Dvader said:

The 23rd.

From now on I'll be treating any dates you post with a raised eyebrow...

gamingeek said:

So 23/11/10 right?

 2010-11-23, penis. 

Metro.co.uk

Epic Mickey

No matter how successful it is, the Wii is always going to go down as suffering from a tragic case of unfulfilled potential. Nintendo popularised the use of motion controls, but very few of their own games really make that much use of it. Other companies have seemed to treat the Wii as some barely acknowledged failure - rather than the fastest-selling home console of all time.

You'd think it would be far too late to change that now but this effort from Disney and Deus Ex creator Warren Spector is the sort of high budget, high effort release that could've really changed the Wii's profile if released in the first year or two.

We still don't really understand the plot, but the end result of it all is that Mickey Mouse is trapped in a sort of loser's version of Disney World, filled with half-forgotten characters. Mickey himself looks much closer to the rat-like version from the '30s and is apparently not the do-godder he's become in recent years.

The game itself is split into three fairly distinct elements, starting with adventure levels that act like world hubs. The one we played was a sort of pirate village, where you could talk to the various characters and explore the game world. Here you're introduced to one of the game's most interesting gimmicks: the ability to paint new areas of the world, such as platforms and doors, or use paint thinner to remove them.

You can often use either option to complete a puzzle but depending on whether you are destructive or constructive the game's inhabitants react to you differently. As you'd expect using the paint thinner is usually the easier option, making it harder to do the right thing.

The graphics throughout are excellent and the adventure sections also feature short semi-animated cut scenes that are particularly attractive. They don't seem especially reminiscent of any Disney animation style we've ever seen but the make the best of the Wii's more modest abilities and help create the general impression that this is a high end production.

As you leave an adventure hub you then become embroiled in a more simplistic 2D platform section, reminiscent of early Disney-licensed games on the SNES and Mega Drive. The one we saw was themed on black and white cartoon Steamboat Willy, but it was surprisingly short and inconsequential. Later levels apparently will be more involved.

The final style of play is the action section, which plays out like a proper 3D platformer. The paint and paint thinner mechanic is retained throughout, but also applied to enemies. You can fight them if you want, with either thinner or physical attacks, but you can also use paint to turn them into allies. This takes longer and can also be undone by other enemies with their own supply of thinner.

The whole production is extremely well thought and out and imaginative, mixing several different styles of game. That at least is exactly what you'd expect from Warren Spector, but his lack of experience in making platformers also shows through. The controls, particularly the jump, seemed spongy and imprecise and the excellent graphics came at the cost of a lower frame rate - with Mickey seeming to wear the same concrete shoes as the characters in GoldenEye.

Perhaps that will be addressed in the final game, but even if it's not there's still plenty of interest in what may be one of the Wii's last, best hurrahs.

phantom_leo said:

^ Waiting for Vader to wake and to witness the inevitable Disneygasm.

Agnates said:

I was excited for this game when I thought it's all early stuff shown but it doesn't seem to be improving. Disney should have done a deal with Nintendo to develop this, JPS doesn't seem up to the task. The jumping doesn't look tight in either 2D or 3D mode, the platforming seems uninspired in both, interesting gameplay basically seems nonexistent and there are all sorts of things that make it look cheap and PS2-like, much like that building you can enter either normally, or from the back by erasing the wall to get an item the guy inside doesn't let you have, but the interior is a separate scene, and when you erase the wall it's just a black mass you walk into to get inside, I mean, wtf? If I was playing I'd probably think it's nothing and I just can't do anything meaningful by erasing that wall. Why isn't such a simplistic interior part of the normal level so that you can properly see and interact with it all?

 Hush you!

Dvader said:

Actualy Agnates is probably right, that said I don't care this is Disney heaven.

Dvader and Agnates agreeing on something.