Disney has chosen the Wii video game console as their platform for Mickey Mouse’s newest adventure. According to reviews, this is not the traditional, cheesy Mickey of old. Epic is apparently pretty dark and daring – by all accounts a bold re-imagining of the world’s most famous mouse.
This new, morally ambiguous Mickey, turned loose with a magic paint brush in a land full of forgotten cartoon characters, is scoring a 78% on the game review aggregation site, Metacritic.com. Joystiq’s Randy Nelson admires the breath of the game, calling it “the single most ambitious Wii exclusive outside of Nintendo’s own releases…’Epic’ is not a misnomer.” He seems to be most impressed with the setting, which mixes together almost 100 years of Disney creations into one coherent world.
Eurogamer’s Dan Whitehead wasn’t so kind. He gave Epic Mickey 6 out of 10 stars, mostly because of the game’s camera:
“Mickey often vanishes from the screen completely, or you’re left staring at a corner, hoping you’re not about to fall into a hole and die,” he says. Whitehead also generally doesn’t care for this re-imagining of Mickey. He says Mickey “simply doesn’t fit in this grim, post-modern dystopia, nor does he need to confront his dark commercial heart to stay relevant in 2010.”
Camera issues seem to be the biggest problem most reviewers can find with the game. Even lovers of the game like Chris Antista, writing for Game Radar and a self-confessed “Disney dork,” had issues with it. But, despite technical annoyances, for Antista, it’s “a life-affirming tribute to both forgotten characters and game genres well worth remembering, with an all new added twist… wrapped [in a] family-friendly package.”
