Pretty as a painting, but thinner on gameplay.
Epic Mickey has one of the most interesting histories regarding how it came to be. First, when the idea of Epic Mickey was conceptualized, Disney didn’t even own the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney’s first cartoon star. After luring the rights back from NBC Universal by allowing them the use of play-by-play announcer Al Michaels, Disney then secured the rights and went shopping for a developer. That developer would be Junction Point, a team lead by the legendary Warren Spector, the creative force behind such games as Deus Ex and Thief.
What’s even more interesting is that before Disney flat out purchased Junction Point to work on Epic Mickey, a game the studio was energized to work on, the studio was in development of a Half Life 2 episode. Once the ink dried on the contract for Disney to buy the studio; however, Black Mesa would be discarded and the team would strap on some mouse ears and get to work. Regardless, Epic Mickey released to mild acclaim. The game received a good amount of hype, intentionally leaked concept art to find Disney’s limits on the tone of the game, and a lot of bold claims from the studio on how innovative it was going to be. Add in that the studio then chose to make the game a Wii exclusive, and many of its gameplay designs would be born out of the use of the Wiimote.
Now, some 14 years later, Purple Lamp Studios, the team behind the latest SpongeBob games; Cosmic Shake and Battle for Bikini Bottom: Ryhdrated, would dust off the paintbrush and look to rebuild the game alongside Warren Spector, that guy I mentioned earlier. This effort would be almost from scratch as the original ran on the Gamebyro engine and Rebrushed would now benefit from Unreal Engine 4. While I certainly have a host of issues with Rebrushed, there is no mistaking that this remaster looks considerably better than the original, especially as the lighting now reflects the tone of the game considerably more. This isn’t just an up-res’d version of the game, nearly everything has been entirely rebuilt.
Rebrushed would not only give the game a new coat of paint, pun intended, but it would add in a few new gameplay mechanics. Mickey can now ground pound, dash, and sprint. These new additions are seamlessly added and honestly feel like they have always been there. Otherwise, nearly everything is as it was, and that is both a blessing and a curse. Purple Lamp showed with Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated that they can respect the source material while also making it feel considerably better and more in line with what your brain remembered it as being, even if it was not nearly as good. Here; however, I wish some things had been improved upon, especially the camera and the platforming.
Despite some minor changes, both of these things are simply not good. The camera will constantly get either too close or too far away and rarely find a happy medium, especially when you are in tight spaces. Platforming, which is the majority of the game, still doesn’t have a satisfying feel to its jump. You feel like you have to rely on the double jump far too much. Honestly, if the dash was integrated into the jump to allow for an air dash, nearly all my issues with the jump would erased faster than your thinner can work. That said, the jump feels weightless in a lot of ways where you don’t feel Mickey’s mass in the air. While you can mantle up if you miss a jump, that mechanic is not available on most surfaces, meaning the mantle is only compatible with certain platforms.
Now, fixing these issues does two things; it would lose the feeling of the original and it would modernize the title to today’s standards. When the original released, it was the platforming and the camera that were the most targeted criticisms, so I am a fair bit surprised they didn’t opt for the latter and attempt to make the best feeling version of this game. I’ve said time and time again that regardless if it is an original game, a remake, reboot, or remaster, that fun should be at the forefront of all your design choices. If you have a chance to make a game better because of quality of life choices, then do it. Sadly, Purple Lamp failed to do that here in any meaningful way. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the effort, I just wish for the game to be a much better version of the original,
My experience with the Epic Mickey games was largely through the second game. I had played a small portion of the original back in the day at an event, but Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, is the one I remember the most. It also had voice acting throughout the entire game, something that I am surprised that Purple Lamp didn’t implement here. I assume that we are going to see Epic Mickey 2: Rebrushed at some point, so adding in voice acting would have made both games line up considerably better. We get little noises out of Mickey as he jumps, the gibberish of Donald Duck and the “H’yuk’s!” out of Goofy, during their small roles here anyway, but it’s bizarre that this wasn’t an addition to this remaster, something that would have been a good selling point.
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed also has the most hand-holding I have seen in a game, period. During the game’s opening moments, you meet Gus, a gremlin and native to this new world that Mickey has found himself in. Gus will alert Mickey to his objectives, as well as where several collectibles and other gremlins are, a cast of throwaway characters you are instructed to rescue. At first, I assumed that Gus would do these things as a means to educate me on how this game works. That he would be in tutorial mode for the first hour or so. Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is around 12 hours long, and right up until the credits, Gus will continue to tell you everything you need to do, where everything is, and remind you of all of this, constantly.
