Epic Mickey: Rebrushed Review – A fresh lick of paint

Despite the massive financial success of Nintendo’s Wii, the console’s games (outside of the central first-party titles) have always had a somewhat negative reputation. While it’s true that there was a lot of awful shovelware and games ruined by shoehorned waggle controls, there were also standout games that were overlooked by the wider gaming community. Perhaps chief among these was Epic Mickey, a surprisingly dark and interesting take on Disney’s most iconic character. Indeed, looking back most of the interest in the game came from the involvement of industry legend Warren Spector (of Deus Ex fame). The eventual sequel, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, moved away from exclusivity and released on all contemporary platforms with added coop multiplayer and a shift towards being an interactive musical. But, going back to the original, Epic Mickey has now been remastered – or Rebrushed as the title has it – in the hope of finding a wider audience.

Put simply, the story of Epic Mickey stems from Mickey Mouse being a pretty terrible character. He breaks into mentor Yen Sid’s office and interferes with his magical paint, bringing devastation to the world of Wasteland in the process. Wasteland is where all the forgotten cartoon characters go and for Mickey to compound his role in eclipsing the likes of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shows what a villain he truly is. However, given his iconic role as the face of Disney, he is cast here as the hero and it’s up to you to fix what he has done and restore the world of the Wasteland. Wider allegories to the role of Disney as a corporation could easily be made here but that is perhaps outside the remit of this review, and a game about a mouse with a paintbrush.

Graphically Epic Mickey was always a striking game, but one whose 3D sections were held back by the limitations of the Wii hardware. The interspersed 2D sections were highlights back in 2010 and remain so now, but the quality of the presentation as a whole has improved almost beyond recognition. The fantastic art design of the world of Wasteland really gets a chance to shine here and it is a good example of a game that really needed a visual update.

Audio has, somewhat disappointingly, been kept very faithful so the various cutscenes still lack voice acting with characters employing grunts and chirps. Given the extended use of voices in the sequel this feels like a shame.

As mentioned above, the game mixes two different platforming styles. The majority of the game plays out in 3D as you traverse environments both original and inspired by Disney classics. Travelling between the different 3D spaces occurs through jumping into projector screens that take you to levels closely based on original Mickey Mouse shorts such as Steamboat Willie. These are beautifully animated and strongly reminiscent of the Illusion titles from the 16-bit era. Both styles control well, but I would have liked to see longer 2D sections and even perhaps a boss fight or two in this style.

Mickey comes equipped with traditional traversal mechanics, such as a double jump and spin but newly added to this version are evasive dashes and ground pounds. These have been widely publicised in the promotion for the game but the new mechanics are almost entirely unnecessary as the actual game has not been changed to require their use. I never used either throughout my entire playthrough as the game is still mostly based around the magic paintbrush that Mickey wields. You can use this brush to either add paint or remove it with thinner, and there are many areas where either approach is valid. Enemies can either be befriended with paint or destroyed with thinner whilst navigating the world requires you to remove barriers or repair platforms and moving machinery.

When the game is at its best it requires you to use both platforming skills and environmental puzzle solving to work through complex areas and the different brush skills provide a simple moral level as well. Do you repair and befriend or take the quicker and more destructive route? Every boss can be defeated by either approach with the game playing out differently either way. This provides the advertised multiple endings but in truth it works out as a binary choice between paint and thinner, with the main reward being an upgrade to whichever you use. The boss fights themselves play out more as separate puzzle areas rather than combat per se but are enjoyable. However, much of the game still feels quite repetitive and padded out, issues I always had with the original.