each stage. Reach the construction yard and you will be asked to round up five little tikes, solve a paint-mixing puzzle, collect 50 coins, find five wrenches and defeat the jackhammer boss at the top of a tower of girders. Unlike old-style 3D platformers this is a game that is in no way vertically challenged. Leap your way past red hot rivets to the top of the scaffolding or shin up a tree and you’ll be greeted by a world-class view of the level laid out below you. It’s a vista marred by no fogging and precious little fading at the edges that doesn’t feel the need to hide its shortcomings under a veil of darkness. The first-person view used to aim Buzz’s laser confirms just how well constructed the levels are as you shoot down toy planes and blow the catches off cribs with a single burst of your light beam.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Toy Story 2 is how easy it is to forget that it’s a film license. Games of films are normally accomplished con-men who tempt you in with cinematic snippets and artfully rendered characters only to cheat you of a decent wodge of gameplay. Last year’s A Bugs Life is a case in point. Happily Toy Story 2 is no such Sindy in Barbie’s clothing - it’s a game that just happens to comes with film clips, not 40 minutes of the movie with. oh. a few game parts thrown in.

Cleverly, apart from framing the action, the t movie sequences are used r ' as rewards for collecting additional tokens on each level (our favourite was the clip of Buzz being fried by an evil alien).

What is disappointing f about Toy Story 2 is its desire to play things just a little too safe. Ape Escape and Spyro 2 manage to be totally kid-friendly while still introducing some genuinely original elements to the platform genre. Toy Story 2 can make no such claims - at times it feels like platforming by numbers as you run around collecting coins or fiddle about trying to line yourself up for a particularly tricky jump from a see-saw balanced half-way up a tree. Well thought out though it is, there’s a certain predictability to the gameplay that leaves room for cynical types to whine on about “What, more movie/toy cash-ins?!” and not actually bother getting involved in the fun. Which is a shame when an injection of originality at the planning stage could have made Toy Story 2 not just a good film license but an all together excellent 3D platformer.

It would be nice to think that Toy Story 2 marks some kind of turning point in the career of the film licensed game. It hints that those tinseltown players are finally sick of peddling pap and have decided to serve up real movie related entertainment instead no more games with the lifespan of your average clean nappy, no more levels that couldn’t challenge a sleepy toddler. Time for nipper minders to pop their corks in celebration then?

Maybe not. Toy Story 2 is, unfortunately, the kind of exception that goes to prove the rule. A title aimed at kids that doesn’t insult adults? A movie tie-in that’s a worthwhile game in its own right? We hear the flutter of pigs’ wings coming from the direction of that big blue moon. Enjoy it while you can.