Disney Universe instantly seemed a game tailor-made with downloadable add-on content in mind. A mixture of the LEGO video games and Little Big Planet, the game let you team up with friends, jump into the costume of many of your favourite Disney and Pixar characters and go crazy smashing everything to bits in a fun, puzzle-filled land of imagination ripped straight from movie screens. But not every Disney world and character was included in the mix, with some notable omissions. Unsurprisingly, Disney Interactive have started slipping DLC content onto the PlayStation Network, with extra levels and characters to boost the ranks and add more life and variety to an already enjoyable family game.
The first major DLC content comes in the form of the ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’ level pack, which nets you a new four-level world based around Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s stop-motion Christmas classic. You’ll get a handful of new character costumes, too, so you’ll be able to suit up as Jack Skellington, Sally, Oogie Boogie, Doctor Finklestein and the Mayor of Halloween Town once you’ve unlocked them all. There’s new vehicles to find in the levels as well, like a fog-sucking car which clears poisonous mist and allows you to travel to new areas. Like the other movie levels, there’s collectibles to snag, arcade mini-games to beat and leveling up to do, but the clever ways in which the puzzles are tailored to fit the film make it as fun a world as any in the core game.
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Similar to the Lion King level’s mechanic of tossing water bombs on plants to cause leaf platforms to bloom, the Nightmare Before Christmas has you brewing up Christmas or Halloween potions to turn festive objects and obstacles into ghoulish ones and vice versa. Collect three candy canes and toss them in a cauldron and you’ll be able to use the potion much like you would water bombs – toss them at graves and they’ll transform into climbable stacks of Christmas presents, giving you access to gold and hidden collectibles. Throw one onto a nightmarish sludge river and it’ll freeze over with wintry snow, allowing you to cross, while unfreezing ponds can free items stuck within. As with water bombs, there’s a time limit in which to position and throw them before they burst. It’s a fun little mechanic that provides some fun puzzle gameplay for kids and ties into the movie really well.
Also available is the Villains Character Pack, which simply nets you Cruella de Vil, Hades, Maleficent, The Evil Queen and Ursula for use in the game. Naturally, being simply character skins, it’s not quite as enticing a package as the actual level content of the Nightmare Before Christmas DLC. The only major problem is the one carried over from the main game itself: The different Disney Universe suits, whether from the core game or DLC, don’t offer any new abilities or skills and the only differences are cosmetic. Still, if you’re fine with that and one of your favourite characters is in the set, then for the reasonable price it’s offered for, it’s not a bad package. The Nightmare Before Christmas DLC is a must buy if you dug Disney Universe, though. There’s a decent amount to it and its clever use of the license in its puzzle-centric gameplay makes playing through it even more fun.
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Disney Universe – A Nightmare Before Christmas DLC is now available to buy on the Xbox Live Marketplace, priced at 400 Microsoft Points, and on the PlayStation Network for £3.99/€4.99/$5.00.