Toy Story 3 the video game is a massively mischievous, endlessly creative, sandbox adventure where you can ride, paint, throw and change anything and everything. It is also a series of short, thrilling adventures, each inspired by classic forms of gameplay that fill the screen with adrenaline, whimsy, and exuberant fun. When its creators at Avalanche Software had the daunting task of walking into John Lasseter’s office to present him with a video game idea to go with his film, they were so intimidated they presented him with two. One they knew was over-ambitious and risky, the other safe and traditional, a back-up in just in case. Happy with each, John Lasseter said “do both”.

That was back in 2007 and the passing years have allowed the game to be as carefully constructed and polished as Pixar’s own films. I played a near-final copy recently and it sucked me in immediately, enough that if I was allowed to take it home, you’d end up seeing my face on the side of milk cartons, missing for days.

The sandbox part of the game aims to deliver both of Andy’s worlds; his real world of toys and his imagination where he might take a patch of ground in his back yard and bring all those toys to life. Basically you’re given his toy box, a large landscape, and a toy catalogue to order more from.

You begin by playing as Woody, Buzz, or Jessie, and entering a small, Western town called Woody’s Round-Up out in the desert. It’s a small gathering of buildings on either side of a single street and Hamm the Piggy Bank (John Ratzenberger) is its mayor. The town and its surrounding country, which is far greater than looks, is simply yours to discover.

If you are the kind of player who likes to customize, build, and personalize things you can change anything you see. You can select a building and change its colours, the materials it’s made of, build add-ons, and give it the characteristics of a structure from any Pixar film. You can change characters, animals, vehicles, and as you continue to customize you’ll unlock other tools and options.

If you purchase “goo”, a sticky green substance, you can pour it on anything to change its size, creating giant monster chickens or horses so small that you can ride them around like pocket motorcycles. Each change you add will build on top of the other, so if you give one person a set of fairy wings and then later make them haunted, those wings will become bat wings.

The idea is that every player’s town will become completely different, no two alike.

If you are the kind of player who prefers quests you can talk to Hamm or any of the other wandering characters to receive missions. This may include searching the town for hidden bolts of cloth or climbing along mountain paths to locate cow bells. A garage will let you purchase cars to enter into desert races or you can ride Bullseye the horse through courses of floating lassos. Two players can take part in these races, each with their own style of car or horse.

If you are the kind of player who prefers to just explore and tool around, you can leave the town boundaries, by foot or horseback, and explore the landscape.

If you see a mountain peak you can climb up to it, if you stand over a cliff and see a river below you can jump or climb down to it. You can’t die so you’re free to throw yourself at anything you see. Inside mountains there are mine cart tunnels to follow and over valleys are wooden forts to climb inside. Hidden amongst the nooks and crannies of all these areas are little prize bubbles you can collect to unlock more options and tools for the town. The farther you journey, the more new towns and areas you’ll unlock. I found a secret area that had short-cut portals to each new zone and counted nine of these easily.

Mischief is a big theme. When the game was being tested early on with volunteers, one kid ignored all these carefully crafted missions and activities and instead spent hours carrying bouncy cows up to the tops of mountains and canyons and dropping them off of them. Watching the cows fall and bounce from such heights made the kid giggle endlessly and he found it all very entertaining. So the game designers added a number of elements for just that kind of enjoyment.

You can shoulder-charge anything that walks or drop-kick anything you can pick up, sending animals and townsfolk hurtling into the side of buildings or off the edges of cliffs. If you do this in creative ways you can actually unlock hidden rewards. For example, out in the desert there’s a cactus shaped like a field goal and if you pick up a chicken and punt it through the “posts” the game will reward you for the discovery.

Every action you take is designed to lead to new rewards. Completing a mission or customizing a building or finding a new area will be rewarded with fanfare, party streamers, coins to buy new toys, and a handful of “Pixar balls”. You can whip these beanbag balls at anything you please, easily pinging some passerby off the top of their head with one and it’s great fun.

The more coins you earn, the more toys and related playsets you can buy and add to the world. These include characters and activities not just from the three Toy Story movies, but from the entire Pixar universe. Name a move and it’s in there. I passed Syndrome, the villain from The Incredibles, on the street in my session.

If you buy a tailor’s shop you can whip characters into it to change their hairstyle or clothes, giving them Mohowks or old granny wigs. If you purchase the Army Men set you’ll find the plastic men scattered across key mountain spots and high points. Climb up to one and you can toss it into the air and guide it through the parachute mission to land on specific targets for rewards. There’s a cow cannon, a TNT shack, and many other toys waiting to be unlocked and used.

The second half of the game follows a series of story-driven adventure levels. These do not follow the story of the film, but instead draw upon scenes from all three movies. In the first level you’re Woody riding on the back of Bullseye. An out-of-control train full of orphans need to be rescued, but as you ride along desert paths, leaping over gates and structures to make it there in time, a large pig-shaped spaceship descends and launches a fleet of alien ships to interfere. Their laser beams explode and destroy the terrain around you and you’re forced to make last-second jumps off of crumbling roads and changing railway tracks while dodging laser beams and falling rocks.

Playing on the Xbox 360 the graphics are wild, with many intense actions on the screen at once, and everything perfectly matching the character and effects designs of the movies.

The second level takes its inspiration from the game Lost Vikings. You have to use Woody, Jesse, and Buzz as a team to travel through Andy’s house in order to get to his cellphone. You begin in the basement and must use each character’s skill to work out how to climb up laundry machines and cross shelves in order to complete tasks.

The third level I’m told has you playing Buzz Lightyear in a flying space adventure although that level, and those that follow, are being kept a secret for now.

Playing through these story levels will also unlock more toys and playsets for use in the sandbox side of the game. Basically it’s an endless activity that will allow you to keep going and going in discovery.

If you are a completionist you are going to love Al’s Toy Box. Al, the obsessed toy collector in the movies, has the kind of immaculate walk-in closet that only collectors like he can build. As you unlock each toy and playset, it’s added into his mini-warehouse. You can see each toy on the shelf in “mint” condition, still in its cardboard box, smiling out through a cellophane window, beautiful artwork on the sides. For years Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have been playing with 3D trophies and collectibles, but none of them come anywhere close to the detailed trophies inside Al’s toybox.

From what I’ve seen so far, Toy Story 3 the video game is a perfect match for Pixar’s films. It uses cutting-edge game mechanics and hi-end graphics to deliver a simple, wide-eyed sense of discovery and play that has an appeal for all kids, from four to forty years old. It isn’t just a piece of merchandise bearing the likenesses of the Toy Story characters, but manages to capture some of their imagination.

Toy Story 3 is due out for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii on June 15th, three days before the movie hits theatres.