In the wake of Disney Infinity being discontinued, the Mouse House has decided to try their hand at mobile gaming, and their first entry is a collaboration with PerBlue to create Disney Heroes: Battle Mode. A virus has infected the entire Disney continuity, depicted in the form of a futuristic city overrun by creepy Heartless-style villains and corrupted, dark versions of the massive company’s characters.
If that sounds like Disney making a meta-commentary on its massive global influence, you’d be mistaken. Rather, it’s a fun action RPG that also serves as a sly advertisement for the Incredibles and Wreck-It Ralph sequels coming to theaters this year.
You’d think Sora from Kingdom Hearts would jump at the chance to be in this game. Instead, it’s Ralph and his glitched partner Vanellope who act as our main protagonists. When they’re assaulted by these mysterious figures, characters from other franchises such as Frozone, the Incredibles, Jack Sparrow, Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde, Monsters Inc.’s Mike and Sulley, Buzz Lightyear and WALL-E team up with them to find out the source of the infestation.
Your job is to arrange groups of up to five fighters according to their power levels and abilities as they brawl through 90-second timed levels of three rounds, and activate their super abilities at the right moments. The first team who knocks out the other party is your winner.
Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl have their signature skills, while among other powers, Jack-Jack can spin towards his enemies in a Sonic-style dash. Frozone uses his ice blasts to paralyze bad guys, leaving me to wonder if or when Elsa could eventually be made an available character, given her popularity. Ralph, of course, uses his massive fists to pummel baddies. Judy uses her large bunny feet for heavy kicks, while Chief Bogo lays into opponents with a riot shield.
I selected Nick Wilde as my pre-registration character, and he turned out to be god-tier powerful. Not only can he use his “charming fox” skill to turn opponents to fight for your side, he simply throws his famous Pawpsicles at enemies- causing an unexpected amount of damage. This leads me to wonder, what deadly substances are those ice cream pops laced with?
The tranquil yak Yax uses his positive energy, along with his lack of hygiene, to overwhelm attackers (which results in hilarity any time a Yax kills a Nick). At one point, Finnick (who fights with the Jumbo Pop) siced his van after my party, which was certainly an out-of-character moment on his part.
Since it’s Disney, the visuals are of course a major highlight of this app. The various characters are nicely drawn and their animations are rather charming. Nick and Ralph’s respective death animations are pretty funny, and characters like Elastigirl will strike a heroic pose complete with a glowing light in the background. The various levels are well rendered with various Hidden Mickeys sprinkled throughout, and the game also features a variety of combat options outside the main campaign such as arena battles and trial fights.
If you want to get the max value out of this game, I don’t recommend spending blindly at all, because so many of these apps are designed to be money pits if you’re not careful. But if you’re a shameless Disney geek like me, I would suggest dropping maybe three dollars on at least VIP Level 3, as that unlocks a fast-forward option to make leveling up the characters much easier and quicker if you’re having trouble advancing through a level. Joining a guild will quickly increase the number of perks and options available to you, and the upgrades for your characters will come fast when you craft different items for them to equip.
If possible, it’s wiser to save your party’s special attacks until the third act of each stage. The difficulty increases as you progress through the game, however, so stronger enemies will likely force you to pick and choose which supers to unleash in certain acts. It’s best to keep heavy hitting characters like Mr. Incredible, Fix-It Felix and Wreck-It Ralph out in front while your Zootopia fighters use their support abilities, especially Yax’s healing power. You may want to keep Judy somewhere in the middle, while Nick can turn the tide of matches easily with long-ranged attacks.
This game is of course very young, not to mention a free download with tons of in-game currency for the launch, so maybe that’s why I’m being a little forgiving of how relatively thin it feels so far. More depth and variety in the combat would be nice, but the characters have been given enough features in this early phase for people to have plenty of fun with it.
As of now, it’s not an app to sit down and grind through for hours on end, more like a really cool mini-game if you’re a fan of the heroes’ respective films. Overall, I’ll recommend Disney Heroes: Battle Mode for fans of mobile RPGs and younger players. It’s not a super-complex experience, but there’s enough entertaining and challenging strategy to where you won’t regret having it on your phone.