There hasn’t been a Mickey Mouse game out since dull, witless opening paragraph writers went to the trouble of wikiiing you a precise date. That said, there’s reason in Mr Mouse’s hiatus. Although the frontline symbol of the Disney Corporation, he’s not exactly what one would call a hot IP these days, certainly not when compared alongside Messrs Lightyear and Woody.

A wicked world of malcontents.

No, if Mickey were to make a return, he would have to do so in a way in which he could somehow avoid the thick river of slurry in which most cartoon tie-in platformers almost inevitably end up. He would need a new brand of thinking. Enter Warren Spector.

For those who weren’t already aware, he is the man behind the original Deus Ex; quite a feather for his not insubstantial cap. So what happens when a cyberpunk FPSRPG innovator meets with an iconic cartoon mouse? Welcome to the world of Mickey Denton, an augmented cyber-mouse, living life on the bleeding edge between covert cyber warfare and a set of magical dancing mops. We kid, of course.

Epic Mickey is in fact a somewhat darker – though we hesitate to use the word adult – take on the Disney universe. We say universe because far from merely employing those characters and environments we’d most readily associate with the game’s central character, Spector has instead gone trundling backward through the last eighty years of the Disney archives and brought to life many familiar personalities, but perhaps more importantly, many character concepts which the wider world has never seen.

Welcome to Moodyland.

And it is with these that Epic Mickey adopts its slightly maudlin stance. Playing the game brings with it an instantaneous sensation of sorrow. Characters from the recognisable Smee, to the unheard of Scurvy Pete, wander about or sit in wait to tell you their sob stories of lost teddy bears and broken relationships. It’s all a bit, well, un-Disney.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing will be entirely down to your own point of view, but whatever you do, there’s a number of takes on what exactly this game is that cannot simply be implied from the title.

The game’s layout is standard platformer fare. Hub world leads through to other worlds and each is tackled through a steady process of unlocking. Mickey can undertake side-quests at his pleasure and the levels themselves range from large open areas, to sidescrolling interpretations of ancient black and white Mickey outings such as Steamboat Willey and Plane Crazy.

Each of the worlds is tied together through one major thread, though; that the world, and it’s largely ignored and underappreciated inhabitants are in a state of extreme depression. Somehow, though, Epic Mickey is not depressing to play. Far from it, in fact.

Mickey’s special abilities – as well as the impossible to get away from double-jump – include a pair of canisters full of contrary liquids. Sprayed onto the environment in a similar war to the Fludd™ in Super Mario Sunshine, using the blue liquid, Mickey can use the device to either colour in missing, ghosted elements of the environment – missing platforms, trees, buildings, treasure items and so on – or, using the green liquid, he can simply erase things.

… continued