Disneyland Adventures (Part 2)

I covered a lot of ground already, but I have a lot more to say than I thought, therefore I needed a Part 2. (Here's a link to Part 1.)

Let’s do this. 

Collect Me This, Collect Me That

Hook, Aurora, Ariel, Mowgli. Characters of
all origins and from very different worlds.

I’ve mentioned it already, but it bears repeating that this game is bursting at the seams with content. You can go on side-quests for collectibles; take pictures of everything that matters; get every costume; or go with the flow and do what the mascots ask you to do. And there’s a lot; you can gather quests easily by simply walking around and talking to the Disney heroes. At one point I had 17 concurrent quests. (And yes, the damn Golden Ticket bugged me about them all the time.) The quests are varied, ranging from “Talk to Character X” to “Take pictures for me” passing by “Buy this costume at the shop” and “Play attraction X”, and of course there's more I'm forgetting. 

However, more often than not, you’ll be sent on a collection quest where you have to gather, I dunno, three ropes or ten toffee apples or whatever. As much as I despise its interjections, I'll admit that the Golden Ticket's adventure trail comes in handy for those. Still, it’s bugging me how Disney characters will think of any excuse to send you on a quest to gather thirteen pangolins or twelve bats or whatever.

Seriously, look at this. Those are all things I was seeking at the same time at one point.

And since I took that screenshot, I accumulated
MORE collection quests.

Disneyland's Thousands of Secrets

But that’s not all. Throughout your journey on this neverending day at Disneyland, you’ll also be given magical items from time to time. The first is your trusty camera, which I’ve already discussed at length, but there are others, and since they are such an integral part of the “exploration” portion of the game, they all need their own paragraph. 

• 

  Please ignore the dancing trash cans.
  There's nothing whimsical to see here!
  ...It's TRASH CANS!

  The magic wand: You’re given an honest-to-Walt magic wand that can make items come to life. Why? Because, that’s why. It can interact with most objects around. Do you want to see parasols spinning on their own, trash cans dancing in place, manhole covers doing flips? No? Too bad, now you can. Playing with this item for long periods of time actually made me realize why this game needs so much memory and demands such long loading times: Dang near every single object has an animation that activates through an item in your inventory. It will even work on a few unique props in each area of the park! 
• The blaster: Given by Buzz, this thing has two functions. Like the wand, it can interact with objects, though in its case, all it can do is turn on any light fixtures for a few seconds. Its main use, however, is to play shooting games around the park; shoot at a target, and you’ll be taken to a mini-game. 
• The fishing rod: You’re given this thing by Stinky Pete (who is a good guy here for some reason, which feels weird). Can you fish out items? Yes in a rare few quests, otherwise you can only grab fishes. That’s it. Kind of extraneous. 

• 

  I still haven't figured out how to best work
  the controls to these mini-games. Something
  was lost from Kinect to PC.

  The conductor baton: An unofficial item (it’s not in your inventory) given by Prince Naveen, it allows the player character to enter music mini-games when they wave near playing bands around the park. Those mini-games were probably a lot easier to play with motion controls, as they were poorly adapted to mouse controls. I guess its limited use is why the baton isn’t registered in the inventory. 
• The megaphone: Given by Br’er Fox (a character I was surprised to see here alongside Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Bear, considering how badly the Disney company has tried to forget Song of the South). Much like the magic wand, it can interact with objects around, though not as many. Also like the wand, it will have an effect on a couple of unique props. It's also funny to see some mascots’ reaction to it… if they react at all. 

• 

  No? I can't even shoot water at them?
  Dang it.

  The spyglass: Given by Aladdin, this object makes visible the half-invisible treasure chests you could see around the park, but couldn’t interact with until you used this item on them. Doesn’t do much else. 
• The water squirter: Handed over by Donald Duck, this water gun with an unlimited tank will revive flowers and plants around the park. Aren’t sunflowers prettier when they’re open? And considering the sheer amount of plants in this open world, it’ll see use very frequently. I was disappointed to find out you can’t spray the mascots. I'd take any chance to be a jerk.

A different take on popping balloons.

All of these items will also see use in a couple quests each, so there was an attempt at justifying them, though their main use is to find Secrets. Activating all of the identical objects in an area will award the player with a “Secret”, and the game keeps track of the Secrets discovered. The park is huge, and some areas have a lot of elements that can be interacted with, sometimes in high numbers as well – in Toontown, there’s a total of 85 light fixtures to shoot at with the blaster. Good luck spotting of all of them.

And while the game keeps track of the secrets you find in an area, it doesn't have a screen to tell you the progress you've made on secrets you've started but not obtained yet. Keep guessing on your own, kid! Also, not all objects you can interact with emit colored auras to say “Hey, you can use an item on this thing”; the light fixtures don’t, as an example. Thankfully, after you've interacted with an item covered by an aura once, that aura will disappear and won't return.

All of these objects will drop coins when you interact with them. However, coming back after a loading screen will also reset the objects’ money drops and animation states. The sunflowers you opened will be shut again. The problem would be solved if each secret could be interacted with only once, no matter how often the world loads. An “If interacted once = keep final state, cannot repeat” switch for every object, perhaps.

Rides and Attractions, Oh My!

*Grumble grumble* I wanted the front row seat...

There’s another thing I forgot to mention so far: Rides and attractions. Rides can be found around the park and you’re encouraged to ride all of them. Well, all the ones that were made into the game – and even then, those that made it in aren’t worth it. It's also very sad to see so many places where there would be rides, and to which you're not allowed to go - the path is blocked. Attractions, however, are a whole other beast – those are mini-games arranged into story missions. Sometimes, a quest given by a park mascot will ask you to play through one or all of the missions in an attraction. 

