I wish I was more familiar with Disney’s way-back catalog. Sure I’ve seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but prior to The Little Mermaid things get really foggy. Perhaps that’s what made Disney Epic Mickey most intriguing for myself. From the beginning, the developer and publisher have teased us with hopes of checking out some of the forgotten characters created by Walt Disney, headlined by one Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. After finishing the game though, I was quite disheartened as Oswald was most memorable. Sure, now I know more about Gilbert the ghost, Gus the gremlin, and The Mad Doctor, but there’s a reason these characters were left to fade away.
The forgotten characters reside in what is known as ‘The Wasteland’: a somber society where Oswald is king and has created his own version of Disney World. If you’ve ever visited this Floridian mecca of idolatry, you’ll be very familiar with where most of the art team has drawn their inspiration. As Mickey, you’ll visit familiar yet somber locations ripped from the Magic Kingdom, with Mean Street (Main Street USA) acting as the hub location to them all. Mickey was drawn into this world by an ink blot monster of his own accidental creation, and throughout his adventure sees what kind of negative impact his carelessness has had. You know from the very beginning that the reason Wasteland is in shambles is due to Mickey playing around with something he shouldn’t have been. Unlike Disney proper, it’s a very melancholy world filled with infinite sadness, complete with this dark cloud over the protagonist’s head. One of the most emotion-inducing pieces in the world shows the iconic Walt Disney and Mickey statue that welcomes visitors to the Magic Kingdom, with Mickey replaced and Oswald holding his hand instead. So much is said about the motivations of the world by that single change.
Mickey’s secret mishap has made the world lose color and structure, but armed with a magic paintbrush you can help restore or remove certain aspects of the Wasteland to overcome obstacles in your way. Paint and paint thiner are your two primary sources of ammo, and depending on which method you choose to defeat certain key villains, Mickey’s form will change. The easiest method always relies on paint thinner, though it will also cause the most damage to the world or the enemies in it and have a negative physical effect on Mickey, causing him to literally drip paint… upwards. It’s a cool effect, showing that being destructive instead of creative really isn’t what Mickey is about. The paint mechanic is somewhat disappointing though, as generally any choice made is restricted to a specific outcome and really has little impact. I spent plenty of time repainting OsTown (Toon Town), restoring it to its vibrant, Wasteland-glory. But when I returned to this location later, all of my work was nullified as the area had reverted back to the initial, predetermined state. So much for helping directly!
Combat with this paintbrush is also less than stellar, forcing you to hold your Wii-cursor over enemies while dodging and relying on a garbage camera to track properly. You can’t run away from a villain and still attack him, even though some Blots require you to do so thanks to the camera swinging behind Mickey most of the time. In fact, one of the biggest bits of frustration in Epic Mickey is its bad camera. Being an action/adventure platformer, you’ll constantly be fighting with it, particularly when you’re up against a wall, but also in normal traversal when the default camera height seems to always be just a bit lower than where it needs to be. It’s great that there’s a curving bridge here, but I didn’t see that there was a hole in it, thanks to the stupid camera. You can make minor adjustments using the d-pad, when the game feels like letting you, but the camera will always fly back to a position the game feels is appropriate. Combine this with an environment that doesn’t particularly display depth all that well, and you’ve got the makings of some seriously annoying gameplay.
Throughout the world, Oswald has erected projector screens which act as wormholes to the different zones around Wasteland. Each projector contains a mini-sidescrolling platformer level themed from one of the older Disney cartoons. These are all great and interestingly stylized, the first or maybe even the second time you go through them. There are several you’ll have to traverse multiple times late in the game, though, which becomes like tedious busywork. Don’t make the mistake of entering one if you really don’t intend to go to a specific location, or you’ll need to traverse the whole area before you can backtrack. At least they become populated with the game’s currency, E-Tickets, so you’ll get a few more of those to spend for the effort. Speaking of tedious though, how about the game’s attempt at increasing length with some bad fetch quests? You get to do a string of them right when you first get to Mean Street, then every once in a while need to do them again to gather orbs which power the main projectors in the game. Time-wasting nonsense.
E-Tickets, a callback to when Disney World first existed, can be spent at one of several stores in the game allowing you to purchase upgrades to your health, inventory space, or even quest specific items that you may have missed. Remember the concept artwork for shambling Goofy? He’s totally in the game but you have to build him by finding his parts. Here’s where you get more into the cool, yet sad story aspects of Epic Mickey. Oswald wanted to have friends like Goofy, Daisy, and Donald, but didn’t… so he built them. Unfortunately, throughout the course of the game I never built any of the animatronic friends thanks to missing some of the parts of Goofy and getting locked out of the area where they were. Sure you can buy them, but they’re just far too expensive.
Any other inventory item you’ll pick up is really of little consequence and just assists a bit with combat. They’re throwaway additions that really add nothing to the game. You’ll know basically everything you need to about the game within the first fifteen minutes of the excruciatingly long, text-heavy, hand-holding tutorial. I think it was about an hour and a half before the game actually started. Just remember, you can shake the Wii remote to perform a spin move! Strange that they chose the single most common mechanic through all Wii titles to repeat multiple times, instead of focusing on a more conceptual newcomer, the Guardians, which are basically just breadcrumbs that never seem to work when you need them the most.
With Disney Epic Mickey, you’ve got a game that’s feels like it’s teetering on the edge of awesome, yet has way too much junk weighing it down. The story, premise, and style are at the top of their game and are worth seeing for fans of the great and powerful Diz, but the mechanics you’ll need to endure can be quite frustrating, and–most importantly–boring. It’s hard to believe that in 2010 developers still ignore the importance of a properly functioning camera.
3 out of 5
Originally posted on Evil Avatar.