A linear story game and an open-world game in one!
What Is It? Toy Story 3 is, ostensibly, a movie-tie in game with the third installment of the popular animated movie series. It was released in 2010 after development by Avalanche Software. The game features a linear story mode which does, broadly, follow the main beats of the movie. The game also features a “Toy Box” mode which acts as a “My First Open World Game” style adventure.
The linear game has you playing as Woody, Buzz, and Jessie. Most of the game is 3D action-platforming with some 2D sections mixed in. Each character has a special ability and you will need to switch between them a few times to progress at certain points. The story move culminates with a true team effort as you need to switch between the three quite a few times to save toys from the incinerator.
Story mode is decent, with a handful of specific sections that rise above that mark. The Buzz 3D shooter portions are pretty good, as is gliding down rails avoiding obstacles as if this were a Ratchet and Clank game. Most of it, however, kind of falls into the middle ground of “this is fine.” The level design is fairly bland in most spots and the controls aren’t quite as good as you’d like.
The other half (ish) of the game is the Toy Box mode. This places you in a western town with Mayor Hamm running things. You, playing as one of the three characters again, complete dozens of small tasks to earn coins to purchase more buildings, open up new areas, and so on. There is an end to the story in Toy Box mode after you unlock all of the areas and complete the main story quests.
Toy Box mode mostly suffers from the same issues as story mode: nothing here is terribly interesting and the controls are just okay, with some notably frustrating parts. There are a few driving portions in Toy Box mode which is a really fun idea, but the precision the goals ask of you are not met by the controls the game allows. “Good idea, mediocre execution” is maybe the most repeated takeaway I had while playing.
Story mode spans eight levels and can be finished in about three hours. Toy Box mode will probably take four or five to see the end of the main missions, but you are free to roam and do open world Toy Story stuff for as long as you please.
The game looks pretty good, faithfully recreating the beloved characters in video game form. They also grabbed all of the movie voice cast except for Tim Allen and Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks’s brother plays Woody in the game, interestingly enough.
Both game modes can be played co-op and the draw of sitting down at the TV with your kid playing through this game is certainly one of the best selling points it offers.
The Best Part: I imagine this game holds a special place in countless gamers of a certain age’s hearts as “My First Open World Game.” It genuinely does a great job of simplifying the experience that larger open world games provide. The quests, main and side, are much smaller, as is the world, but they provide the same basic loop of “do something, get reward, do more stuff, get more rewards.” There is a lot of customization you can do to the town you build and the toys who inhabit it as well, feeding into the cosmetic upgrade aspect many of these games feature.
The Worst Part: This is, truly, a game for kids. I only discovered the Toy Story 2 game a few years ago but it stands among the best of the 3D platforming collect-a-thon games of the era, in my opinion. It was certainly targeted towards children at the time, but by producing an honest copy of the timeless gameplay style, rather than a simplified version, the game holds up for people of all ages. Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is very much a simplified version of trends of its time. “Kid’s First GTA” is a great hook for the era and Toy Story 3 delivers on that while also allowing you to play through the story beats from the insanely popular film.
The Verdict: I went into this game not really knowing what to expect. I love the Toy Story 2 game and I occasionally heard rumors of people liking Toy Story 3 even more and that was plenty of reason for me to give it a try.
What I found was a game that was way more geared towards kids than I expected. This, of course, is not a bad thing at all, it just reframes pretty much every thought and expectation I had going in. Yes, the levels lack variety and the designs are fairly bland, but would a 10 year old me have cared if I was playing through scenes from the movie? Probably not. Yes, Toy Box mode is repetitive and has plenty of weak controls holding it back, but would a 10 year old me have cared if I was getting to play an open world game like my older brother was? Probably not.
All of this makes a critical appraisal of this game difficult. No, I cannot recommend this game to an adult in 2026 unless you played it as a kid back in the early 2010s. Would a kid today, particularly one who has seen the Toy Story movies 50 times each, have a good time with this? Absolutely. My only real advice is not to go in expecting anything other than a very simple game best enjoyed co-op with one of your children or as a pure nostalgia blast if you played it when you were younger.
How to Play: PlayStation 3*, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, Mac
*console played on for this review
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