Epic Mickey (Wii) Hands-On

Epic Mickey, what can I say? Well, a lot of things. We literally sat with two developers of this game for 45 minutes watching them play and playing ourselves. There's doubtful a question we didn't get answered, or ask and told they can't answer.

I was initially skeptical about this game when they first announced it a year ago. The concept art, seen above, was good but the gameplay could be be awful. Warren Specter (of System Shock and Deus Ex fame) is the man in charge of the game but he's hardly proven himself in the platforming adventure genre. He'd made some great games but still, I had my doubts.

Well now that I've played the game myself I have no more reservations. This game looks, plays, and sounds great. The game controls, lovingly enough, a lot like Super Mario Galaxy. The control stick on the nunchuck moves Mario, er I mean Mickey, the pointer aims the paint brush, B/Z launches paint and thinner respectively, a swipe of the Wiimote spin attacks, and A jumps around.

The game has a lot of thought put into each and every decision. There's a part where you need to give the shop keeper, a Goofy looking ghost character, three masks. You can either go through and find/jump your way to collect them all or you can find one and give it to him. After he takes it, he puts it behind the desk. You can sneak around the back, erase the shop wall with paint thinner, and steal the mask you just gave him and give it back to him. Here's the catch: if you do that for all 3 masks he'll be tricked because they all look the same and he doesn't know any better. If you do that once and then go grab a new one for the third he'll notice they are different and punish you.

The example above is a perfect example of the amount of thought that's gone into this game, and I loved every aspect we saw, right down to the 2D transition levels. There's even a constant effect where paint is falling upward off of Mickey's ears just like the concept art above. It really is a very nice touch to an all around superb looking game.