The big draw of 3.0 was, really, Star Wars, and I hadn’t even really noticed Inside Out during its theatrical run.

Still, it happened to be in stock at a Redbox on a day when I was browsing for something to rent, so my wife and I watched it and liked it well enough, and then I wound up receiving the playset as a gift and figured I’d better give it a go.

Turns out, it’s probably one of the best implementations of the whole toys-to-life thing AND a solid platformer of the sort that used to come out alongside every kid-focused movie.  It’s also a fairly long playset by Disney Infinity standards and took me the best part of a Sunday to play through, though part of that came from exploring lots of side paths looking for collectibles and the like.  If I’d just held right the entire time, I could probably have burned through it much more quickly – but that seems rather a waste, because the game has a lot of really imaginative landscapes to run and jump through.

…mind you, there’s a particularly annoying gravity-flip mechanic that I could have done with less of, but moving along…

The toys-to-life schtick is handled interestingly.  All of the characters have a special ability – Anger can walk across lava without taking damage, Joy can jump and float for longer distances, Sadness can walk across clouds without falling through and so on.  If you have the two figures that come in the package, you’re going to be able to complete the story without too much difficulty.  I’d personally recommend getting a Sadness as well, just because her special ability trivializes some of the platforming bits, but you don’t NEED to buy all five characters.  I did anyway, because there were many very good Infinity sales over Easter week and I have poor self control, but do not use me as a role model.

Where having Sadness, Disgust, and Fear does come in handy is in opening optional paths and collecting random junk – so if that’s a motivator for you, you’ll need to shell out the extra money.

Of course, one natural reaction to quite liking what Disney did with Inside Out for Infinity is to wonder why they’re not following up with similar playsets for, oh, Zootopia, Frozen, Big Hero 6…

At least we’re getting one for Finding Dory?  Hopefully it will be as good.