Toy Story 3 reviewed

 

I can remember seeing the first Toy Story movie in theaters.  It was supposed to change the way we looked at animated movies since it was made with a computer.  It did.  I still remember my mind being blown at the theaters and then watching it and re-watching it again and again when it was released on VHS.  I only stopped when my mom said it was ruining the tape.  Then the second Toy Story came out and I loved that too but I thought that was the end of series but little did I know what was in store in the coming years. It wasn't a movie that's equal to the first two but Toy Story 3 has plenty of charms.

After many years of being Andy's playthings, times have changed and Andy has grown up.  He's about to go to college and like all big boys, he hasn't played with his toys for years.  But his mom throws down the gavel and demands him to either put his old stuff in the trash, attic or college.  But due to some WACKY HIJINKS, they get put in Sunnyvale Day Care Center run by the adorable and strawberry-scented Lotso Hugging Bear, so it's like Heaven on Earth.  But Woody is all like "We're Andy's toy." and the rest are like "But he doesn't want us!" so Woody goes to find Andy and the rest stay.  Needless to say, things aren't what they appear to be which necissitates the return of Woody and a great escape from Sunnyvale.

The Toy Story movies have always been about letting go and accepting the fact that you can't be in control of everything forever.  The first movie was Woody not being Andy's toy anymore.  The second one was the fact that toys will get broken and replaced.  This one is about what happens when the kid grows up and you don't know what's going to happen. It's that fear of the future that leads to a depressing air to this.  It may be funny at times but even then it's really subdued and there isn't any laugh-out-loud moments.  But that's not to say that this is a bad thing since it fits the story really well.

The animation, however, tells a much different story.  It's bright and vibrant and alive making it a great feast for the eyes when they're not flowing with tears.  Each character is wonderfully animated in a way that's instantly familiar to anyone who has grown up with the series and still don't look out of place with today's animated movies.  It's a thin line that the animators crossed flawlessly.

The voice-acting is still top-notch.  All the returning actors like Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles and everyone else fit their characters like a glove.  It's like it's been eleven days since they last did Toy Story 2, not eleven years.  The new guys also acquit themselves admirably here.  But special note goes to Ned Beatty, the voice of Lotso Huggin' Bear.  He has that folksy, grandfather-like quality about him that lures you into a false sense of security until he shows his hand and reveals he's EVVILLLL!  And he still retains his folksy, pleasant talk barring a couple breakdowns.

This is just like spending good times with some very dear friends that you haven't seen in years.  The script isn't the best written and at times it can be a bit to cloying with the past & I think Lotso comeuppance was a bit too weak.  Despite that, it's still  a very good movie that only Pixar can do, they just did it better on the other movies.

8/10

Toy Story, the video game, reviewed

Hey boys and girls, it's story time about MOVIES I LOVED AS A KID!  In 1995, Toy Story was released to huge success.  When I saw it in theaters it blew my mind, both in story and the 3-D animation. It immediately became my favorite movie at that time and when it was released on VHS, I watched it so much that my mom told me I was going to wear out the tape if I kept watching it.  So when I found out that there was going to be a Toy Story video game, I asked for that for Christmas and I got it.  As a kid I played the heck out of it just because it was Toy Story and it was short enough that I could finish it during a fog delay at school.  So does it still hold up?  Let me put it this way, it was going to be on my Top 50 games list and after re-playing it it's no longer there.  So without further ado, let's dig into the SNES version of Toy Story.

So we have another situation where the plot of the game is the same as the plot to the movie.  I could just to tell you to watch the movie and be done with it but I won't and I never will.  In a world where toys come to life when no one is looking there is a house where a kid named Andy lives.  In Andy's room he has a whole mess of toys where it is led by Woody, a cowboy toy.  All is well until Andy's birthday where he gets a new toy, Buzz Lightyear.  He's much more advanced than Woody and everyone replaces him as their leader which makes Woody jealous.  Then some wacky hi-jinks happened with moving, vengeance and a psychotic kid named Sid, anymore told would be criminal. 

So when I pop this baby in through an emulator and started playing, my first reaction was "This game has not aged well at all.  I don't think this game has ever aged."  I mean the graphics are just horrible, they're lazy and fuzzy & are indicative of the hate Licensed Games get.  To the graphics credit, it is very well-animated and fluid but as good as the movie in the animation department is equal to how bad the game's graphics are.  Now I have said that the graphics are not what makes the game, it's how fun it is to play.  In that respect, it's not all that fun to play.  The difficulty is harder than The Lion King's which was decently hard.  Things bump into you from out of nowhere, the mercy invincibility time is pathetic and when you are at the levels where you have to drive RC, that car, the battery life goes down to fast and the controls are very slippery making RC very hard to control.  This game is just not that fun to actually play.

However, not everything about this is a failure.  There are some levels where it does get to be a bit fun to at least look at.  In one level, you're racing Buzz to re-establish your dominance to the toys there are jumping toy sharks trying to nip at your heels.  Were there sharks in the movie?  No.  Is there any logical reason for this to happen?  No.  Do I care?  No.  There's another level where you have to ride Rex, the dinosaur, to escape the toys wrath when you accidentally pushed Buzz out of the window.  That never happened in the movie since Rex also wanted to kill Woody for that but once again, who cares.  It's kinda awesome.  And the level before that, you can whip Mr. Potato Head's features off.  It's useless but it's still really funny to do that.

So all in all, this game is best viewed through the eyes of youth.  It does tell the story of Toy Story fairly well with some minor alterations.  Most of the set-pieces are recreated to a good degree, especially when Woody gets a hold on Buzz and uses his karate-chopping action to ward off Sid's creations.  The bad thing is that section is really glitchy and your chops don't connect half the time.  Also, this game does try in level designs with a couple ones where you control RC, one where you fly...I mean fall in style, and even a first-person level where you have to find some of those alien thingies in The Claw machine.  I don't want to hate this game since I do have fond memories playing it from years past and I like games that do try.  It just doesn't hold up now and I have a feeling it didn't hold up then either for a 23-year old.

5/10