"HEEEEEERE'S... BRUCEY!" Did this game for kids,
in a level based on Finding Nemo, just reference
The Shining through the shark named after
the animatronic from Jaws? ...Okay, I respect that.

Those events are based either on existing park rides (such as the Jungle Cruise), or events from Disney movies. As an example of the latter, in the first mission of the Alice in Wonderland attraction, your child character falls down the rabbit hole, then gets shrunk. In the second mission, the child, stuck in a sphere, becomes the ball during the croquet match on the Queen of Hearts’ gardens. It ends on Mission 3 with a dance-off against the Mad Hatter and the March Hare at their never-ending tea party. There is, again, a lot of variety here. You’ll even have the occasional boss fight (I remember, in particular, a fight against Captain Hook at the end of a Neverland-themed attraction). To my surprise, the missions are actually quite lengthy and can take a while to finish.

Okay, this fight was mostly quick-time events,
but I'll be honest, it was pretty fun to watch.

However, several missions will play one way: You’re flying around or floating or getting thrown and you move left, right (and sometimes up and down) to gather coins and avoid obstacles. This is most likely due to the original Kinect controls, where the kid could just move left/right (and maybe jump and duck) in front of their screen to control the character. 

Dance! Dance! It's a Disney character's favorite activity!

This isn’t the only instance of mini-games changing to accommodate the difference in controls between the Kinect and PC versions. Several mascots around the park have tasks where they ask the kid to strike a pose – this happens when taking pictures with mascots of course, but also in other instances. As a result, those tasks are frequently completed on their own, without the player on PC having to do anything. Some mini-game attractions also required the child to strike poses (such as the Tea Party dance-off), but the controls for that were replaced by quick-time events, which… yeah, I can’t think of something better. In short, we did lose a few things in the transfer from motion-control to buttons, but not much overall.

Why do I have a Weird Al song in
my head as I'm playing the Jungle
Cruise ride of Adventureland?

Although, to be honest, I almost forget about the attractions with everything there is to do around the park already. It says a lot about this game’s mass of content. By the way, each mission also has a lot of coins to gather, since those tend to impact the overall score of that mission; so when you finish a mission with 5 stars, it’s usually because you collected tens of thousands in coins throughout. Attractions also stack your cumulative score and give you extra pins in bronze, silver, gold and platinum colors for your overall performance in the whole attraction. 

And yeah, it’s made for children, but I promise that even good gamers will find a challenge in getting the platinum pin for any attraction – so imagine trying to get them for all 18 attractions! 

As a last point I am adding, note that this isn’t solely a single-player game; it’s actually possible to bring a friend and play through the park and the attractions as two players. It’s also implied to make the attractions a lot easier to beat, especially for high scores. And as a bonus, through Steam Remote Play, two kids can play without being in the same room! 

Final thoughts 

This game’s alright. It’s for kids, I know I’m technically not in the target demographic. But I’m also of the strong belief that you can’t just put anything in front of kids, since they’ll absorb what they watch and play, so it’s important to give them good media that carries good life lessons and morals. Or, in the case of video games, good stuff in general. And this is pretty fine on its own. 

Let me say it again, this game broke ground by being an open-world on the Kinect, an all-motion control interface. And yet, it all works. Or rather, since I haven’t tried the original version, I can say it (mostly) works on PC. It’s harmless enough, the child gets to interact with several famous characters of Disney’s history, there’s a large world to explore, thousands of secrets and interactions to have and loads of mini-games to partake in. It never ceases to amaze me just how much content this game has. Damn near everything will react to one or another of the items you add to your inventory, you can go on the rides, and the families wandering the park help make it feel like an actual park-going experience. With that said, so many things on the screen at once, all with their own animations, lead to atrociously long loading times.

Nope, still can't annoy the chipmunks.

Of course, I have critiques here and there, as I’ve laid out throughout these two parts: The sentiment of uncanny valley I get from the kid character interacting with mascots of various different styles. The game struggling to keep everything on the screen, which cause objects to beep in and out of existence, be they props or people. The Golden Ticket will remind the player of things they know and the quest they’re on, which may be tolerable at first but gets unpleasant fast; same goes for the shopkeepers commenting on every single item you purchase. The game keeps track of your progress on missions and collection quests, but doesn’t keep track of your progress on secrets in the eight areas of the park, which makes it really difficult to remember what you’ve done or what you have yet to do. While the attractions are fun, the majority of them will play one way: You move left and right to dodge obstacles, and stuff like that. The over-reliance on collection quests. Lastly, a lot of missions and quests involve posing, which is understandable per this game’s origins on Kinect, and on PC those are either done for you or swapped with button-mashing, quick-time event mini-games, which I feel is an okay trade. 

Add a little bit of magic to the world.

But that pales compared to all the great things it contains: The interactions you can have with all the mascots. The number of quests, be they the ones given to you by mascots or the ones you take on your own, like gathering all of the autographs or finding all of the hidden Mickeys. Playing the attractions can be great, and there is a genuine challenge in getting the gold and platinum pins for all of them. And not only are there secrets to find everywhere, there are mini-games everywhere as well, even in the open world – the conductor baton’s musical mini-games and the shooting galleries triggered by Buzz’s blaster come to mind. I wished there was also a fishing mini-game in places, it would have justified the fishing rod a lot more. 

I’m very happy I played this game. Even as an adult, I felt invested. Kids will love it, absolutely. Adults might enjoy it, as well, although it’s pretty obvious they’re not the target market. Harmless, cute and fun, that’s just what I felt I needed lately. If you do as well, it could be a game to check out. 

Next week: Hopefully something else! In the meantime... well, I'm still stuck at home without work for two more weeks. I might binge-watch some Disney movies, this game has put me in the mood.