If you stopped by the PlayStation.Blog recently, you got an exclusive preview of Toy Story 3: The Video Game, releasing on June 15th for PS3 and PSP. More specifically, you got to see Zurg, the playable villain found only in the PS3 version.

SCEE blogger Jem Alexander and I recently stopped by the charming Pixar offices and got a few minutes to play around with the PS3 version of Toy Story 3: The Video Game. More importantly, we got a chance to play as Zurg in the game’s open-world, highly customizable Toy Box mode.

But let’s back up a bit. Distinct from the Story Mode, Toy Story 3’s Toy Box mode is a standalone sandbox that enables you to build a town and populate it with whatever landmarks, characters, and missions you’d like. When playing as Buzz, Woody, or Jessie, there’s plenty to do: mine for gold, take on side quests, race in various vehicles, beat down baddies, and compete in challenges. The reward is more gold and, by extension, more unlockable toys and buildings for your custom town. Get a peek at Toy Box mode in the video below.

Enter Zurg. Formally introduced in Toy Story 2 as a villain and arch-nemesis to Buzz Lightyear, Zurg is a Vader-esque bad toy who possesses enormous offensive power compared to the milder, meeker Woody and team. Once you buy a special toy in the Toy Box mode, you can use it to transform your character into Zurg and begin a reign of destruction. Zurg is tough, and packs a rapid-fire blaster with plenty of ammo, a far cry from Woody’s single-shot ball throw projectile attack. You can also cruise around in the Zurg-mobile, outfitted with its own cannons, to terrorize the town, compete in races, or just bust sick jumps and flip tricks. On-foot, Zurg’s power comes at a tradeoff: he can’t pop double-jumps or grab onto ledges like Woody and the gang, meaning he’ll miss out on some secrets tucked in the game’s many nooks and crannies.

But he is really, really powerful. Given his destructive tendencies, many of the Zerg-only missions involve acts of cruelty: blasting townspeople, smashing objects and structures, and generally wreaking havoc. Zurg will also tie into the game’s PlayStation Move support, which will be available as a downloadable mini-games later in this fall after the game’s release in June. In one mini-game, Zurg will be able to shoot at targets from a first-person perspective using PlayStation Move to aim and fire. Details are still early, but the team at Avalanche Software sounded excited to be working on an early PlayStation Move-compatible game.

Thus wraps our hands-on experiences with Toy Story 3: The Video Game and Zurg, but stay tuned on the PlayStation.Blog — we’ll have some in-depth interviews from the team at Pixar (including the film’s director!) and Avalanche Software, discussing what it was like to collaborate on the game’s two-year-plus development cycle. It’ll be a good read! In the meantime, watch the video below for a sneak peek at Zurg’s gameplay, in case you missed it the first time.