PSXEOne of the most popular animated movies of all times receives the sequel treatment. Yes that’s right, Toy Story is back, and it’s better than ever. based on the motion picture sequel, Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue, puts you into the shoes of Buzz Lightyear, who is on a Journey to rescue Woody. Woody has been kidnapped and it is all up to Buzz to save him.
Graphically Toy Story 2 does a great job of trying to look like the movie. The developer (Travelers Tales) does a great job at capturing the cartoon and transporting all of the cartoons environments and areas onto the Playstation. toy Story 2 also features some of the best looking FMV’s. They look almost as good the movie, seriously. I haven’t seen the full movie so I don’t know whether or not the FMV’s have been pulled out of the movie or they are exclusive to the PSX version. But I think they could be from the movie, because some of the clips look familiar from the trailer I once saw. So it is a 50/50 issue right now. Toy Story 2 also features very detailed characters and backgrounds, that make the game feel more like the movie. And also when we played the demo and then the full version we saw a huge graphical difference. It looks as if Travelers Tales wanted to push the PSX’s limits even further, and they succeeded.
Usually when a movie is translated into a game, the outcome is horrible. But that is not the case with Toy Story 2, Toy Story 2 is a game with great gameplay. And games like Ape Escape, 40 Winks and Spyro 2 should watch their backs. TS2 has 15 levels, from which feature 5 pizza planet tokens to be collected, weapons or gadgets to be found and more. The game is full 3D in 3rd person perspective, and the levels can be fully explored for more freedom. Basically Toy Story 2 isn’t terribly innovative but it still is a very amusing title, and it stands out among the other movie titles. Each level features tasks or mini games to be completed in order to receive a Pizza Planet Token, there are five tasks in each of the 15 levels. Don’t think that this will be an easy journey because Toy Story 2 will have 5 bosses and 15 mini bosses for you to defeat. But the game does support a lock on feature, which is pretty self explanatory. Also each stage features 1 puzzle and 1 race with RC.
During the FMV’s there is speech dialog. The speech dialogs quality of sound is great. Very very clear, no break up, and plus the game features some of the tunes that are from the movie. During gameplay you might hear Buzz Lightyear (played by Tim Allen) quote some of his phrases like “to infinity and beyond” or “I am Buzz Lightyear”. As usual the sound is never discussed that much because it is never very essential in a game, but overall Toy Story 2 has some great sound.
Since this is an adventure title, control is very important. The layout is fairly simple X is to jump, X twice is to double jump, Square is to shoot the laser, holing it charges the laser, holding O is to spin, and pressing it while in the air is to stomp, R1 is to lock on (manually) and to see the status, and L2 and R2 are to move the camera. Although Toy Story 2 is an adventure title in 3D, the camera movement is very good. It flows nicely and never leaving the sight of Buzz.
This is an adventure title that is longer than most others. It features 15 levels, with 5 tokens to be collected in each level, mini games, 15 mini bosses, 5 bosses, beautiful FMV’s, colorful areas, free movement, and so much more that my fingers can break from writing so much info. All in all Toy Story 2 is another great title courtesy of Travelers Tales and Activision.