Because of this, the story has an incredible amount of start-stops where Gus will explain to Mickey everything that is going on in this new area and then sprinkle in more of this as you move around, constantly pausing any progress to often explain things you already know. This often caused me to leave some of the side quests unfinished because I simply didn’t want to deal with Gus any more than I truly needed to. There is a moment near the end where you are separated from Gus. I breathed a sigh of relief, then sighed so loud that I startled my cat as Gus then showed back up some 20 seconds later, spouting “Don’t worry Mickey, I’ll be with you every step of the way.” I wanted to uninstall the game right then and there. But. I had about an hour left and pressed on.
The concept of Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is this; Mickey explores his master’s workshop via his role in Fantasia, and nearly destroys a magical world that rests on a table in the workshop. He uses a magic brush to tinker with this world and accidentally knocks over a bottle of paint thinner and nearly destroys it, unleashing a monster known as the Blot unto this world. However, the Blot seeks out Mickey some time later and pulls him into it this magical realm. Mickey then discovers this was the home to Oswald, a creation before his time, and that Oswald has become a bitter ruler thanks to the Blot destroying everything he loves.
This world dubbed the Wasteland, is home to forgotten characters such as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar, characters who were present during the very early years of Mickey Mouse. You’ll also run into Pete, a notorious character who is in several modern appearances of Disney products and even had a sizable role in Kingdom Hearts, even if most people likely know him from Goof Troop. As the Blot has ravaged this world, despite Oswald's attempt to fight back, his success in stopping the Blot came at great cost. This causes the Lucky Rabbit to despise Mickey Mouse, so your initial encounter doesn’t go so smoothly.
This resentment of Mickey Mouse also led Oswald to copy the trappings of Mickey’s dominance into the mainstream. Here, you see the echoes of Disneyland locations and robotic copies of Goofy, Daisy, and Donald, animatronic iterations meant to exist within the park’s contained attractions. While it makes sense for the story, it is sort of weird that since Disney lost the rights to Oswald back in 1928, it wouldn’t make sense that he knows some of Mickey’s pals, such as Donald Duck, a character created in 1934. Still, seeing those familiar characters is fun, and how much you explore your surroundings will determine their fates as the game has multiple additions to its endings, should you find the parts and pieces they all lack.
Alongside the new additions of the ground pound, dash, and sprinting, Mickey can double jump and pull off a spin attack, even if requires other means for it to be useful in combat. Thankfully, since Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is meant for every console on the market, you don’t need to rely on its Wiimote controls to get the job done, even if a few parts of the game still have them baked in. The big gimmick of Epic Mickey is that you have both Paint and Thinner to use during combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving, all flowing from the brush that Mickey will wield from start to finish.
To use your Paint and Thinner, you’ll move the center cursor over what those will affect almost like a first-person shooter. In the original, you moved the cursor based on where you pointed the Wiimote, which allowed the game to have a very different camera at times. Paint can paint over objects and geometry that is noticeably invisible making them tangible. Thinner will take those same objects and platforms and make them invisible, also making them intangible. This allows you to remove or add objects into the world that benefit you in some way. From rebuilding a bridge to removing the platform under an enemy to painting over the objects that offer you money and health, this gimmick is basic but works for what Mickey needs from this story.
The biggest issue is that after a few examples of how it works, it never gains anything new to its use. It’s a solid gimmick that feels ripe for some interesting gameplay, but it never arrives. You can use thinner to erase enemies from existence, and then open some up to spin-attacked, or paint them up to turn them to your side, and how you deal with bosses will dictate if you upgrade your Paint or Thinner, acting like a fairly shallow morality system. That is about as in-depth as it gets past the simple point-and-shoot mechanics. And since Mickey has a ground pound and a spin attack, that is as exciting as combat gets. It's serviceable, sure, but it gets old extremely quickly due to a very small assortment of baddies.
Another issue is the aiming. While it’s not the fault of the cursor, if you are aiming at something that has a small perimeter around Mickey’s feet, it will hit that perimeter, despite the cursor being over it. For example, if Mickey is on a ledge, you cannot shoot down. The paint or thinner will hit the edge of that ledge. You also cannot get the camera up high enough to look down enough to use those fluids. If you are attempting to hit something that is not on a flat surface, the curve of what is in front of it can often take most of the paint/thinner.
The aiming is rebuilt away from the Wiimote’s approach because it needs to work on a standard controller. However, several of the bosses are still built with the Wiimote in mind. A large robotic boss, for example, has you targeting his arms. Now, this fight is your typical character on a platform while a giant boss is waist-high in front of you. So, instead of the cursor being in the center of the screen, you have the same general cursor moving around with the analog stick to aim in the same way that was present on the Wii. While it gets the job done, it seems some of the old DNA of the original was left as is. Again, it works, but it is somewhat disorientating when it swaps to it as the game doesn’t prep you for it. The aiming is also rather slow, as was very noticeable in the barrel fight aboard the Jolly Roger.
