Toy Story 2: Buzz l'Éclair à la rescousse

Toy Story 2 not only had an incredible movie made in its name, but the game released alongside it was damn good too. Sure the graphics are blocky as heck but that's part of the gorgeous charm to games from that point in time during the 1990s.

This game is your standard Mario/Banjo-Kazooie/Rayman/Donkey Kong collect-a-thon games where you get tokens or power-ups that help you progress in the game. It's standard stuff yet the Toy Story settings and characters give it a nice polish and their own quirks add to the game's fun factor too.

And to think Traveller's Tales would go on to become a gaming titan with the likes of this, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and the onslaught of LEGO Games (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, MARVEL, JRR Tolkien's Legendarium, etc). It shows that art and form are always being refined whenever dedicated companies stick to their guns long enough.

Toy Story 2 is a solid game companion for a solid movie. Even over twenty years on that's still very much the case.

Okay, so before I explain the positives and negatives of this game, I will explain how the game works.

So you play as Buzz Lightyear, and there are 5 zones in this game, each zone has 3 levels, in the first 2 two levels of each zone, you have 5 objectives you have to do in order to earn a pizza planet token, such as finding 50 coins for Hamm, finding 5 missing items for a character, doing a racing mission (most of which have a time limit), solving a puzzle, and killing a mini boss, and the whole purpose of unlocking these tokens is to progress to the next level, and the third level in each zone is a boss fight, and those boss levels require a certain number of tokens in order to access them. There are 50 pizza planet tokens in total, however you only need 40 tokens to make it to the final level, there isn't really any point in collecting 50 tokens, because if you do, you will just be "rewarded" with a congratulations screen and then a scene from the movie. Rex appears in all levels (except for the third levels in each zone) where he gives you tips on what you need to do, and Mr. Potato Head appears in all the first levels in each zone, where he will unlock a gadget for you in exchange for finding a missing part of his body, and these gadgets will either help you with winning certain missions, or help you enter areas in levels that you can't get to by normal means, and there are 5 gadgets in total, such a force-field shield (used to protect you), the disc launcher (used to kill stronger enemies), rocket boots (that help you go faster), a grappling hook (used for reaching high areas), and hover boots (also used for reaching high areas). Each level (excluding the third levels in each zone) has a non-linear design, and it is a third-person platforming game. You will be mainly climbing up poles or ropes to get to areas, and there is also a lot of platform jumping. You will also be swinging on poles and holding onto zip-lines in order to get to areas. You are equipped with a laser with unlimited ammo (and if you hold down the button which makes Buzz shoot his laser long enough, a stronger yellow colored laser will come out), and you can use Buzz's wings to attack enemies (and if you hold down the button that makes buzz use his wings to attack enemies and then let go of the button, he will spin around for a few seconds making him deadlier towards the enemies). You can also pick up green laser upgrades, which gives you a stronger laser beam that makes enemies easier to kill, though it has ammo. You have 5 lives, and if you die, you will lose a life. You can pick up these green coins that have a picture of Buzz on them, and they will give you another life, and 9 lives are the maximum in this game, meaning that you can't collect more than 9 lives. There are floating batteries in this game, and if you collect them, your health bar will go higher. There are also floating little boxes in the game, and if you touch them, they will give you tips on what to do if you need help.

Okay, now that I have gotten all that out the way, I explain the positives and the negatives this game has, but starting with the positives.

Although the graphics look old by today's standards, for its time, they looked pretty good, and for an old-school game, they still look rather good. The controls are solid and well designed, the camera is also very functional, and the soundtrack is just great listen to, in fact i'd say it has one of the best soundtracks in video game history.

Now for the negatives, this game is dead easy. I understand this is meant to be a game for small children, but they could have at-least added some challenge. The enemies themselves are easy to avoid, and the only reason you will need to destroy them is because they carry coins that are part of your mission in giving hamm 50 coins in each level (as mentioned above) or if they get in your way (which isn't usually often), and the objectives are very simplistic and not all that challenging, especially the mini-bosses, who are complete push-overs that are easy to kill, easy to dodge, and they just aren't as deadly as they could have been. The racing objectives that have a time limit give you plenty of time to complete your missions before the time runs out, and the puzzle missions also tend to be very basic and don't require to much brainpower. The green laser upgrades and extra life pick ups are both major game-breakers. You can easily beat this game without dying.

Another flaw is lack of replay value. As mentioned above, the objectives are incredibly easy, but also once you've beaten them and earned all the pizza planet tokens, there just isn't much point returning to play those objectives.

Overall, this game is generally fun overall, but you may find yourself playing it just once.

Note that this is a review of the PlayStation Version.

Toy Story 2 was the first real video game that I played on my old Windows '98 and therefore will always have a place in my heart.

Today some unknown fate made me pop my PlayStation version of this game into my PS3 and it still has the same effect on my that it had eleven years ago.

Lets talk about the actual game now. The game starts as Al is stealing Woody and you take control of Buzz to go rescue him. While doing so you encounter obstacles through the various interesting stages. Starting out in Andy's House and going through his Yard, a construction site, an alley, Al's Toy Barn, Al's space barn, the ventilation system at Al's building, Al's suite, inside the Airport and ending at the outside of the Airport.

The controls were simple and easy to get used to. The X button jumps, the square button fires lasers, the circle button does a spinning attack, the L1 button aim's and R1 lets you check your stats.

A problem I had with the game was that you couldn't use the joystick, and this was a game released in 1999, well it could have just been the fact that I was playing on a PS3 but it still got annoying.

The graphics weren't anything special at the time, it was basically like every PS1 game released around that time. The music was fantastic though, it really fit the areas that each track was placed in and every area had a unique track.

To sum up, I love this game. It was amazing when I was only five years old and eleven years later, it still is.

9.8/10

I used to play it all the time as it came out but I had no theory on it seeing that I was only about 8 when it came out. I played it the other day and I enjoyed it. I never finished the game completely, I only got up to the Second Last level and I am one token left for the last level.

The background are good, the graphics are good but no way near as good as the Movie, and the gameplay is Surprisingly fun! I am 13 years old and i am not normally into kids sort of games, I basically only play Racing games, Sports or Gun games like Max Payne or GTA series.

Each level has 5 tokens to collect, you have to collect a certain amount of tokens to pass on to the next level and Save Woody! Great Game.

The gameplay is great, the soundtrack is great, the level design is amazing. As you are a toy, you have to traverse the levels in unique ways. Buzz also looks like a potato.