First and foremost, THQN is being THQN here, charging $60 for the game despite its release being very close to several flagship games, including some lower-priced titles like Frostpunk 2 or Lollipop Chainsaw (priced at $40). They do this with their collector’s editions as well, and most end up as dead stock despite being marketed as limited in quantity. And yet, they will keep doing this. I have no clue why but it's their characteristic. While I cannot justify the price tag, long story short, Epic Mickey is a very good game. A bit annoying at times, but still a journey that is somewhat fulfilling and worth exploring. You can expect about 15 hours of playtime if you want to complete almost everything. It’s one of the best remasters I’ve played—competent and seemingly very true to the core.
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed comes from Purple Lamp , the artisans behind SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated and The Cosmic Shake. The original Epic Mickey was crafted by the now-defunct Junction Point Studios to be a classic flagship game for Wii. I will always respect Warren Spector —not just for his work in creating one of my favorite genres, immersive sims, but also for his involvement in one of the all-time greats: Deus Ex. Of course, at the time, many were surprised to see Warren getting involved with Epic Mickey until he would eventually reveal that it was a dream of his. Who can judge him, everyone loves cartoons, right?
Warren's vision is definitely present in this game. You mess around, and you find out—almost like an ImSim. I love it, I really do. Of course, I wasn't expecting it to reach the complexity of Warren's previous works, but I was pleasantly surprised by the level manipulation mechanics. You have a brush that can thin the world’s layers or repaint what is alreay thinned. Doing this changes the environment and adds complexity to the levels, allowing you to discover collectibles and new ways to traverse. However, while there are multiple options—thus fulfilling part of Warren's vision—the levels never quite evolve in complexity. By complexity, I mean utilizing your abilities to skip portions of a level (similar to how Prey’s goo gun lets you do) or creating unique vantage points. While Epic Mickey offers some choices, they aren’t as expansive. You can select between a certain array of options, sure.
There are ‘Thin’ and ‘Paint’ paths (a sort of quasi-morality system), which you unlock by completing quests in various ways (though you can also fail them if you don't finish before progressing to the next area). Painting (befriending) or thinning (defeating) enemies has a slight effect, but the truth is, combat isn’t challenging. You can spam paint all over the place and befriend almost everyone, except for the Beetleworx types of enemies, which can’t be befriended. Thinning them out of existence is an easy task so not being able to befriend them is not quite a feat. The lack of meaningful impact from your approach to combat is ultimately disappointing. And while you can manipulate certain parts of the levels, the limitation that only specific areas can be thinned or painted makes things painfully obvious. If I had played this as a kid, I might have gotten lost a few times. It's not overly cryptic, but there are moments when backtracking or finding ‘objects’ to complete quests is required. Now, though, it’s just a matter of running into them as I spread paint everywhere like a mad man. A prominent con is that the levels reset to their initial state after you exit them (the objectives you have completed of course do stay but the paint will be gone) and it's kept like that in this remaster too.
Speaking of quests, it’s great that this game includes plenty of side quests, though most are ‘fetch me this, fetch me that’ tasks. Even the main quests often involve some form of hidden object hunting. This gives the game a bit of an early 2000s sandbox collectathon feel. I don’t have a serious problem with this, as some of my favorite platformers (A Hat in Time, Spyro, Banjo-Kazooie) do it as well. However, the collectibles don’t feel as rewarding, nor are they crucial to collect. There's barely any fear of missing out. You'd be opening up bunch of chests and buying some 'unlockables' from the shop but they don't even count towards any achievement. Though the extra stuff does include some cool artworks etc. Some side quests reward you with health or paint upgrades, or they provide a ‘spark’ needed to repair projectors and progress to the next level. So, I rarely felt like I was wasting my time by completing side quests.
The 2D levels ooze charisma. You need to traverse through these in order to progress to the next 3D level. While it's a creative idea, these levels are very short and lack challenge. There are far too many of them, and you may have to revisit some locations multiple times. E-Tickets (the in-game currency) always respawn in these levels, allowing you to grind hence making the best out of your time, but playing them back to back only highlights how limited their scope is, which further trivializes their importance, even though they differ thematically. I found out that you skip the stretch films i.e. 2D levels by paying 10 E-Tickets to gremlins, it's a trivial price if you want to save time but I don't see the necessity of this game design . The 3D levels are often open areas (though not particularly large), with questlines usually chaining 3 to 4 similarly themed levels. Most having quests exclusive to each level (either acquired through the main hub or through in-level). Personally, I would have preferred larger areas for each theme and fewer (but longer) 2D levels, possibly featuring boss fights at the end. But that’s just me. The bosses are fun, but they lack meaningful gameplay elements—you can thin or paint them, but this doesn’t really create any emergent gameplay during the fight. The game also includes multiple hub areas, with one arguably serving as the main one.
The camera, from what I’ve read, was a major issue in the original game. It seems completely fixed now, and the game runs smoothly on Unreal Engine. I encountered one animation bug where I got stuck, but I was able to break free.
The soundtrack is good and dynamic, shifting from light to dark as you progress through the levels. It's very artsy and colorful game, contributing to the magical world of Disney. The cutscenes are well-done and look astonishing in particular. And now you can photo mode all of these.
The story is serviceable for what Epic Mickey sets out to be, surprisingly an emotional one though the lack of voice acting is a bit disappointing, as it could have added a lot to the game’s overall charm and the tone.
All in all, Epic Mickey Rebrushed deserves a chance. Not an all-time great platformer (inevitably looking at Sunshine) by any means but it's a fun, memorable and intelligent one.
Trivia: I believe Warren labels this as a sim-lite. Of course being the one who coined the term and also being the director of the game it's hard to argue against such claim. While there is not really a consensus on the term of ImSim, it could have been relatively harder to market this game as one but Warren is most definitely set this game out to combine the said genre with a platform in a mainstream IP and some of these are rooted in his words back in time. I personally feel a sandbox collectathon is also a great term to use colloquially because there are lots of shared aspects and the lovers of that genre will know what to expect.
★★★½☆☆
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