Disney is one of the companies which really knows how to handle their IP, like Mickey Mouse. The latest Mickey Mouse game, called Epic Mickey, looks quite different from other Mickey games, it’s a lot darker, and has some surreality to it as well. Made by famed video game designer Warren Spector, we had great hopes for Epic Mickey, Disney’s biggest Wii offering this holiday season. However, things turned out quite differently.

In Epic Mickey, you play as Mickey Mouse in his own cartoon world where the objective is to do a bunch of missions, like any other platformer. The missions you run are straight on and something we’ve seen in any platformers. In fact, it’s hard to find just one original mission in Epic Mickey, but there’s a sense that it’s kept simple for a reason. We dunno what that reason is. Between the missions, you’ll be playing amazing looking 2D side scroller levels, which look as if they’re taken out of the old Disney cartoons from the 40s and onward — some are even black and white, which makes the nostalgia even more impressive.

The big original idea introduced in Epic Mickey is a paint brush — kind of a magic wand, which you use to color objects ahead of you, for instance, paint over a bridge so you can cross it. This is quite original and we’re sad that Disney didn’t make it a bigger part of the game, as it’s a perfect fit with the Wiimote. But as we discovered with Epic Mickey, even the paint brush is limited to certain parts of the map and only to certain objects, and at times, you’ll be stressed to figure out what can be painted and what cannot. The worst thing is that once out paint something, it doesn’t get saved, of you re-enter the map, everything is reset. Which kinda makes the paint brush pointless.

You do use the brush for combat, where you can paint enemies to become friends, or kill them by pouring paint thinner over them. However, the combat quickly gets tedious and repetitive, and once again, the original feature of the brush isn’t used to its full extent.

Epic Mickey has some serious issues, most notably the camera and control issues, which, when combined, make for some of the dullest gameplay ever. Combine that further with tedious levels and boring combat, Epic Mickey fails big time on the Wii. The biggest upside are the great visuals, and the 2D mini games that resemble old Disney cartoons. Epic Mickey had a lot of promise, but ultimately, it’s a disappointment.

The Good:
Great Disney visuals
Awesome 2D minigames

The Bad:
Camera issues
Flawed controls
Little originality
Tedious missions
Boring combat

Overall score: 2/10