Epic Mickey

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Epic Mickey stars Mickey Mouse who travels through a mirror and finds a model town created by a wizard. Mickey accidentally knocks paint thinner on it and as a result; ruins his creation. Unknown to Mickey, the town is actually inhabited by Walt Disney's forgotten and retired cartoon characters and led by Disney's first cartoon star; Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (who Mickey Mouse replaced). After many years, a monster pulls Mickey Mouse through the mirror and into the damaged world; now known as 'The Wasteland' and the adventure begins to help restore the world that he ruined.

The game is a very linear adventure game with platforming sections. You are given simple tasks and puzzles to proceed into the next area. A large part of the game is about using the magic paintbrush to interact with the world. This can fire paint or paint-thinner and so feels slightly reminiscent of Super Mario Sunshine which had Mario firing water at painted sections to restore the polluted world.

Using the Wii Remote, paint can be fired to restore missing objects such as platforms, and thinner can be fired to remove objects such as walls. In fact, a lot of the world can be sprayed with paint and thinner. Although a lot of it only provides a cosmetic difference, there are plenty of secret areas to reveal, and a lot of puzzles rely on a combination of the two.

When you arrive in a new area, the camera pans round, and your gremlin assistant Gus will chip in with instructions of what tasks you need to perform. Trouble is, you don't stay in an area too long and so it feels like you are constantly interrupted and being led through the game. The game is very large and takes at least 12 hours to finish, but you do feel the constant interruptions drag it out even further than necessary.

Hidden in the areas are other Gremlins which can be freed with Mickey's spin attack. Once freed, they will help you achieve your objectives which is a great idea and provides a large incentive to keep an eye out for them. For example, if you have to find and spray two pipes to stop the steam and fix a machine, the gremlin will locate and fix one for you.

The camera isn't perfect and can be a bit annoying, although can be manually panned with the d-pad, and centred with the C button (although this doesn't work in certain positions).

Graphically, it's surprisingly good, and also surprisingly dark considering it is a Disney game, although it needs to be like this to emphasise the dark theme and show the destruction within the world. You can help brighten up the world with the use of paint, and some tasks are focussed around this.

You will be constantly doing quests, be it hitting switches, collecting items, painting certain areas, or delivering items between characters. Then once you are in the next area, there will be more quests to do. Continuously doing errands seems repetitive, but this is what adventure games are all about.

To travel between areas, you will need to activate the projector screens and then you are thrown into a 2D platforming section in the style of an old black and white cartoon. This takes around 30 seconds to 1 minute to complete and they help break up the game-play and provide a chance to find the 'cartoon reel' which unlocks concept art. Annoyingly, there is some need to backtrack between areas, so you will have to play some of these sections repeatedly, but in reverse.

In terms of combat, Mickey can spin attack with a shake of the remote, and by spraying thinner at the enemies; they will be erased, or covering them with paint causes them to switch allegiances and fight for you. When fighting important characters, your choices to use paint of thinner has an effect on the story with thinner deemed more evil and paint deemed the good choice.

You will encounter a few Disney characters along the course of the game, but not as many as you would expect.

Overall, Epic Mickey is a great adventure game with an interesting concept with plenty to do and lots of secrets to find. To improve the game, I would have liked bigger but less numerous areas, so that you aren't constantly stopped to introduce them. Longer 2D sections would be welcome, with the option to skip them when backtracking.