Mickey Mouse has returned to video games, and has never been better.
STORY 10
The story starts out with our loveable protagonist Mickey Mouse in the "real world" of Disney. However, Mickey accidentally spilled thinner on a small world that Yen Sid (from Fantasia) built for all of the forgotten Disney characters, which ends up ruining the world. Months later, Mickey gets sucked into this world, which is named Wasteland, and an evil doctor ties him down and tries to take out his heart with a plunger (the reasons of this are explained later in the story very well). Being Mickey Mouse, he does not allow this to happen, and escapes before his heart gets taken out. From this moment on, Mickey meets a Gremlin named Gus, who helps Mickey try to get out of this world because Gus knows that Mickey doesn't belong there.
Being a world that is inhabited by forgotten Disney characters, these characters aren't the only inhabitants of this world. The many forgotten Disney characters of this world all recognize and idolize Mickey Mouse because Mickey is Walt Disney's master creation and the heart Disney. The leader of this world is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney's previous master creation that he had before making Mickey Mouse. Oswald is in Wasteland because here in the real world, Oswald was lost by Disney to Universal in a vicious legal battle, and was only reclaimed by Disney in 2006. Many of the characters will be easily recognized by hardcore Disney characters, however you do not need to know the background of the characters to understand the game in any fashion. I personally only knew one or two of them, but I never felt like I was missing out on anything.
Without spoiling anything in the story, I will say that the main purpose of the story is to get out of Wasteland and back into the real world where Mickey can go back to being the Disney character we all know and love. In order to do so, Mickey Mouse has to do a series of quests in areas designed after Disneyland, and this is where Epic Mickey really shines. The environments and settings of this game are absolutely fantastic, even perfect if you are a Disney fan or a fan of Disneyland. If you have been to Disneyland, you will recognize many of these areas. There are areas in this game that are based on rides and areas in Disneyland, most notable are Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. I won't spoil all of the areas because realizing what these areas are based on and looking at the glorious recreations of these areas are half the fun of this game.
Of course, the areas would not be mean much if the things you did inside of them were not fun. Fortunately, the quests in Epic Mickey are exceptionally well designed, and there was never a part that I was bored, which is especially amazing given the fact that many of the levels have a very somber tone to them given the apocalyptic Disney setting. Accompanying these are side quests, which are also exceptional. Most, if not all, of these side quests are for a variety of forgotten Disney characters who want something done, and part of what makes these quests so compelling is how much the game makes you care about these characters. The way they characterize these people without voice acting is something I have been trying to make sense out of, but I just can't determine how they did it. It is quite remarkable, and something I have not seen in a game in a long time, and never seen in a Wii game.
Overall, I feel like the story and characters in Epic Mickey are incredible. They do a phenomenal job at engrossing you in this situation, and the environments make it that much better. I personally have not been this engrossed in a fictional world of a video game since Fallout 3, and that is quite the statement. Of course, it comes as no surprise that it comes from a designing veteran such as Warren Spector, lead designer of Epic Mickey as well as the maker of Deus Ex. What does surprise me is that a world consisting of Disney characters, a subject I will admit not being the biggest fan of, sucked me in so well and didn't spit me out until days after finishing the game.
GAMEPLAY 9.0
Being that this is a Warren Spector game, one might assume that the choice elements and consequences from the popular Deus Ex might bleed into other games the man makes. Not only do these aspects bleed into Epic Mickey, but also they make up much of the glory of the gameplay in the game, as it builds upon the choice brought in Deus Ex and makes it suitable in a way that seems "Disney."
For starters, the game is a platformer first, and it does it well. It is very much reminiscent of many of the platforming games that were on the Nintendo 64. It is very refreshing to see a platformer that isn't Mario do its job and do it well, as well as a game that is not all about killing everything in sight with guns. However, if the game were just a platformer, it wouldn't be nearly the game it turned out to be, and the main mechanic that saves it from being just a platformer is the paint/thinner mechanic. Essentially, when you start the game, you get a magical paintbrush, and it comes with two abilities: spray something with paint using the B button, or spray something with thinner using the Z button. If you use paint on objects in the environment, it creates environmental objects, but if you use thinner, it erases environmental objects. What this leads to is a wide variety of ways to not only go about platforming, but this also shows itself in combat and in the quests.
In combat, you can go about using paint, thinner, or both to overcome most of your enemies. If you spray them with paint, you befriend them, and if you spray them with thinner, they fade into oblivion. The combat has been a controversial subject of the game, and in my opinion, I thought it was just fine. It isn't nearly as good as all of the other aspects of the game, but it gets the job done. For each boss battle, there is a paint way and a thinner way of dealing with each boss, and depending on which one you use, your respective choice will increase the amount of that usable substance. For example, if you beat a boss with paint, your paint level will increase, allowing you to use more paint. There is an auto-target mechanic usable on anything but bosses that you can use if you are not feeling up to pointing the Wii-Mote at the screen, and it works just fine. There are a few enemies in which you have to use thinner, which leads the player to know that it are times in which using thinner isn't a bad thing in the environment. Using thinner, you can uncover many unlockable extras and secrets that are only accessible by revealing them with thinner. This is a very good thing to remind the player, especially when bringing up the idea that using thinner is completely evil. It is good to remind the player that sometimes it can be necessary if you want to unlock all the secrets of the game.
