Holy Cow Disney...Long ago, on a very peculiar day, I went to GameStop and was attracted by a certain Disney based game. I'm not sure if I was feeling curious or annoyed (Disney games have a pretty bad track record), or perhaps I knew the role it would play in this project. Today I will tell you the tale of a certain beloved character, a tale that is sure to be epic.
So to start off we get some back story, apparently when Mickey Mouse began his early career he noticed on night the mirror was a portal. The mirror led him to the lair of the wizard from fantasia, the award winning short. I'm sure he has a name, but beats me. He was putting the final life-giving touches to the forgotten world, a place based off fantasy world in Disney land that was made for every forgotten, unused, of drafted character in the Disney cartoons. It was meant to be a happy place held together by paint, however when the wizard finished and went to bed, Mickey tried to make his own creation with the magic paint and brush. A cute statue of Mickey began to melt away into black goop, and Mickey tried adding more paint to stabilize it. This made things worse, as the "blot" became an inky monster. Mickey tried splashing paint thinner on it to erase it, and as the wizard came back down Mickey panicked and ran. The combination of the paint and thinner created a portal to the forgotten world letting the blot in, and all the thinner destroyed most of the world, making it (YO SWORD LEGION!) a wasteland of near extinction.
So the wizard never knew of the intruder's identity, little did he know he would temporarily be his apprentice, but yeah, Mickey spent the next decades growing popularity as one of if not the most iconic cartoon character ever. However, his actions would catch up on him, one night in his
sleep the portal opened and an inky mass grabbed him dragging him through and into the wasteland along with the paintbrush. This was none other than the monster Mickey made, the Shadow Blot. Upon coming back to his consciousness Mickey found himself attached to a machine with the mad doctor (bet none of ya remember the mad doctor) ready to... wait for it... RIP OUT MICKEY'S HEART. Oh don't worry, he'll use a painless plunger. But yeah, ripping out a beloved character's heart means this ain't your ordinary Disney made game. Mickey breaks free however, but has to now face the shadowo blot. Having nothing to defend himself, he grabs the closest thing to him, the magic paintbrush. The shadow blot flees in terror knowing the danger of the brush. So the mad doctor escapes, and Mickey sees a rabbit who gets scared upon being noticed. He tries using the escape hatch but breaks the machine, making the robot machine go on a rampage. However, thanks to a gremlin (betcha didn't know about Disney gremlins either) named Gus Mickey shuts it down.
Now this here game... you wouldn't believe what happens with the plots. Many beloved Disney characters like captain hook's gang, extra's like Horace and Clarabelle, even different versions of Pete are here and in trouble. You learn how you caused a great amount of thinner to destroy the world, and the blot grew and released an army of blotlings that took over. The person who was in charge was Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit. As a side note, Oswald is the reason we have Mickey! He had many interesting and humerous cartoons, and was basically the baseline for Micky Mouse. Oswald never appeared again after Mickey stole the spotlight, making him the first of many to go to the forgotten world. But how does Mickey fit in all of this? It's the fact that the only way to leave the wasteland is to have a good heart. Due to this, every character who comes down loses their heart. Mickey, however, is the most famous Disney icon, giving him the most powerful heart of all. The blot and doctor want the heart so the blot can leave the wasteland into the real world and the doctor will stay behind to rule the forgotten world. Pretty bad huh? Well let's not dwell on the past or future... we live in the damaged, disturbing, nightmarish present.
As I said the wasteland was meant to be based of the fantasy park in Disney land, but with the incident of the thinner disaster and the habitation of the cartoons there it became a twisted mess. The first place you go to is supposed to represent the... the... I CAN'T DO THIS!!! No... I must do this for the people... meep... IT'S A CREEPY BOATRIDE LAND OK!? It's basically the night in the hotel after your little girl sister daughter niece whatever wants to keep seeing the small world attraction over and over, and you have a nightmare with the song in your head... not pleasant right? Well the first boss is also based on the ride. While waiting in the line there's a clocktower that shows a little preview every 15 minutes and then shows the time. At the very most, it's charming. But what if the clocktower was sentient? Would it like hearing that song every day forever? No, anyone would go insane. And the fact I brought all this up if since the boss is the tower, and it went insane from hearing the song. It looks creepy as all hell and the music playing is an evil version of the small world song. Thank GOD it has no vocals to it. There was a mountain attraction in the park too, and the mountain in wasteland, Mickeyjunk Mountain, is filled with countless wrecked Mickey merchandise, also very creepy. Tomorrow Land also looks like an extinct alien civilization, the beginning and end of the game take place in a dark version on the castle in the center, and the haunted bog easy... well I'm kinda stumped what the place is based off of. Adventure Land is pretty fine, compared to the rest of the world, and main street, first place in the park, serves as a hub-world.
