Since his golden days on the SEGA Genesis, Mickey Mouse has been mostly MIA in the video game industry. Now in late 2010, famed developer Warren Spector aims to bring everyone’s favourite mouse back to gaming with the release of Disney’s Epic Mickey. After playing the game I am sad to say that Spector’s version of a darker Mickey has been tainted with some debilitating gameplay mechanics.
Epic Mickey tells the story of Mickey Mouse and his adventures in , the place where forgotten Disney characters end up. Mickey must save this land of forgotten characters from a giant blob of paint thinner called the Shadow Blot after accidentally spilling paint thinner all over the world. It is clear that the story is Epic Mickey’s strongest trait. Seeing Mickey as the villain after the accident puts a spin on the character and his change from obliviousness towards the accident to remorse about what he has done creates a masterpiece of character development and storytelling. Seeing each of the forgotten characters attempt to convince Mickey of their relevance adds a layer of humor to the dark plot that is uniquely Disney. It is clear that Spector is a Disney fan who has had its influence rub off. The story of Epic Mickey is so good that if you can get through the horrendous gameplay — which we will get to in a minute — I recommend you play the game just to experience it.
Now for the gameplay. Oh boy, the gameplay. Well to be fair, the gameplay mechanics in Epic Mickey isn’t exactly terrible by itself, it’s just the awful camera that ends up making the gameplay terrible. The camera in Epic Mickey seems to have a mind of its own and will always position itself in the worst places. It can be controlled using the d-pad on the Wii Remote, but the camera then tries to fight the player over control. This creates a mess and makes the 3D platforming, one of the biggest gameplay mechanics in Epic Mickey, nearly impossible. This causes immense frustration and had me wanting to throw my controllers across the room on multiple occasions. Where the gameplay and not just the camera fails Epic Mickey is in its simplicity. It is clear that the gameplay was just added between story segment when you start to breakdown each objective. The gameplay is set up through missions which have the player doing MMO like tasks that are either: find X person, collect X amount of item, or destroy X amount of enemies.
Thankfully the 2D platforming in Epic Mickey is immensely better and while it doesn’t come close to that of Mickey’s Genesis classics, it is still great, classic platforming. However Epic Mickey once again falls flat on its face with its morality system, or lack there of. The game tries to give the player morality decisions by using paint to make things grow or thinner to destroy them, but the lack of effect on the gameplay makes this a nearly non-existent feature. If there is an Epic Mickey sequel, I want to see the use of paint for thinner actually mean something. The best part of the gameplay in Epic Mickey are the boss battles which have the player doing something fresh and unique each time, but those are so far and between that it doesn’t make them worth it.
Epic Mickey uses the infamous Gamebryo engine and its graphics suffer from it. The in-game graphics in Epic Mickey are dark and ugly, which as I’ve said many times before, is the worst thing a Wii game can be. Dark doesn’t work on Wii and Epic Mickey further proves this point. The character models look pretty good especially Mikey, Petey, and the Pirates, but everything else is just plain ugly. As for the story cut scenes, they are done with very bright pastel drawings that look fantastic. There is also a fantastic looking CG cut scene at the beginning of the game. It’s once again sad to see that how story and gameplay in Epic Mickey are once again polar opposites. The audio in Epic Mickey is okay. There are barely any voice overs which is quite disappointing, but for the most part the music fills in that giant quality gap.
In the end it feels like Epic Mickey would have been much better as a movie or television series. It is obvious that the gameplay simply half-asses itself in between segments of Warren Spector‘s masterful story to make it a video game. From gameplay to graphics it also seems as though there are two different forms of media shoved together. Unfortunately, its the game side of the two pieces of media that is awful. I can only recommend Epic Mickey to the die-hard Disney fans who can slave through the gameplay. Everyone else should just avoid the whole thing all together or find a way to extract only the story from this overall poor and disappointing experience.
PROS
- Masterful story
- Good character models
- Great music
CONS
- Debilitating camera
- Terribly simplistic and repetitive gameplay
- Ugly graphics
- Lack of voice-overs