The quests also carry this paint/thinner mechanic to a certain extent. For most quests, there are two ways of getting things done. You can do it using a technique that specializes in paint, or one that specializes in thinner. The amazing thing about this game is that if you choose to go one path throughout the game (paint or thinner), the game makes you try as hard as you can to do the quest that correlates with the path you chose, no matter how much harder the quest is than the other one. Countless times I did a quest the hard way because it was the paint way of doing it, even though the thinner way was clearly easier. There was only one quest where I broke that, and even then, it was not easy. I tried for at least 45 minutes trying to do it, until I just couldn't take it anymore and chose the easy way out (and if you choose the paint path like I did, you will know it when you get to it). This made the game feel more personal to me, as the fact that this game made me feel this strongly on doing everything the good way made me really care about this world and its inhabitants, something Junction Point did an incredible job of achieving.
One universal problem of the gameplay is the camera in the game. It can be very clunky at times, especially in tight spaces; as for the most part it is an auto-camera, with some manual controls on the D-Pad. The problem with this is that there are points where you cannot use the D-Pad at all, and the game doesn't tell you when you can or cannot use it. It can be frustrating in some of the harder platforming levels, but I never felt like it severely harmed skill in the game to the point where I could not finish something because of the camera, and I never felt as though it hindered my enjoyment of the game in any significant way. Other than this problem, the brush mechanics mixed with some stellar platforming elements make this a very enjoyable game.
GRAPHICS 9.75
The graphics in this game are outstanding, especially for a Wii game. There were actually parts where I could have sworn I was looking at a PS3/360 game. It can get that good. Like I said earlier in the Story section, the environments of this game are incredible. Each level is an apocalyptic reimagining of some aspect of Disneyland, and it is all designed phenomenally. The assets are very detailed, and everything just comes together in this art style better than many games nowadays can do. Mickey Mouse and all of the characters also look incredible. Mickey Mouse has the look that he had in the early days of Disney, not so much his look nowadays. The animations of Mickey are very smooth, and the animations of all of the characters look very fluid and are very well done. There are some slight drops in framerate, but I only found them rarely, usually when there are many enemies on screen at a time.
The cut scenes of the game are great as well for what they are worth. The key elements of the story are explained through 2D animated cartoons, which have a very unique style to them, which makes the delivery of these very effective. However, most of the cut scenes are one-on-one dialog scenes in game, and even these are great for what they are trying to do. Overall, this is easily the best looking game on the Wii, and even can put up a fight against some 360/PS3 games, especially with the consistency of its fantastic art style.
SOUND 9.0
The sound in this game is very good. There is no voice acting, which I read was a design choice in an attempt to mimic the lack of dialog in the classic Disney cartoons. I did feel, however, that voice acting may have hurt the game in the same way that it would hurt the Legend of Zelda games if they tried to voice link, as well as how voice acting nearly did ruin Metroid when they voiced Samus in Other M. While many people may disagree with me, I for one feel like it was the right choice not to have voice acting. The characters still make noise, including some classic high-pitched sounds from our favorite mouse friend, sounds that most people will recognize, and all will enjoy.
The score in this game is absolutely fantastic. Award winning in my opinion. Not only is the music itself phenomenal, which it is, but the score itself actually changes depending on how you play it. If you play it using paint, you will mostly hear music that is not necessarily upbeat in any way, but it is more happy-go-lucky than the music you will hear when playing with thinner. If you play with thinner, you will hear some very depressing music, something that is a very subtle touch, but is a fantastic one if you notice it because it really sets the mood based on how you play the game.
LENGTH 9.5
My first playthrough on the paint side was roughly 15 hours. In these 15 hours, I did almost every side quest that was paint-related, although there were a few in which I didn't do. This is the kind of game, however, that I can easily see myself replaying multiple times, especially for the collector in me. The reason for this is that it is literally impossible to gain all of the collectibles on one playthrough because there are some that are specific to paint or thinner. On that note, there are a TON of extras in this game. There are unlockable scenes, artwork, and even full cartoons that you can watch. It is definitely reminiscent of the classic N64 games where there were countless extras, and adding in endings specific to one side (paint or thinner) that will make you want to see the other one, you have at least 30+ hours of game here.
OVERALL 9.5
Overall, I would call Epic Mickey not only one of my favorite games of 2010, but also my favorite Wii game ever. It mixes a strange immature maturity with an interesting world that makes a game that I feel can appeal to kids and adults alike. It is like a Pixar movie: there are things in there that kids can enjoy, but if you are an adult, you can truly appreciate everything this game does and does so well. There is so much to see here of exceptional quality that begs for multiple playthroughs, and it is just an outstanding achievement on the Wii. It tickled me in all the right places, places I didn't expect it would, and it results in a game that while it may not be perfect, it is pretty damned close, closer than any 3rd party Wii game will ever get.
Story 10
Gameplay 9
Graphics 9.75
Sound 9
Length 9.5
OVERALL 9.5