Epic Mickey's attitude in art, concept and direction is undermined by bland gameplay
Epic Mickey begins with Yensid, the sorcerer from the Fantasia segment The Sorcerer's Apprentice, at his workshop working in a world that is a carbon copy of Walt's Disneyland. This world is created with the intent of serving as a home for the Disney characters that were forgotten with time. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, is the leader of this world, and all is in fine balance until Mickey Mouse – and his big curious nature – lead him to the sorcerer's workshop. When playing around with the brush that was used to engineer that world, Mickey ends up accidently creating an evil creature – the Blot – in his desperate attempt to destroy his devilish creation Mickey throws tons of thinner into the world, creating havoc and tearing apart the life of its inhabitants. Mickey returns frightened to his house, but a few months later he is surprised a mysterious shadowy figure breaks into his place in his sleep and drags him into the broken Wasteland. Mickey's task is to either fix the mess he caused, or extend the reach of the damage he did.
Epic Mickey is mainly a vault crowded with Disney references. For big and knowledgeable fans of the company, opening that vault is a sheer delight in its own. Some references are rather obscure and will fly over the heads of a big part of the audience, others will be as clear as water, the biggest example being that the Wasteland is set up pretty much like Disneyland with twisted versions of Fantasyland, New Orleans Square, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Toontown being organized around a crooked Sleeping Beauty castle. Being able to play and fight enemies in such a scenario is an amazing experience for Disney fans, but somebody who is looking simply for a great platformer to play will be able to look past all those fan services and notice that at its central structure Epic Mickey is a little bit rusty, as if a soft blowing of the wind were able to bring everything down.
In the game you play as Mickey armed with a brush and thinner. Using those contrasting tools Mickey will be presented with a series of goals by the inhabitants of the Wasteland that had their lives affected by the thinner disaster. The good thing about those missions is that all of them can be performed in two different manners: a friendly resolution, dubbed the Paint Path; or a not so honest solution, dubbed the Thinner Path. Choosing to solve problems more often in one way, instead of the other, will directly affect the final outcome of the game, which is surprisingly deep for a Mickey Mouse game. Besides, as an obvious consequence, the game gains huge replay value from the two ways in which all of the missions can be finished. Not to mention, all of the extra quests that the game will present along the way to those who are looking to fully complete the title by collecting all items it possibly has to offer such as: the addictive pins, film reels that unlock remarkable old Mickey Mouse cartoons, and paper sheets that reveal amazing pieces of art in the game's extra section. Epic Mickey can't, in any way, be finished in only one playthrough.
The creativity applied to the conception of the game's basic premise, however, is nowhere to be seen when you look at the way it has been structured. Most of Epic Mickey's missions consist of silly fetch quests. There aren't many moments in the game where players will be amazed by the ingenuity applied to the platforming sections, everything Epic Mickey offers in terms of level design has already been done, and in a much more inspired fashion. As a consequence, missions that should involve fun segments and obstacles stopping you from reaching a certain item, become a simple exercise in jumping and running through bland challenges that just don't go anywhere for players who are into the genre. All comes down to the combination of running, jumping, erasing a wall or painting a missing piece of the scenario to reveal a new possible path towards your final goal. The missions, which are many, get repetitive pretty fast and past a certain point in the game the only thing that will keep players going is the surprisingly intriguing and heart-warming story that is very well developed.
Another considerable problem Epic Mickey presents are its sidescrolling levels. They are always used to connect distinct 3-D areas of the Wasteland, and are good fun in your first playthrough them as they amazingly resemble the design of old-school Mickey cartoons. However, truth is, one time is more than enough to experience all they have to offer. Sadly, the game developers did not realize that, and as a terrible consequence whenever players have to transit from one area to another they are obliged to play the 2-D stages again, with no option whatsoever to skip it and just proceed to their destination. Those extra playthroughs add nothing at all to the game, they just make a possibly fun transition between scenarios into a slightly more boring activity.
The third major issue the game presents is the boring combat. Enemies can be found all across the Wasteland, and they are not exactly the most engaging foes around. Battling all enemies is just a matter of using enough ink to make them friendly, or enough thinner to make them disappear from the world. Therefore combats are simply a matter of running around while spraying the enemy in question with as much paint as possible. There isn't a moment of awe-inspiring creativity in the enemies design, and even though they have different forms of attack, defeating all of them requires pretty much the same method. The fact that game's camerawork is decent at best also doesn't help make the combats more compelling than they are, on the contrary it can turn them into frustrating ordeals.
Epic Mickey is not all about shortcomings, though. Despite all of its slip-ups the game is still a fun platformer to play, and the biggest part of the credit goes to the artistic department involved in the game's production. The artists behind the title were able to transform a real-life artwork of an environment – Disneyland – into a distinct and full of personality videogame scenario, crafting – therefore – a highly artistic version of a place that is already artistic in itself. The scenarios are wonderful in their thorn-apart state and they become even more overwhelming if you work on filling them up with ink and restoring a part of their original beauty and colors. Painting the environment and watching it fluidly transform is one of the most fun activities in the game, and it compels players to explore and play around with the scenarios around them for a little bit. The Wasteland is an extremely immersive location, and the solid story behind it turns it into a rather believable place too.
To go along with the great visuals, a masterpiece of a soundtrack was also crafted. The game is full of dark instrumental themes that perfectly convey the feeling of despair and sadness when one has upon walking into such broken environments. The tunes are not catchy – as you would expect from a platformer – they are actually atmospheric and very successful in bringing players closer to the action. That outstanding combination between sound and sight is the main factor that makes Epic Mickey a nice game to play. The game also features good voice acting into some of its key cutscenes, the ones who don't possess that mark make up for that with extremely high artistic values in their presentation.
To sum things up, Epic Mickey is certainly a mixed bag. The creativity and attention to detail that are seen in the game's visuals and soundtrack are in a much higher level than the craftiness applied to create the stages and challenges that keep the game rolling. For a 3-D Mickey game, Epic Mickey is without a doubt much better than average, but when compared with some of its generation's biggest platformers the game just falls short from impressing. Still, anyone who has a love for the good things Disney has produced during the years will be delighted to know that the Disney license was so well-used by the game's developers throughout the adventure. Epic Mickey is definitely not the brightest platformer out there, but its interesting concept and unique attitude make up for a nice package.