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| The single most annoying level in the game. |
Dear Internet,
"Epic
Mickey" was an enjoyable game. It made
me think fondly back on many platforming games that I enjoyed when I was a
kid. At the same time, it makes me think
of the morality system that many games being made today implement. The game pulls itself from a variety of
sources while making sure to be itself.
How well of a job it does this is what is up for debate. I finished talking yesterday about a few
gripes I have with the game, and I should continue with a bit of that.
The
duel morality system of the paint/thinner, while remembering not to strictly
define itself into good/evil, leaves something nagging in the back of my head. It works quite well, truth be told. The player gets a feedback from the NPCs' behaviors
reflecting the player's choices. The
epilogue shows the most noticeable reflection of the player's actions. Depending on how the player dealt with
bosses, how they chose to aid certain NPCs, and who the player helped, certain
short scenes will play out to show how those choices make ripples down the
lane. If you redeemed a bad guy, the
game will show them acting friendly towards others. If you disposed of them, the game will show
their remains or something equivalently depressing. By showing the consequences of the player's
actions, the game goes one step further than most by illustrating how both
action and inaction can cause problems later on. However, this is not what is scratching the
back of my head.
I
cannot but help but wonder if there was even a need for a moral choice system
in this game. This is a Mickey Mouse
game, which was made primarily for children.
Made to scare them, but still made for them to play. With that in mind, the game has to stress a moral;
otherwise it does not fit in line with the Disney creed. Then again, if it is a straightforward
comedy, it can ignore having to instill a moral, but "Epic Mickey" is
not a comedy. The moral of the game is
your actions can have far reaching consequences and one must correct ones mistakes
when possible. Mickey accidentally
unleashed the Shadow Blot years ago and caused the Thinner Disaster. By the end of the game, he admits his guilt
and works to make amends. This is done
without regard to how the player chooses to fight. It is the central plot that cannot be
changed. The minute choices that the
player makes along the way do not alter the final outcome of Mickey and the
Wasteland. They only affect the side
details.
In one
way, the game does succeed in attempting to illustrate to its audience that those
choices do matter. I will give it that,
but I still wonder why it was needed. Having
the player go through a game with no choices and being tasked with being the
hero would have been perfectly acceptable for a Mickey Mouse game. Did the game have to have a moral system when
the ending was pretty much the same no matter the choices made? It does spur the player to complete the game
again and choose something different to see the effect. I am not saying that the moral system is a
bad mechanism or does a poor job in what it aims to do. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I feel that it
is out of place in a game like this. It is
a sort of happy accident, if you will.
Another
thing that I have to begrudge the game is the camera. The camera was poorly implemented and
difficult to control at times. This lead
to a number of untimely deaths because I could not tell how far I had to jump
or was killed because an enemy had come from out of nowhere to sucker-punch
me. One annoying circular room had me
confined fighting a single difficult enemy.
Since it was not a boss, the camera was freely up to the player's
control. I spent more time trying to get
the camera at a good angle to see the enemy than I did trying to fight
him. The camera leads up to another of
the game's problems. When pointing at
the screen to aim the brush, a cursor appears to show where Mickey will shoot
paint/thinner. He then will shoot
paint/thinner at where the cursor is pointing from his perspective. Many times, I found him shooting straight at
the camera towards the player or angled oddly so that he completely missed the
curser. Changing to a first person
perspective to shoot did not always work because he shoots from the hip. If there is a hip high ledge, the
paint/thinner will stop at less than a foot away, never reaching where you want
to hit. I am reminded of "Super
Mario Galaxy" which allowed the player to shoot hand-sized stars at
enemies. The difference was that the
star was launched from the perspective of the third person camera instead from
the player controlled character. This maximized
accuracy at the expense of immersion. "Epic
Mickey" requires an accurate aiming system, but it hiccups at moments
where the player has to fight the controls.
My last
grumbles is a lack of voice acting throughout the game instead of grunt
talking, no good map, a minimal menu, many repeating character models, and a
world hub that is not all that interesting beyond the first few times that the
player visits it. There is also the
final boss levels (that is "levels" as in plural) that seems to last
much too long to hold the dramatic tension that the game tries to create. I just want to throw those out there before I
finish.
"Epic
Mickey" is a good game with enough thrills and replay value to go through
it a second time to try and find all the missable collectables and alternative decisions. It has great atmosphere that it is able to
keep for the entire duration. The
characters are complex, showing a range of emotions and desires, some of which
contradict one another. The game has a
number of problems that are not big by themselves but add together to cause
frustration in even some of the most patient players. Overall, I liked the game, and it makes me
all that more interested to play the sequel.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
P.S. Next is "Epic Mickey2: The Power of Two."
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