The Toy Box mode in Toy Story 3 was surprisingly enjoyable and fairly well received, so Disney Interactive Studios opened it up to a wider range of Disney & Pixar franchises for Disney Infinity. I'm a massive Disney fan and yet, from what was demoed, Disney Infinity lacked lustre.

Perhaps it is because you were plonked into the Toy Box mode with no real objective, or perhaps because even the on-hand helpers didn't seem to really know what is expected of you either, but I found myself wandering through a big barren landscape looking for something to do.

Eventually I found a mission to try out and learnt how to place things on the landscape, but what was on offer wasn't particularly exciting (a few cars, fountains etc). Maybe once you play the game from the start these things will appear more organically like they did in Toy Story 3, but I found myself just placing things down because that's all I could find to do.

The mission I played, staring Mr. Incredible, was very basic yet oddly frustrating. You have to rescue characters that are trapped in domes. Simply bashing the dome enough times will free them, but meanwhile enemies are attacking you. Seeing as the attack command both hits the dome and the enemies, I found myself unintentionally alternating between hitting both. You have a time limit to rescue these characters, which increased every time you did, but there seemed to be no reason to complete this mission other than general do-goodery.

In the final version of Disney Infinity players can place NFC-based characters or play sets on a supplied surface, which opens up new characters and play sets within the game. Each play set is based on different film franchises (some of the ones confirmed so far include Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean and Toy Story), with the potential to expand in the future.

Disney Infinity comes with three figurines, and the Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure business model has been adopted here to sell more. Hopefully once you play the final game and have more figurines it becomes more engaging, because the demo we played was anything but.  Coupled with the frankly weak graphics, Disney Interactive Studios has a long way to go to convince this Disney fan that it's going to be worth it.  But perhaps I'm just too old for this game now.