Disney Universe is Fun For The Entire Family

11/25/2011 9:06:24 AM EST

More: disney universe, video games

The "Disney Universe" game, released last week, is a breath of fresh air in the video game world. It is so easy for kids to get caught up in more "adult" video games, since they are generally way cooler to play. Well, Disney has made this game family friendly as well as fun to play (even for grown ups).

The friendliness is key here: you don't pay a high price for losing a battle (you respawn right where you "died"), the action is easy and forgiving, and the levels are well enough designed so you can almost always see where you need to go and don't get camera-angle problems.

The worlds are all based on Disney properties and the team did a good job of distilling the movies into (simple) video-game terms. Nothing is scary or edgy and the game is large enough that, even though it's not hard, you'll get a good amount of play out of it. The combat is straight-forward and doesn't have a learning curve or frustrating special moves.

Personalizing characters is a big appeal for certain types of games (in fact, there are some titles that are almost entirely based on that) and Disney Universe hits on this. The game allows each player to dress up their characters in various Disney related clothing such as Captain Jack,Mickey, Donald, Goofy and more. Some "premium" clothing can even be purchased for your character.

This game, which is clearly geared towards children, is just as much fun for adults to play. It consists of six worlds - "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Monsters, Inc.", "Alice In Wonderland", "Aladdin", "The Lion King" and "Wall-E". There isn't really a "storyline" to the game; you pretty much just battle through all the levels at a non stop pace. I didn't find that battles too difficult, which makes it fun for me, since I am not a huge video gamer.

I want to note that the game's cooperative play is very well designed as well: having friends along makes everything easier and since a good portion of the audience is going to be playing with either friends or parents this is a very important feature. While the game doesn't set any records for technical innovation, it is top to bottom professionally designed and understands its target market and what it needs to do in order to satisfy them.

Overall, I really liked this game. Like I said, I don't play a lot of video games, so when I come across something that I can play with my nieces or nephews with out needing a tutorial, I jump on it. And, it honestly is a great, fun game!

Purchase your copy of Disney Unvierse for the Xbox 360, Playstatio3, or Nintendo Wii at Amazon.com

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