Epic Mickey: Rebrushed Review – A fresh lick of paint

thesixthaxis.com:

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