Giant Bomb Review
108 CommentsDisney Epic Mickey Review
2- WII
by Ryan Davis on
Epic Mickey's brief moments of cleverness and knowing affection for obscure Disneyana are mired by clunky, perfunctory platforming and a general lack of followthrough.
As someone with an honest appreciation for the design aesthetics, cultural significance, and nostalgic payload of all things Disneyana, I was personally delighted at the premise of Epic Mickey. While there's a whole world of familiar Disney characters to populate a Mickey Mouse adventure with, Epic Mickey, after a somewhat senselessly convoluted start, traps The Mouse in a painted Wasteland filled with generations of forgotten Disney stars and little-known extras. In a way, the metagame of name-that-obscure-reference is the most fun thing to do in Epic Mickey. Sometimes the game just lays it on real thick, such as with an encounter with a Tron version of Bad Pete perched atop Space Mountain, which I'll admit I'm not immune to the pandering charms of. It also shows a certain capacity of self-awareness, most notably with the location of Mickeyjunk Mountain, a world comprised entirely of discarded Mickey Mouse merchandise. The delicious irony here, of course, is that Epic Mickey will itself one day become consumer detritus, though the game refrains from going that deep down the rabbit hole.
Interesting ideas abound in Epic Mickey, but they're all sadly in service of gameplay that just doesn't deserve them. While it has some half-baked open-world and role-playing elements, this is a platform-jumping game first and foremost. Specifically, it feels like the kind of mascot-driven platformer that was legion in the N64/PlayStation era, before dual analog sticks were standardized and when most third-person polygonal games struggled valiantly with camera controls. Epic Mickey's unruly camera isn't insurmountable, but having to replay sections due to blind jumps and constant fussing gives you plenty of time to consider just how boilerplate most of the platforming feels, and just how dull vast stretches of this game are. Mickey doesn't just hop--keeping with the game's painterly theme, puzzles and treasure hunts are presented on the regular that require you to employ a magical paintbrush that can shoot either paint or paint thinner. Shoot paint at specific, silhouetted parts of the environment, and they'll fill in and come to life; shoot thinner at the brightly colored spots, and they'll melt away, revealing hidden paths and such. There are a few specific puzzles where you're tasked with starting and stopping mechanized systems with your paintbrush that struck me as kind of clever, but it's mostly too obvious--once you've seen it, you've solved it.
The real tragedy with Epic Mickey is that every last part of it could, and arguably, should, have been totally amazing, but it so consistently falls short of that potential. The Disney enthusiast in me got a certain charge out of the experience, at least for a while, but as a game, it's pretty far from a masterpiece.