Jordan here!
Sorry to interrupt, Jeff, but I have a few things I’d like to say about my experience of Epic Mickey Rebrushed. Firstly, I have to commend the team at Purple Lamp for delivering a massive graphical improvement over the original release. They have also managed to translate the controls from the Wiimote to a modern joypad fairly well outside of some particular situations. Not to mention, I played on PC where performance was outstanding; locked at 120fps while playing on max settings, and I encountered zero bugs in my several hours of play.
That’s right, I, unfortunately, haven’t finished Epic Mickey Rebrushed as of yet. The main reason for this is the overly guided nature of the experience, as Jeff has already described, Gus and his pals tell you word for word everything you have to do in the game. This left me with the sensation that the game was effectively playing itself with me there just to move from point A to B.
Whenever Gus wasn’t around I actually really enjoyed my time playing. The side-scrolling mini-levels, which Jeff is about to talk about, take you through some iconic Mickey and Disney moments and were a real highlight for me. I wish the whole game could have been just these levels, as Gus is nowhere to be found and I’m left to my own devices.
Speaking of Disney moments and the use of its IP, I like that Epic Mickey Rebrushed puts the focus on some long-forgotten or relatively unknown characters, but I feel like the game doesn’t make the most of the catalog available to it.
I would say that Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a game I admire but sadly isn’t really for me. If you have a younger child just getting into gaming they will likely have a good experience that will teach them how to navigate and feel like they are solving problems. If you are older, however, the experience is far too guided and doesn’t leave you to figure things out for yourself. This is a real shame because there are some well-crafted levels here that would be enjoyable to play through if I wasn’t told what to do everything 10 seconds.
Anyway, let’s get…
Mickey will also have a small cropping of moral choices to make but none of them are evil. It basically boils down to a nice option and one that is slightly dickish, but far from evil. These choices are few and far between, such as leaving a gremlin in their cage or opening up a treasure chest. Another example later on is either helping a ghost scare someone senseless or taking that someone’s side and addressing their problem. Now, those gremlins can be saved or left in their cage, that choice is up to you. Freeing them will see them tasked with helping you, but in most cases, you’ll solve your issues well before you even find them. Some will request some money, but you’ll have little means for their help most of the time.
Spread out across each stage is a currency you’ll use as money. These tickets are rolled out in red, green, blue, and gold. These tickets can help you buy items in the shops, from concept art to items required to progress the game. The main collectibles found in the corners of the map are pins that are regulated to red chests or earned by performing a certain objective. While the pins had a point to them in Epic Mickey 2, here, they don’t do anything at all, making them a complete waste of time. It’s a shame the pins didn’t provide you with tickets as a result of finding them, making them worthwhile to track down. You can also find movie reels and concept art, but all of it could be skipped and you won’t feel you are missing out on anything.
Between each of the big stages, as Jordan mentioned in his write-up, you’ll jump into a projector image adorned with the title screen of one of Mickey’s motion pictures. These take you to a side-scrolling adventure based on those films. Apart from the Pluto segment, these locations were actually fun, incredible even. They don’t last too long and can be eventually skipped for some tickets, but ideally, I would have preferred a Mickey game built like this instead of a 3D platformer that rarely feels fun. These environments are great to explore and while the platforming is their weakest element, it works better here because you can gauge the jumping considerably more. That and you don’t need to fiddle with the camera.
Purple Lamp has done a great job at remaking the game’s visuals, and while I would have loved to have heard Mickey and his pals instead of reading the subtitles, the audio is more or less pretty good. From a presentation standpoint, Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is leagues better than the original. From the rebuilt shops to buy additional concept art or Goofy’s limbs to rebuild him, this small segment of the game shows that Purple Lamp can offer up quality of life choices while still paying tribute to the original.
Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a product of its time, and Purple Lamp has done a fine enough job at rebuilding its world and tending to maintain what it was, even if I truly feel it needed some more work to make it fun for today’s standards. Despite my issues with the core game still being a bit too outdated, this is easily the best version of the game as it is considerably better looking and has a far better framerate. It doesn’t bring anything new to the genre that you haven’t seen before, and despite the Paint and Thinner mechanics knocking at that door, they are far too basic to really be revolutionary or inventive, even for the time. Epic Mickey was a fine enough game 14 years ago, but now, it’s an outdated relic that is the definition of paint by number.
Developer - Purple Lamp.
Publisher - THQ Nordic. Released - September 24th, 2024. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC. Rated - (E 10+) - Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.