Epic Mickey

Hello again, long time no see! Once again, I'm really sorry about last week. Technical difficulties and health issues prevented me from updating my blog, and if anyone out there reads this every week, I'm sorry.
This week, I'm giving a bit of love to the often neglected Nintendo Wii, with a review of Disney's Epic Mickey.
Epic Mickey was developed by junction point, and designed by video game veteran Warren Spector (Deus Ex anyone?) especially for the Wii. Could this be a reason to dust off the little white box?

STORY
Epic Mickey begins with Disney's main mouse himself intruding into The Sorcerer's (see Fantasia) workshop out of curiosity, and starts messing with a magical paintbrush. Unfortunately, he splashes paint and thinner all over the world known as The Wasteland, a home for all the forgotten Disney characters.
Mickey soon realises the error of his mischief as the evil Shadow Blot rises up to consume him.

In his efforts to erase his mistake, Mickey accidentally spills Thinner all over the wasteland, causing unknown horrors. Months after returning to his own world, the Shadow Blot pulls Mickey down into Wasteland; leaving him stranded in this world of forgotten characters, ruled by Mickey's predecessor Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Its now up to Mickey to undo all the damage he cause, as well as win the trust of Oswald and get back home.

The story is actually quite interesting, though it may seem a bit childish at first. However, I think if there are some older gamers out there who want to play this game, they won't be disappointed. It just has to be said that the story was probably written with younger audiences in mind.

PRESENTATION
Epic Mickey is a game that wants to look good, but knows it's systems limitations. Despite not have that HD makeover the PS3 and X-Box games have, Epic Mickey has an art style of its own that really works for it. From the old black and white Disney characters, to the inky, drip effect of Mickey's skin the game is certainly memorable looking.
The environments are extremely cool, and most of them take well established places from Disneyland and turn them on their heads, turning Main Street into Mean Street and so on.

The game only has 2 CG cutscenes in its entirety, but there are various animated segments that really work well for the game. Its amazing how the slightest tweak in these animations can convey so much emotion from the characters, and most of them are pretty funny too.

My biggest problem with the presentation would have to be the lack of voiced cutscenes. The developers weren't dealing with a silent character; everyone knows what Mickey Mouse sounds like. And in this day and age, its a bit weird to not have any voice acting.
The music, on the other hand is fantastic. It (like the environments of Wasteland) take elements of Disney and tweak them just enough, so that they're familiar, but just seem a little bit off.


GAMEPLAY
Epic Mickey is basically a puzzle platformer. You jump around ledges and moving platforms to get to the next area. The big innovation here, is the use of Paint or Thinner to create or erase the landscape respectively. That may sound awesome, but heres the catch. You can only Paint something that used to be there, and Thinner only works on certain things too.

Thats only a minor concern though. You have to have limitations on the powers of the player, otherwise the game gets broken. No, my main problem with the paint/thinner mechanic, is that it involves me always pointing the fucking wii-mote at the screen. After an hour of that, my arm was cramping up something fierce.

This mechanic has also been stated as causing a huge impact on the game world and story. Thinner represents evil and destruction, while paint is creation and purity. A morality system by any other name is still overused and lame. And it wouldn't be such a problem if the effects of your painting and thinning didn't get removed after every time you leave the area. This is supposed to be an important thing, yet theres no permanent effects.

Now, with almost all good platformers, comes one absolutely horrid problem. The camera. The fucking camera. Often it'll fly into a wall, leaving you to fumble around blindly while the it takes a break from working. As well as moments like this, there is no second analog stick to control it. Instead, you have a d-pad which is as slow as a fat man in a wheelchair without wheels.

The highlight of the game for me was, sadly, the sidescrolling sections between each area. Based on old cartoons, they take away all the paint and thinner features, as well as the dodgy camera. But this is not without its flaws; you have to repeat these sections almost every time you wish to traverse to another area. Can get extremely annoying.

And my number one complaint, worse than the repetitive travel sections, worse than the horrible camera, worse than the arm cramps, has got to be the amount of fetch quests. Let me give you an example. Mickey needs to go to Ventureland, but to get the transitional projector working, he needs sparks.

So you go to fetch them from people. However, the people of Wasteland are jerks, and want you to go fetch some maguffin for them so they can give you the spark. At the worst of times this can incorporate yet another fetch quest, as well as travelling between areas. It pads the game like a menstruating fire hydrant.

REPLAYABILITY
Theres a lot of Disney lore here for those who are willing to look for it. And those people are probably the ones who have already bought this game. Aside from a bunch of fetch quests and collectible hunts, you basically have the main story. That's it. There are multiple endings however, and it all depends on your use of paint and thinner. Duh.

OVERVIEW
While not the greatest game out this year, it is certainly one of the more original. As well as that, its one of the best uses of pre-existing intellectual properties in a game that I've EVER seen. But the limitations of the wii make it fall short for me. The use of motion controls in combat and painting/thinning, as well as the lack of dual analogue sticks can make this game extremely frustrating sometimes.

All of that said though, I can recommend this game. Mainly that recommendation goes out to the Disney fanatics, but if you're interested in the concept of Mickey Mouse almost destroying a world, then go ahead and pick this one up.


OK, in the next few weeks, we'll have reviews of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kane and Lynch 2:Dog Days (my back catalog is rather full) and Heavy Rain (like I said), as well as the Tophat Game Awards for this year. Look out for that one on Boxing Day.

To all you gamers out there, I wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope the year has treated you well, and I hope you get to spend some quality time with the ones you love. Merry Christmas to all, except you campers and n00b t00bers. I'm coming for you!