Okay Geek Farm
Wii Review - Disney's Epic Mickey
Ricardo Trejo
What’s Epic Mickey about?
Before Mickey Mouse was the beloved face of the Disney corporation, he was a mischievous character who one night snuck into Yensid’s tower (the wizard from Fantasia) through a magic mirror and fooled around with some the sage’s mystical tools. On this particular occasion, the wizard had been busy restoring a long forgotten world with a magical paintbrush and some paint thinner. However, when the wizard retired for the evening Mickey saw the perfect opportunity to wreak some havoc.
After spilling the paint thinner all over the project, Mickey heard Yensid’s footsteps and ran as fast as possible back through the mirror to his world. The event seemingly went without consequence, as it wasn’t until years later, once Mickey had become the star he is now, discovered just what a mess he had created. When he’s violently taken from his bedroom and thrown into the world known as the Cartoon Wasteland – a place where characters of old Disney cartoons, who didn’t have the fortune of becoming popular icons, have been forgotten for good. Now Mickey must find a way to escape the world in which he inadvertently created and help those he’s affected along the way, including the new bitter, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
How’s the Gameplay?
Falling into the world of Wasteland, a place that resembles a half built Disneyland — where rides don’t work and buildings are falling apart at the seam — Mickey is bestowed with the aforementioned magical paint brush and thinner. These powers allow Mickey to seemingly create or erase the world around him. Each chemical is assigned to the rear buttons on the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and players simply point and shoot which area in front of them they want to splash. The concept is genius but the game’s execution of such features ends up being more of a frustration than a stroke of artwork.
Chalk it up to the game being developed for the Wii, but only certain predesignated areas can be tampered with – limiting the overall scope of what you can do and can’t do. In the end, the removing of an obstacle or the painting of a moving platform to get to the other side ends up becoming the most innovative thing you can do. And for a top tier game like this, I would’ve expected much more, especially from the imaginative minds over at Disney.
Epic Mickey is a platformer at its core, with enemies and attacks playing second fiddle to puzzles that get you from point A to point B. Some parts even reminded me of games like Gex and Spyro from the original Playstation era, which is a bit worrying seeing as that was over a decade ago. For instance, moving Mickey around can feel a bit clumsy at times since the game suffers from stale controls and a camera system that feels as if its only purpose is to annoy you. And with only a spin attack and a double jump at your disposal, there aren’t many variations that spice up the action as you play on into deeper worlds. Enemies are easily dealt with; drenching them with paint befriends them, and dousing them with thinner weakens or stuns them temporarily to allow ample time for the player to attack with the spin move. There are also many times when traveling between destinations that the game will take the perspective of a 2D sidescroller, but it’s nothing more than fancy, although unnecessary, way to transition from place to place.
There are also quite a number of instances where Mickey must do fetch quests and fulfill redundant objectives, that slow down the game substantially. And for a game in the year 2010, I would’ve figured that Disney could come up with something a lot more intuitive than just making players talk to random characters to figure out which other character you need to talk to. Oh and the lack of voice acting really killed the experience for me, which again is a bummer considering we’re talking about Disney.
How’s it look and sound?
From the look of the fabulous opening cinematic you’d expect an adventure that can be deemed nothing less than ‘epic’ would be right around the bend, right? However, while it feels like there was so much that was accomplished in terms of look and sound, it’s hard to be satisfied when looking at the near limitless potential such a title might have had.
Watch the Opening Cinematic HERE
The environments are vastly creative, bright, and colorful despite their delipitated appearance — though they rely too heavily on the prior knowledge and familiarity of its players to realize what portion of Disneylore they’re currently inhabiting.
The music does a splendid job of reflecting the somber and pathetic state the Cartoon Wasteland has been in for decades, with most of it being comprised of generic orchestral pieces. Cutscenes are tastefully crafted with an artbook flair to it, but lack of voice work does impede the overall enjoyment.
On that note, there’s not enough to be said about how much voice acting is missed in a game such as this. Call me spoiled by the Kingdom Hearts series, but it just feels lazy on Disney’s part to not include a voice track to a game that stars its most cherished celebrity mouse.
How long does it take to finish? How’s the difficulty?
Epic Mickey rounds out to around 15 hours give or take on the amount of quests and side-missions the player decides to take on. The game isn’t hard per se, but it does present some action on the player to know which characters to talk to so you can know where to head to next. It might be a bit old school for newer players, but it’s truly not that hard of a title.
Multiple game endings are also available for anyone who wants to journey through the adventure twice. Each ending is depedent upon the interaction Mickey has with the citezens of Wasteland and whether or not certain missions are completed.
Overall
“…it’s hard to be satisfied when looking at the near limitless potential such a title might have had.”For it what it was meant to be, Epic Mickey appeared to be the penultimate Disney game ever imagined. And from a look at the early concept art that leaked, it was meant to be massive in scale and perhaps take us to a corrupted version of the happy-go-lucky Disneyland every kid wants to go to. What ended up happening however, was a game that felt too old for its time and short on original quality. Sure, there are a ton of faces that we’ve seen in past Disney works, but how long can that be kept up until newer players just don’t care anymore?
Pro’s:
- Genius concept
- Imaginative familiar and original setting
Con’s:
- Bad camera system
- Outdated gameplay
- No voicework
Give us a climactic battle with a Monstro-sized anamatronic whale and this game would’ve probably been in the game of the year category! But no, instead we were dished a game in which Warren Spector went so far as to say that the bad camera system could be attributed to reviewers ‘not understanding’ what kind of game it was.
C’mon, don’t blame the players for breaking the game. Blame the development and not putting as much effort as was needed to make Epic Mickey the game it deserved to be. Everyone wanted this game to succeed, and I as well had high hopes for it. But it’s hard to recommend this title to virtually anyone at full price since it wreaks of a property that Disney made simply just to cash in on, knowing that people would buy it regardless of how the end result turned out. I can only wish that if a sequel gets made it offers a much more richer gameplay experience, as well as a REQUIRED voice track for. Until then I don’t wish on anyone to try out Epic Mickey and expect a well-rounded, fun time.
