• As space hero Buzz Lightyear, you've got your hands full. Your best buddy, Woody, has been kipped by a greedy toy collector and it's going to be an all-out race against time to save him..

Product description ------------------- As space hero Buzz Lightyear, you've got your hands full. Your best buddy, Woody, has been kipped by a greedy toy collector and it's going to be an all-out race against time to save him. .com ---- Film favorites Buzz Lightyear and Woody are back in action with their latest video game offering, Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 2. The cowboy Woody is in trouble in a game that closely follows the plot of the hit computer-animated flick. Although the game is obviously ed at luring fans of the movie of the same name, it does contain gameplay that will appeal to a wider audience. Toy Story 2 is not a perfect game, but it captures the playability and humor of the film, and also has movie-quality animations and graphics. Woody finds himself kipped by Al, the evil toy collector, and it's up to Buzz to save the day--with a little help from the other toys in owner Andy's room. Buzz must venture outside Andy's house and into the local neighborhood. Game environments include a perilous construction area, a toy barn, and a sky-rise apartment. Ultimately, Buzz will confront his arch nemesis, the Evil Emperor Zurg--but getting there is half the fun. During his journey, Buzz must collect missing parts for Mr. Potato Head. He also calls on his buddies Rex, Slinky Dog, and Hamm the piggy bank for helpful tips and directions. Controls are varied but can be confusing to master. Buzz can climb, do a "super foot stomp," fire his laser, and perform a Space Ranger spin attack to help him get through the various levels. All in all, though, this game's battle cry should be, "To mediocrity... and not much further." --Bill Hutchens Pros: * Better-than-average graphics * Includes movie clips that aren't available on the Nintendo 64 version Cons: * Probably too cute for serious gamers * Choppy control makes some levels frustrating P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Review ------ Within the first few minutes of the Disney/Pixar film Toy Story 2, you can already see how the game will follow suit. The movie's plot, while it has great pacing, is candidly segmented, and the action is mission based and rooted in specific geographical locations throughout the game - Andy's House, Al's Toy Barn, The Airport, and so on, just like in a game. The PlayStation title rearranges the order of the sequences a bit but essentially tells the same story, with the same colorific characters and the same amusing antics of search, rescue, crazy happenings, and - eventually - escape. Toy Story 2 is something like n-Space's Rugrats: Search for Reptar in that it has mission-based levels set off a hub, which, in both cases, is a house, and that it follows the film's scenarios to a T. Toy Story 2 is larger, with about 15 levels (three levels within five zones) you can play through them either as quickly and easily or as difficultly as you wish. By picking up all the items and solving all the puzzles, Toy Story 2 has a bit more complexity than Rugrats, which probably exists more in the "good for kids" category. Toy Story 2 wants to appeal to a broad range of gamers, not just kids, and this is obvious in its level design. In each of the levels, you have several objectives. You have puzzles to solve, tokens to collect, enemies to fight, and items to find - in addition to a boss fight at the end of zone. However, once you complete one objective, you have the option to move on, fight the boss, and work your way to the next zone. It's usually easy to acquire 50 tokens in a level, as they're scattered about the environment, often lending clues as to which obstacles you can jump on, and so forth. You can also pick up tokens from dead toys you've destroyed with your Buzz Lightyear laser. Eventually, you must go back and replay levels, if you haven't picked up all the goods, as you'll need a decent-sized stash of Pizza Planet tokens to advance toward the final stages. But as in any game, you learn certain skills as you progress that will make stages that had seemed difficult in the beginning much easier. Another big surprise comes in the graphics department; the PlayStation version looks surprisingly better than even the N64 version. With movie license games, it's easy to assume that the PlayStation/N64 trade-off, should both versions exist, will be graphics for the N64 and sound and FMV for the PlayStation. This is not the case. The PlayStation version actually has it all. Scenes from the movie advance the plot; the scenes appears before and after the game and between levels, and it actually looks a bit better than on the N64 - which has simplistic, underwhelming stills with rudimentary text that look that look almost like placeholders in lieu of the animated cutscenes you get with the PlayStation title. Otherwise, the environments are colorful, easy to get around, and fairly free of the depth-perception problems all too common in PlayStation games that involve jumping from one place to another. A really nice touch was Buzz's reflection being visible from inside his space helmet when you're in targeting or close-up mode. The cameras presented a bit of a problem, however. You could choose passive or active cameras, with either you in charge of the camera or the camera in charge of itself. You decide. What's good is that you can change between active and passive cameras on the fly during gameplay. You'll probably find yourself doing this quite often in the beginning. When the active camera is agreeable, it's suspiciously good. But then, seconds later, you'll find yourself cornered in an alley, pushing a box next to a chair that you must jump on to leap onto a scale that will in turn send you soaring into the air looking for the best place to land. This isn't fun with a camera whipping around you like a mosquito, yet you've too much going on to manage your camera while you navigate your jumps, grabs, and leaps. This becomes a problem far too often, dragging the game's overall score down a bit and keeping the graphics from a potentially higher visual score. It's certainly not the worst camera system out there, and you will get used to it and probably settle on the active camera at some point, cursing your way through the game. The camera proves the game to be yet another notch away from being a kid's game. For a movie with generous voice-over already in the can, you'd expect an overload of catch phrases and one-liners in the licensed game. This is not the case, and Crystal Dynamics could learn a thing or two for Gex from this one. It's a simple model: Less is more. The voices from the film are intact, but they're not out of hand, at least Buzz's voice isn't. It does get a bit annoying when Hamm whines, "Buzz, come 'ere" the entire time you're in his territory. And Sarge's pep talk gets old pretty fast. But for the most part, the catch phrases are few and far between - just enough to make it interesting without driving you to the brink. And the music? Toy Story music. 'Nuff said.--Lauren Fielder--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review See more ( javascript:void(0) )