Now the gameplay is very unique and revolves upon choices. Your paintbrush can shoot paint that fixes the world and befriends allies, and thinner that destroys whatever it can and defeat foes. Just about every part of the game puts your personality to the test, help others, go on a rampage, or do whichever benefits you the most. A prime example are the bosses, animatronics, and mission characters. How you deal with them don't seem to matter much at all. Let's take a look at the clocktower again. Now just to make it clear, most people say HOLY CRAP KILL IT KILL IT and use thinner to melt the arms, weaken them, and have the clocktower smash them to bits and die. The alternative is to immobilize the arms with paint to temporarily stun one arm and get the other to lift you to the tower's ever so freaky face to paint it and calm it down so he can turn off the music. Well either one you do, you never see the tower again. Then another aspect is fixing Oswald's robots. When the mad doctor was good he built a robot Goofy, Donald, and Daisy so Oswald had friends like Mickey, but upon turning evil destroyed them and scattered their parts. Now you can only go to a place once and never go back, so finding the 4 parts is real hard to do... you can still get the remaining ones at a store but they cost 1000 tickets each. You can get more missions for pins by fixing them, but that only seems useful for 100% completionists. And you will run into Horace, Big Bad Pete, and Small Pete. Small Pete crashed his/her/it's ship to the home of the gremlins and now they won't let him/her/it back. But he/she/it has proof in the ship log that it was an accident. So you have to go get it for... let's just call Small Pete "hit". But if you forget it or lose it hit'll unleash many enemies to kill you. Jeez... harsh, well if you'll do that to a protagonist why would we help? Pete missions involve wrangling enemies in mean street and helping other Petes in the wasteland. Horace missions involve finding lost items and solving mysteries. Helping them also yields rewards, but if you don't like pins then who cares?
We'll get back to that later, but how about the gameplay? Well using paint or thinner opens paths to go through. Traveling between maps require 2D platforming sections based on popular Disney shorts. A few platforming areas make clever use of paint and thinner too. Also the paint and thinner are used in fighting. The first enemies you fight are blotlings. There are different kinds, involving scouts, bombs, throwing enemies, and some upgraded versions of them. You can kill them with thinner (don't thin the bombs though) or befriend them with paint. Painting the more powerful enemies helps so they do more damage on the opposition or don't take too much damage and turn evil again. Next you fight beetleworx, the robots of the mad doctor. They are either hoppers, spinners, cannons, or sword fighters. You can't befriend them or kill them with thinner. Instead slow them down with paint and then thin the armor away and hit it's weak spot. Oh yeah, the sword robots are hook's pirates turned into robots. Where'd the doctor get this idea from? Eggman? Also you can choose to break the pirate robot machine or reverse the effect somehow returning the pirates who get in back to normal.
Now before we get to the ending here's some more tidbits to mention, every time yo beat the game you restart from the beginning in the mad doctor's lair. You keep any movie reels and pins so you can 100% this sucker. Every time you replay the game you can tyr something new, granting much replayability and depth. The music is focused on atmosphere, and is very forgetful as every track employs the same feeling, gloomy despair. However as you paint or thin the world you attract guardians in the form of tints of paint and turps of thinner. Use guardians if you are lost to find your next destination or use them in combat. They also have nice touches, making the music more dark or hopeful depending on how many of which kind you have and also increasing or decreasing the ooze Mickey gives off. Oh yeah... Mickey absorbed some blot and oozes black goo now... not like it really matters.
Now for the end, I won't give too much, but long story short Mickey gets out and the wizard learns Mickey was the cause of all this. However, with the forgotten world better than ever thanks to Mickey he simply let's him return home. The ending to this point is the same, but then the wizard shows you the results of important actions. In the worse-case scenario, the mission characters never change or fulfill their dreams. The animatronics aren't assembled and may never be. As for 3 bosses you face, the clocktower is shown breaking down in a thinner pool, peteronic comes back for revenge as a virus, and my opinion as saddest of all, captain hook's hook hand is seen floating in the ocean. Yeah, that means you KILLED him, murderer. Now let's say your a perfect little angel who does everything right. Well the animatronics are back to their usual lives, Horace is a respected detective, Big Bad Pete is a nice mayor to everyone, Small Pete is helping the gremlins repair the forgotten world, Peteronic now takes care of the renewed tomorrow land, Pete Pan (yes I'm not kidding, there is also a Pete Pan) goes back to fighting robot hook, and the clocktower is happy again, at least till he snaps again...
So that's the gist of Epic Mickey, which is truly EPIC indeed. I'm gonna go play it, but first...
It's a world of laughter, a world of fear.
It's a world of joy and a world of tears.
It's a small world after all...
It's a SMALL WORLD after all...
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL...
IT'S A SMALL.
SMALL.
WORLD.
Graphics
8 Sound
4 Addictive
9 Depth
10 Story
9 Difficulty
7
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