Epic Mickey (2010)

Originally released in 2010 and remade in 2024, this is Disney's attempt to give Mickey an adventurous personality.

The game is a 3D platformer with Mickey Mouse as a protagonist, who is trapped in a land of forgotten characters that is being slowly destroyed because of Mickey's fault, and you can either help to restore it or let the thinner ruin everything.

Thanks to the setting, there are many references to Disney's classic era, with many characters that haven't been used in a long time. There is even a metacommentary about how little Disney cares about the preservation of its own story, which is funny considering this is a game licensed by them.

And, to be honest, that's the most interesting part of the game. The gameplay itself is kind of basic, the platforming is easy for the most part and the level design isn't that entertaining. The graphics, references to real-life cartoons, and aesthetic are great and fun at first, but soon you realize exploring the Wasteland isn't that engaging, and when you are at the final levels you can feel a little fatigued.

This is a shame because there are many parts of the game where you have to make choices, and depending on them you will get or miss collectibles, so if you want to get everything it is mandatory to complete the game at least twice, but after defeating the final boss the first time I wasn't feeling interested in doing a new game+ to experience the content I missed.

Still, the game isn't bad at all, it just feels generic outside of the unique setting and the Disney brand, but if you want to play an easy platformer and are a fan of Disney/Mickey Mouse, I'm sure you'll love it. However, if you don't care about either of them I wouldn't really recommend it.

Est-ce que tous les jeux vidéos dérivés de grandes franchises sont voués à être des cash machines sans âme ? Si vous posez la question a un enfant des années 80, il y a pourtant de très grandes chances que son jeu préféré soit Ducktales ou Aladdin. Il y a quelques jours, j'ai demandé à Reddit quels étaient leurs premiers souvenirs de jeux vidéos. Beaucoup de commentateurs ont répondu par des jeux Disney. Chaque génération de console a d'ailleurs son hit issu de la firme aux grandes oreilles.

A l'occasion de la sortie du remaster Epic Mickey Rebrushed sur Switch, je me suis enfin lancée à l'aventure !

Epic Mickey est un plateformer 3D incorporant quelques mécaniques de RPG (quêtes, statistiques évolutives, système de karma...). Ce dernier est plutôt basique: si vous aidez les pnj en faisant des quêtes secondaires et que vous choisissez de "réparer" les méchants vous aurez forcément un karma positif.

Mickey arrive par hasard dans le laboratoire d'un sorcier occupé à peindre magiquement un monde pour les personnages Disney oubliés. En chahutant, Mickey renverse sur la toile une bouteille de dissolvant, ruinant ainsi l'œuvre du mage. Mickey s'enfuit et, de retour dans son monde, passe plusieurs années sans se douter de la gravité de ses actions. Un jour, il est attiré dans cet autre monde par un fantôme de dissolvant. associé au personnage du savant fou et à Oswald le lapin, il veut s'accaparer le cœur de Mickey, clé de sortie du monde de la désolation où échouent les toons oubliés.

A partir de là, on va devoir se servir d'un pinceau magique doté du pouvoir de création et de destruction. Choisir l'un ou l'autre va influencer notre relation avec les personnages et notre karma.

Le gameplay a un peu vieilli mais reste très accessible. On traverse des zones semi-ouvertes en combattant des mobs et en résolvant des puzzles assez simples. Chaque passage entre les différentes zones se fait par un niveau de plateforme 2D. En repoussant les mobs des zones, on débloque plusieurs hubs habités qui vont alors accueillir des quêtes secondaires. Cela force à faire des aller-retours entre les zones mais on peut passer les niveaux 2D en payant quelques tickets. Ces tickets servent aussi à acheter des artworks du jeu pour notre bibliothèque et des pins pour notre collection.

Non, là où le bat blesse c'est sur l'aspect technique. Chaque changement de zone est accompagné d'un long, TRES LONG temps de chargement. Il y a des nombreuses chutes de framerate et la hitbox de notre personnage est parfois totalement aux fraises. La volonté de ne pas autoriser le joueur à revenir en arrière pour changer ses actions et ses choix moraux est très rigide. On aimerait parfois avoir la possibilité de recharger un niveau ou une salle après s'être rendu compte que l'on a zappé une quête ou fait un mauvais choix.

Mais j'oublie tous ces défauts pour une seule raison, la plus importante de toutes: Ce jeu a été fait avec un amour sincère de Disney. Evidemment on pense à Oswald, création perdue de Walt Disney à ses débuts chez Universal mais ce serait faire l'impasse sur tout le reste. Le monde de la désolation est inspiré de Disneyland et de ses attractions classiques (dans un registre twisted qui nous rappelle le Dismaland de Banksy). Le jeu incorpore les pins, des cartoons d'archives, des réorchestrations de musiques classiques (shoutout pour le thème de Small World) et des goodies obscures comme le masque à gaz Mickey.

C'est un hommage. Un hommage par des gens passionnés. Passionnés de jeux vidéos. Passionné de Disney. On ne peut que s'amuser.

Epic Mickey is an endearing tribute to Mickey, the Disney Parks, and the Disney Company as a whole. As a big-time “Disney Adult”, I absolutely adored the creative imaginings of the “twisted” Disney Parks attractions, lands, and even songs. If you are a Disney fan, you must play and complete this game, because it’s such a tremendous love-letter to the artistic output of the company.

