Disney Epic Mickey review

To make this a fully honest review, I must confess that I am a Disney fanatic. My favorite Disney character: Mickey Mouse. With that in mind it’s still not very hard to take an objective look at Disney Epic Mickey because most, if not all, of the past Mickey Mouse titles were not geared towards my age group (at the time) or they just flat out sucked. Disney Epic Mickey is definitely not one of those games.

What is Disney Epic Mickey?

Basically Mickey is drawn by the mirror in his house into Yen Sid’s workshop where Mickey discovers the model that was created by the Sorcerer and the magic paintbrush. While Yen Sid is away, the mouse will play. Mickey ends up fooling around with the magic paintbrush, creating the Shadow Blot. Mickey tries to destroy the Shadow Blot by throwing paint thinner but instead destroys Yen Sid’s model. Mickey flees the workshop, the Shadow Blot takes control over, what is now, Wasteland from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. After a few months the Shadow Blot returns to Mickey’s house to bring him into the world of Wasteland and Mickey must stop the Shadow Blot and right all the wrongs in Wasteland and return home.

Mickey enters into Wasteland and finds many forgotten characters from old Disney cartoons like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Ortensia as well as some known favorites like Captain Hook, Pete, Daisy, Donald and Goofy (although as animatronics). This is where the game actually begins.

Overall the game looks absolutely great. Animations are crisp and colors make you feel you are in a cartoon. The model of Wasteland is influenced by Disney Parks and will have numerous references to things like the Pirates of the Caribbean, Carousel of Progress, Space Mountain, as well as Main Street USA. This familiarity will make any Disney fan happy but if you are not familiar with Disney Parks you need not worry.

Not only will the visuals be familiar to you, the sound will be too. The music in Disney Epic Mickey is subtle and not repetitive which is very refreshing. Hearing tunes from Steam Boat Willie or from newer tunes from Disney theme park attractions made me always ask what other music will I come across next. Each time I was pleasantly surprised.

Getting around Wasteland was as easy as playing any other 3rd person game. Once in a while I would have camera issues but for the most part it was ok. I've seen many other games have much worse camera issues, so this was nothing. Each "land" is separated by a side scrolling platformer level. Each of these tiny levels are film strips and connect you from land to land. In these levels there is no paint or thinner as paint and thinner are only used on third person levels. The paint and thinner are your primary weapons and can be used to repair wasteland or turn it into more of a wasteland.

There are pros and cons for using one over the other; Paint and Thinner. Sometimes using thinner to overcome a specific challenge will be easier but the benefits of using paint would have been more rewarding. Sometimes it’s very easy to choose which is “right” and which is “wrong.” I found myself using paint more often than thinner as it seemed to be the “right” thing to do. Controls were nice and quite easy to get a grip on. The Wii remote was your paintbrush, point and press the B button and you were painting stuff. Point the Wii remote and press the Z button on the Nunchuck and you were thinning things out. Movement was controller with the stick and shaking the Wii remote controls Mickey’s spin attack. Simple and effective.

While I didn’t have a problem with the camera too much I did have a problem with targeting. A lot of the times I would point the Wii remote at a specific target and attempt to paint/thinner it but would be blocked by some unknown object, even though the reticle was on the spot that I wanted to paint/thinner. This proved frustrating at times as I would have to jump around to get better vantage points and would also cause many problems while fighting other characters.

Disney Epic Mickey has a lot of content and will keep you busy for some time. Besides the main story arc, there are also mini quests that are abundant that will give you Hidden Mickey’s, E-tickets, Pins, etc to help you on your way out of Wasteland. Some of these quests were frustrating, not because they were hard, but because they detracted from the story. Now with that in mind these quests do fit into the overall story arc, maybe they could just make it tie in better for short term rewards.

Mickey is going to keep me busy for a while. I already see how I want to go back and see how the story would have worked out had a chosen to do things differently. I also want to explore more complete all the quests and collect all the pins and movie reels. I hope that this is just the beginning for our old friend Mickey to make it into main stream gaming of today. Frankly Disney Epic Mickey is great fun and I am hoping that Warren Spector and Disney can continue to bring Mickey games out that appeal to all types of Disney fans. It’s time to brush off the Wii, get yourself a copy of Disney Epic Mickey.