Epic Mickey

I'll admit it, I'm a Disney nutball! My bathroom is covered in Mickey Mouse stuff, I've been to Disneyland a dozen times in my childhood, I have too many Disney plushes to count, and I have about 20 of the over 50 animated Disney films on tape! So, when I heard about Epic Mickey I was super excited! Only one problem...I didn't own a Wii. A few years past and I used my birthday money to buy a Wii, and one of my friends gave me their copy of Epic Mickey. It took me 24 hours to beat, and I loved every minute of it! One of my favorite things to do in the game was to spot characters, cartoons and items I've seen. For example, I remember watching the Mickey cartoon, "Thru the Mirror", on my "Alice in Wonderland" DVD as a kid, and I was so excited to see the cartoon as the Projector Screen to Ostown, the Telephone in Mickey's house, and the Radio in Bog Easy. Even the opening took bits from that cartoon! Another thing I love is the old cartoon characters. I'm now a hard core Oswald fan thanks to this game. I even have an Oswald plush! And it was awesome to see characters that I remember from my childhood, like the Lonesome Ghosts, Clarabelle, and Horace! If you love Disney, or you have some memory of Disney in your childhood, play this game! You won't regret it!

Epic Mickey is one of those strange games where it's good, but not great. It's fun but boring.... if that makes any sense. I guess I should explain. Let's start with the gameplay mechanics here: the paintbrush. I was turned off by this concept (and not so keen on the idea of the Wasteland), and starting off in the game, I still wasn't sure. However, it grew on me, and I found it rather fun after a while. So there's the fun factor. The boring factor is what the game puts you through to get to its thrilling ending.

Fetch-quests.

Each area of the game you enter through, and each NPC you speak to, you are more than likely have some kind of objective they want from you. Normally I'm okay with this, but there are a number of different reasons why this is more of a chore than fun. Sometimes you have to bring an item back for a character, usually involving backtracking. The objectives that your Gremlin Gus (your tutorial for the game) gives you is usually patching up pipes with paint or filling up tanks with either paint or thinner.

Which brings me to your paint and thinner. Your paint is more like a good guy where it usually brings invisible objects such as ledges to life. Sometimes in battle you can use it to make enemies your friend rather than killing them. This helps bring the hero ending of the game, I guess. The thinner kills enemies and turns a lot of objects invisible. Sometimes you need to just so you can find certain items or whatnot so it has its advantages.

As boring as these quests are, it's the story that keeps me going which centers around characters Disney created that most people didn't even know they exist: like Oswald. Poor little Oswald. He had been angry with Mickey Mouse ever since Walt Disney abandoned him and made Mickey a star. Now since Mickey has created the Wasteland (comprised of dull environments)its up to Mickey to set things right. There's more to the story than this, and believe me, it's a good one.

Which leads me to the last third of the game: it is epic. I found the last third more thrilling than anything else in the game. It's too bad that its such a chore to get there. The characters they throw at you will keep you entertained, and there are also these side-scrolling levels based on earlier cartoons from Mickey and Oswald that I really like. And the music in the game is incredible, especially the ending music.

Is it worth playing through? Oh yeah, especially if you're a fan of Disney like me. Also towards the end, I can see why they compared this game to Kingdom Hearts. However, I wish they would make some kind of movie off of this. It would make one heck of a film!

Epic Mickey takes one of the world's most beloved mascots and places him in a strange decayed and ruined world he help destroy and create. Mickey travels around a magical kingdom of forgotten and lost characters and hopes to right his wrongs and escape the ruined world. With the magical paint brush Mickey is able to create and destroy with paint and thinner. All of that sounds wonderful on paper.. but the final product is far from wonderful. The game is directed by Warren Spector, the man behind Deus Ex, and a few Ultima games. While I have yet to experience them I don't know much about his previous works, but it one can see that this is his first platformer he's worked on. While the world of the Wasteland is quite interesting with places like Mickeyjunk Mountain standing out, you feel that the team didn't know how to approach the platforming sections of the game. There's 2D and 3D sections to the game. The short 2D sections prove to be tedious, repeative and uninspired platforming while the 3D sections get screwed by a horrible camera which fails to follow you properly and won't shift. I fell plenty of times because of the faulty camera. The music feels full and orchestral but there's no stand out tracks ,besides the warped 2D section music. The game promises a moral choice system, you can be evil and erase the baddies and not help people or help people and convert the baddies to goodies. Overall.. it doesn't matter the main ending is still the same. I was kind of expecting Mickey to merge with the big bad of the game and become the evil menace to the Wastleland and rule it with an iron fist., or something a bit darker then the same happy ending that happens. Overall, Epic Mickey is an interesting adventure full of neat little tidbits from Disney's past. But .. it is held back by a poor camera and poor level design