If you’re not so much of a Disney fan, but are a platforming game fan, the game itself does have a lot of charm as well. Epic Mickey surprised me with its gameplay competence and scope. I was expecting a very bare-bones, short game, but there’s a lot here! There are a lot of levels and quests and things to find and collect. There’s not a huge amount of challenge to be found here, Celeste this is not (that’s a good thing, for my weak gamer nature), though there was one boss sequence with the Mad Doctor that really frustrated me and seemed a lot harder than the rest of the game. Honestly if there’s any game that this reminds me of, it is Psychonauts. Seriously! There is a diversity of levels that really has that same sort of, “The next area could really be anything!” feeling.

While it was a lot better than I expected, I did have some constructive criticism that I felt like should be mentioned. This is, of course, a Wii game, and has the “flick to attack” thing that many Wii games have. I don’t really care for this — I know that it works 99 times out of 100, but it always feels like it does fail when I absolutely needed the attack to work the most.

I also don’t really like the “hybrid” targeting method that the Paint and Thinner mechanic uses. You use the Wii pointer to target things to shoot with paint or thinner, which is fine, because the Wii pointer works pretty good. But the problem is that the source of the paint is the character of Mickey Mouse, so if he’s in the wrong spot, you won’t be able to hit what you’re targeting. I would have preferred if they invented some conceit to allow the paint to just shoot out of the screen, like a light-gun shooter game, instead of requiring you to also coordinate the character position in order to shoot the paint.

The third thing I didn’t care for was the heavy amount of repetition in the game. There are 2-dimensional platforming stages that connect the larger 3D areas, and any time you travel between these areas, you have to traverse these 2D transition stages. This gets boring! Especially because there are a whole bunch of these 2D stages with different themes (they’re all based on old Mickey Mouse cartoons, it’s kinda great, otherwise, like Cuphead before Cuphead), but there are only a couple areas that the story has you repeatedly travel back and forth between. So you wind up seeing some of these segments only once, and others, you see, back and forth, maybe 10 or more times. They should have paced this better, because it made me resent the end of the game where they make you re-tread some of the 3D areas, too. I was “primed” to be annoyed by the repetition by their repetition of the transition stages.

I know these sound like some big complaints, but they’re really more like those annoyances that just kinda stick in your craw because the rest of the experience was so enjoyable and decidedly good. I’m really glad that there is a sequel, because I grew to love Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and I think it’s so awesome that this game was the thing that brought him back into the Walt Disney Entertainment fold.

I have always known Mickey as more mascot than featured player. He wasn't in the Disney media I grew up with, so I never had any real affection for him or his friends (except maybe Donald, because that is one angry duck). I have also never been to a Disney theme park. So unless this game had a world dedicated to the Aristocats there was no real reason for it to appeal to me. Or hell, screw Disney and give us the Don Bluth animation crossover game that the people crave.

But hey, I liked it, and was surprised by how many interesting ideas it had. The Wasteland is a great setting. A place where forgotten cartoons live, most of whom are delighted to see Mickey despite him hardly remembering them, is both sad and very touching. Seeing the statue of Oswald holding Walt's hand is a bit too much for my soft heart to handle. It made me want to fix this damn world, so its inhabitants could live out their days peacefully.

I wasn't expecting player choice to play such a large role. There are different ways to accomplish various tasks, having either a positive or negative effect on your environment. A gremlin got mad at me for breaking a theme park ride, but saving other gremlins helped me out at key moments throughout the game. I know Warren Spector was the creative director, but it was still surprising to see a family game where you can either dissolve enemies or turn them good. It all feels pretty surface level, but I could see a younger player getting invested in how they choose to approach the game.

The core painting mechanic was fun. It was satisfying to dissolve a wall to find treasure in a hidden nook, and felt great to restore a drab neighborhood to its former colorful glory. It would have been nice to see it implemented in more puzzle solving, but both the puzzles and platforming are pretty basic.

The camera didn't bother me as much as it did others. It is slow to manipulate, with the d-pad being a barely passable alternative to a second   control stick. It mostly stayed out of my way, and even when it did obstruct my view it wasn't a big deal since the game is very forgiving.

There is a plethora of easter eggs and references to Disney that were mostly lost on me, but it is always nice to play a game that is so enamored with its source material. This was clearly a labor of love for all involved. The 2D levels that were based on old Disney shorts were a clever idea, but were never very interesting or fun to play, especially those you had to traverse multiple times to reach different areas.

Ultimately Epic Mickey is just a solid 3D platformer, your enjoyment of which will be dependent on whether or not you love Disney or are atleast interested in their history. It doesn't exactly break new ground, but it does let you paint that ground and then assemble a terrifying Goofy animatronic nightmare monster. Seriously, look at this guy:

I decided to take a break from whittling down my backlog to replay an old favorite... and it was better than I remembered!

There are three main aspects of the game I find really appealing:

1. The overall concept. I'm a Disney geek, so setting a game in a land of forgotten and/or twisted Disney characters and locations is just fantastic.
2. The mix of platforming and light adventure game and RPG mechanics. These sequences add variety while strengthening my connection to the world. This is one of the reasons that Psychonauts is my favorite game.
3. Mickey's paintbrush controls well and its mechanics are fun.

Prior to this playthrough, my memory of this game was tarnished by issues I'd had with its camera. Those issues are still present, but they don't feel as egregious to me as they once did. It is a fair criticism to say a game debuting three years after Super Mario Galaxy should have a better camera than Epic Mickey does... but it's not like Super Mario Sunshine's camera feels all that great today, either, y'know?