Warren Spector, the mind behind some of the best games in PC history, got his hands on Mickey Mouse, the most famous fictional character in the world. It’s a strange combination, but between Spector’s impressive history of games (Thief, Deus Ex, Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander) and Mickey’s history of actually having games based on him that weren’t total shit (Castle of Illusion, Magical Quest, Kingdom Hearts), gamers have been hesitantly hopeful about what the pact between Disney and Spector that is Junction Point Studios could come up with.
The end result is a good game with moments of greatness. Or a great game held back by major flaws. Or a mediocre game that shows solid gameplay but ends up squandering its potential. Disney’s Epic Mickey
Epic Mickey has you playing the famous mouse, who dives into a mutant model of Disneyland on the wizard Yen Sid’s table to undo a rather nasty mistake he made decades ago. At least, that’s the plot on the surface. At heart, Epic Mickey is really about the sad, inevitable fates of all the characters who end up on the cutting room floor and are otherwise forgotten. While Mickey and his pals have gained immortality over the decades, many of Mickey’s original peers have fallen by the wayside. Before color came to Mickey’s cheeks (and pants), he was the star of several black and white shorts, with a supporting cast of Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Clara Cluck, and other anthropomorphic characters you probably haven’t heard of. Even before Mickey, Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a star of several shorts in his own right, but the rights of whom were lost to Universal Pictures. Here, in the “Wasteland” of Yen Sid’s workshop, these forgotten characters have eked out a life, even after Mickey spilled a massive amount of paint thinner and caused a disaster throughout the land. Whether that metaphor is intentional or unintentional, only Warren Spector knows for sure.
If you think that sounds like a really interesting take on Disney’s history, to revisit the oldest characters in the company and genuinely look at what happens when characters fall by the wayside, I’m right there with you. Unfortunately, that doesn’t quite happen. The shadow of the inevitably interfering hand of the Disney Corporation blots out almost all emotional and philosophical resonance Epic Mickey could have had. What should be genuine envy and resentment at Mickey from the forgotten characters is little more than hollow awkwardness, and the residents of the Wasteland seem so artificial and robotic they might as well have literally been built in Disney’s workshop out of spare bits of scrap metal. If Epic Mickey tried to be a little bit darker, a little bit bolder, and a little bit more honest with the company’s genuinely impressive history and how so much has changed over the last near-century, this could have been a much, much more compelling story.
As it stands, Epic Mickey is just a decent third-person platformer with some Super Mario Sunshine-style gameplay mechanics and a distinctly Banjo-Kazooie-feeling emphasis on item collection. Run around the level, solve a few puzzles, climb a mountain/cliff/building/waterfall/whatever, grab a MacGuffin, repeat. It’s fun, but it’s neither revolutionary nor particularly excellent in its design. Some of the levels are actually quite memorable—Mickeyjunk Mountain particularly stood out, a tower pile of discarded Mickey Mouse merchandise, including Mickey Mouse NES and SNES cartridges you have to use as stepping stones—but most of the levels are simply present, showing off a handful of decent set pieces but never actually presenting anything particularly remarkable.
Then there’s the camera. Epic Mickey has some of the worst camera controls I’ve seen in this generation. Supposedly, you use the Wiimote’s direction pad to control the camera. Unfortunately, the camera takes these button presses less like commands and more like vague suggestions, only occasionally moving around to the angle you want. Epic Mickey is a third-person platformer, and if I had a nickel for how many times I fell into a pit of paint thinner and died because of the crappy camera, I’d be able to afford to go to Disneyland.
At heart, Epic Mickey is mediocre, but with some fun points. The premise is fantastic. The platforming has hints of greatness overshadowed by long expanses of cookie-cutter mush. The graphics and the sound are both great, but we’ve reached the point where every new Wii game has “the best Wii graphics yet (but seriously, when is Nintendo gonna give us high-def?)” Sadly, all of these points can’t get past the feeling that Warren Spector could have done so much more. He had a great idea, but the final product feels like he pulled so many punches his arm must be in a sling by now.
The sad fact is that Disney absolutely will not allow any sort of dark, biting, sardonic, satirical, or otherwise unconventional portrayal of its mascot. Ironically, the sort of soul-searching and calling-out of Mickey Mouse Epic Mickey should have had is exactly the sort Disney itself could use. Instead, any teeth the game might have had were blunted beyond recognition, with only cardboard cutouts quietly bemoaning their fates after The Mouse has come and gone and come again, never actually trying to hit home with its message. The worst part is that none of us could have expected anything else. This is Disney we’re talking about. Bright and shiny and never looking back, never peeking under the rocks, never listening to naysayers. Spector has said repeatedly that Disney kept its hands generally off of the game, but after seeing the final product, I simply cannot see how that is the case.
