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| Should that not be "Disney's"? |
Dear Internet,
I have wanted
to play "Epic Mickey" for some time now. I had actually gotten hold of it after getting
"Epic Mickey 2." I did not
play it, nor have I. It would not make
much sense to play the sequel without seeing how the original played. The studio that developed the two games under
the ownership of Disney, Junction Point Studios, has got one notable fact about
them that I want to keep in mind while playing this game. The studio is closed. Shortly after releasing "Epic Mickey 2"
to lackluster sales when compared to the original, Disney closed the studio. It is no real secret that the sequel had
gotten mediocre reviews and lackluster sales as compared to the original. However, it is important that ratings only go
so far. If two million or more people
played the original, yet there was something that halted them from scooping up
the sequel right away, what was it? Was
there something so bad but hidden about the original that stopped people from
wanting to play the sequel? Or was the
sequel such a step down that it pushed away any proportional sales from occurring? I will try to find out.
"Epic
Mickey" follows the adventure of, would you guess, Mickey Mouse, the most
iconic Walt Disney character created. Mickey,
however, is not the first character that Disney created. Among those characters was Oswald the Lucky
Rabbit. Sadly, time has not looked favorably
upon Oswald or many other characters within the Disney cast. As Mickey and the other characters rose to
fame, others fell into obscurity. Within
the narrative of the game, there exists a place made for the forgotten
characters to live and be happy. Years
ago, Mickey came across the world and accidentally created the Shadow Blot, a
menacing creature made of paint and paint thinner. In his poor attempt to undo his actions, he
destroys the world for the forgotten, making it a wasteland. Years have passed, and Mickey is the popular
character that he is today. He is then
suddenly captured in the middle of the night and brought to the world he had
destroyed. The Wasteland is a half
decayed landscape where rivers of paint thinner run like industrial waste. Thankfully, Mickey does have two abilities
that he can use to find his way back home.
He can create with paint or destroy with thinner. Before he can go home, he must explore this
world and find the mysteries that abound.
The
game has got a pretty simplistic plot for itself. That is how it should be. You cannot expect a Mickey Mouse game to have
as many twists and turns with double faced characters as an episode of
"Law & Order" if you want kids to be able to follow it. Mickey screws things up, runs away, and has
to fix the mistake years later. If
anything, this mischievous attitude is more in line with his oldest character
designs. It is no surprise that his
actions are similar if not exact to that in "Fantasia." In both "Epic Mickey" and the musical
short "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Mickey interacts with the magic of
the wizard Yen Sid until disaster takes hold.
At least in "Epic Mickey," he has to live and even undo his actions
instead of only being chastised. There
are a few problems with the story so far.
It is almost too scant. There is
a mad scientist and of course the Shadow Blot.
These characters are explained to be present but their roles other than being
"the bad guys" has yet to be explained. Mickey is thrust into this other world along
with the player, but they are told to keep moving further with little information
to go on. Sure, we know he is in the
Wasteland but with a straightforward hour long tutorial level, the game does
not do well in setting up the world from the viewer's perspective. We are dropped too quickly. Hopefully, the slow but steady progress
through the land will unravel the complexity of the world that I hope there is.
The
world of the Wasteland is dark and foreboding.
I even sometimes have quite a lot of trouble finding my way because the
game is so black. The ground and
possible gaps that I must jump over just merge together into one single dark
shape. I think this might have more to
do with my display settings, so I cannot mark it off. Going back to the screenshots of those
moments proves that my display settings are calibrated incorrectly. This does not mean that the game does not create
a shadowy landscape. The Wasteland is
already one of the most depressing and gloomy environments that I have come
across. Wrecked and abandoned amusement
park rides rust as they fall apart in the open air. Bushes and hedges are missing entire segments
that have been erased by turpentine with topiary of characters missing hands
and heads, creating images of dismembered flora individuals. Lakes of paint thinner sit idly by, awaiting
the poor soul that should fall in, doomed to have their colors washed away like
acid eating flesh. A giant Swiss Army
knife lunges at Mickey with corkscrew, scissors, a chainsaw, and a plunder that
tries to pull his heart through his chest.
And all of this is just in the tutorial level. Afterwards, the player must traverse a
mountain of old Disney memorabilia that has decayed and rotted to the point
that it is a landfill of one-eyed dolls and faded fan-membership badges. It is a horror-ridden landscape that chills
me to the bone.
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| Not all of the discarded merchandise is unrecognizable. |
The
game's imagery does not stop with just the landscape. The enemies are made of black and green paint. They are not solid beasts with a bone
structure and organs. They are morphing
sentient blobs that do not stop even when you blast them with a face full of paint
thinner. Some of these creatures do
nothing but sleep until you happen to run by. Then they explode into a giant mess, ceasing
to exist. Their only purpose is to exist
as living mines, waiting for the chance adventurer to happen by so they can
expand past the breaking point, taking anything nearby with them. If that is not scary enough, take the passive
and friendly characters for a turn. At
least two characters so far have been veteran characters from the early black
and white era. Horace Horsecollar and
Clarabelle Cow make appearances in their black and white designs rather than
their "House of Mouse" era formats.
They try to remind Mickey of their past performances, each one having a
scattering of photographs of themselves from their acting days. Some of these photos are cropped showing that
their appearance in those cartoons were as background characters, sometimes not
even being fully in the shot of the camera.
Mickey apologetically does not remember them. They made such a little impression of Mickey
that he cannot even tell that he had worked with them despite their importance
to his own rise to fame. The Wasteland
is not some sort of retirement home for old cartoons, where they go to live out
their final years in some comfortable conditions. It is where the neglected and the outcast
go. It is a cross between a graveyard
and limbo.
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| I do, Horace. I do. |
It is
amazing to me that "Epic Mickey" did not get some sort of Disney
censor that wanted to pull back the amount of nightmare fuel that the game has. Most likely, the game is already pulled back
from an even more terrifying version. A
search for "Epic Mickey concept art" is enough to make goose bumps form. Then again, perhaps I am reading too much
into the world of the game. I may just
be letting my imagination run off away from me.
Yet, that is precisely what a good game should do. It should excite the imagination and let
loose the wonders of the mind. I only
hope that I am not kept up all night by such dark wonders.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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