Disney Epic Mickey - Game Review

Sometimes you are rewarded more for the destructive path. The Wasteland is filled with creatures called blotlings that can be vanquished either with thinner, which will melt them, or paint, which will make them befriend you. If they like you they will fight other blotlings on your behalf, but if you destroy them they will leave behind helpful items. Sometimes you can tackle monsters in more unusual ways, such as melting the bridge one is patrolling or luring one into a hidden room and then painting over the exit.

Now and again you will have a big boss battle, and once again you will have a choice of befriending them with paint or destroying them with thinner. Either way works, although in the final moments of the game players are cleverly shown the consequences of their actions in a way that makes it clear that the Wasteland would be a better place if you use paint more than thinner.

In terms of gameplay though it’s sometimes hard to know which to choose. In a battle with Captain Hook you have two distinct choices; save Tinkerbell, which involves high speed platforming, or feed Hook to the alligator, which involves rotating gears to send Hook along a certain path. Fighting one battle means you have to replay the game to fight the other.

Designed by Deus Ex 2 designer Warren Spector, Epic Mickey was touted as a game that would match that classic in terms of gameplay choices that altered the very nature of the game, but on that it falls short. However you play it, the game is a Legend of Zelda-style platformer with an interesting gimmick.

While the Zelda games constantly add new things, Epic Mickey feels like a game that wants to rely on its one great idea. Outside of the paint/thinner device, the only other major gameplay element is the ability later in the game to use sketches of anvils or televisions to create the real thing. Drop a TV near an animatronic monster and it will attack it and short circuit itself.

There are only a handful of specific places where you really need these sketches. The only sketch that really offers much player choice is one that creates a watch that slows time; there were places in the game that would be incredibly difficult to get through without that.

The game’s biggest issues involve the game camera and the game’s controls. While the game camera generally angles itself to show what you want it to show, sometimes it fails to do so, and while it can be manually changed, it often will refuse to point exactly where you want it to, or will swerve back to the annoying view you’re trying to escape. There are times when it is almost impossible to paint or thin certain objects because the camera won’t let you look at them, and certain places you simply have to jump blind.

In terms of controls, you use your paintbrush like a hose to shoot out paint or thinner, but often you simply can’t hit your target. For example, if you are standing on a ledge and want to fire at a monster below you, you will keep hitting the ledge itself even though visually it looks like your brush should easily clear it. There are also times when you shoot thinner at a bridge some distance away and instead take out the bridge you are standing on.

For the first few hours, I thought Epic Mickey was possibly the best platformer ever, but after a while the game began to plateau. One section, involving going from world to world destroying giant tentacles leaching paint out of the Wasteland was remarkably dull and unnecessary. And while the early cut scenes were gorgeous, most of the story is told through these oddly, rather unattractively animated scenes made worse by the lack of spoken dialogue. Somehow it seems reasonable to ask a game with “epic” in the title to go the extra mile and skip the subtitle approach.

But while Epic Mickey doesn’t quite deliver on its extravagant promises, it is still one of the best games ever released for the Wii, with striking graphics, a beautiful symphonic score, an engaging story and interesting, challenging gameplay. While I have a list of things I wish had been done better, this is still the first game I’ve played in a long time that kept me riveted, playing hour after hour, only forcing myself to stop when my head began to ache and my vision to blur. Epic Mickey may not be the second coming, but it is undeniably a wonderful creation. And as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit learns in the game, there is more to life than being at the very, very top.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.