Once a vibrant, mischievous character in his own right, Mickey Mouse's role for the last several decades has been primarily that of a simple silhouette – his iconic ears little more than a logo for one of the world's biggest corporations. Though he's been the face of Disney for almost a century, these days we rarely get a sense of his original character – which itself has been molded to fit a range of disparate personas, from the wise King Mickey of Kingdom Hearts, to the sanitized Saturday morning Club House compere.
Enter Epic Mickey, a 2010 Nintendo Wii exclusive that re-established Mickey's cheeky-yet-good-hearted character in a truly unusual setting. Part Defunctland episode, part Psychonauts-style adventure, the creative vision of Deus Ex's Warren Spector and his team gave way to a torrent of subversive and dark ideas that permeated the Disney sheen and gave us one of the most interesting games on the Wii console.
As far as remakes go, this one pitches the aesthetics just right. Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a game that looks comfortable in 2024, but erases none of its past as a Wii classic. It combines vintage animation styles in 2D side-scrolling segments with full 3D exploration and occasional sketchbook cinematics. The game looks and feels like the original, but shows off a very modern level of quality. It may have lost some of its Wii-era uncanniness, but it's replaced with a shiny new coat that's hard to criticize.
A brush with greatness
Release date: September 24, 2024
Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, Nintendo Switch
Developer: Purple Lamp
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed stars Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (Walt Disney’s original creation) in his first outing as a main character in more than 70 years, and set in Wasteland – a world for forgotten cartoons – Epic Mickey introduces our titular hero as an accidental villain. In a Fantasia-inspired sequence of events, Mickey accidentally covers the world – made of a painted substance called Toon – with paint thinner, inadvertently destroying Wasteland. Months later, Mickey is dragged back and forced to square up to the consequences of his actions. It's here he learns to wield his magic paintbrush to either paint the world back to health or destroy his enemies with paint thinner. If you're looking for the Magic Kingdom, this ain't it.
The paint/thinner dichotomy presents a basic morality system in which you can destroy or befriend almost every enemy and each of the key bosses. Blue paint restores the world, while green thinner dismantles and erases. Your choices have some consequence to the story and how it ends, and change smaller details like sound design or how much your character resembles The Blot's dripping ink. The majority of quests can be completed in a few different ways (yielding different results) or skipped entirely – sometimes changing outcomes significantly in the rest of the game. Characters you've helped may pop out and repay the favor, or if you chose not to help them, they might have met a bitter end. As such, a good, neutral, and bad ending all exist, and there's certainly enough here for a few playthroughs.
In fact, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is positively brimming with content, from pin badges and E-tickets to original concept art and full vintage cartoon reels. Every ledge that you drop onto, every secret door, every seemingly-just-out-of-reach location sparkles with the promise of a new trinket to add to the collection. Secret hunting is a huge focus of this game, but this is where the charming exterior starts to give way to some unfortunate issues.
The problem with paint
Although the infamous camera issues from the original have been fixed in Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, the controls still feel just as slippery. In a game so full of hidden promises, a game that actively encourages you to jump on top of buildings and drop behind scenery, you need crisp, responsive controls. All too often, Mickey would default to a sliding animation when I was trying to land a jump on a perfectly flat rooftop or get stuck between two buildings and start to hover in the air. The biggest irritant was the ledge grab feature, which worked when I didn't want it to (with Mickey clinging to a useless ledge and refusing to let go) and didn't work when I desperately needed it (during some moving platform sections, or long-distance jumps, he would skid off the side of a ledge instead). You can never rely on Mickey's movements to get you where you need to be in a hurry.
Changeable scenery is a difficult thing to get right. The parameters of these objects need to allow for manipulation at will by paint or thinner, but Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed struggles to implement this despite it being a central conceit. During a rounding-up-bunnies side quest, for example, one of the bunnies got stuck in the roof of a building, effectively closing off that questline to me entirely. Characters also struggled with multiple questlines, opening them up to me only to then refuse to close them and offer a reward.
If you're looking for the Magic Kingdom, this ain't it.
For such a visually striking game that puts such emphasis on the world reacting to your touch, the glitches and clunkiness are especially jarring. Even the accuracy of the paintbrush is poorly executed at times, failing to highlight when things can be painted, wildly misfiring, or simply not working as promised. Many of these issues were present on the Wii, but I had higher expectations for running the game in 2024 on a hefty PC.
The game also struggles with progression. There is no difficulty setting, so the first three quarters of the game are far too casual compared to the final drawn-out showdown that expects you to dig deep and find a wealth of skills that you've only cursorily had to use so far. The sketch mechanic, for example, is introduced very slowly, giving you one sketch every level. These can be used to power up machines, slow down time, or drop anvils on enemies heads, but their (very occasional) use is signposted heavily each time. Suddenly, you find yourself in the final stretch needing up to eight of these sketches at a time, having no real need for them in the preceding 15 hours of the game.
In terms of level design, however, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a perfectly sweeping curve from the small, straightforward, aamnd contained earlier levels to the sprawling, side quest-packed later stages. The ambience of each world is that of an individual vignette, each with its own twisted Disney theme; Main Street USA becomes Mean Street, ToonTown becomes OsTown, and New Orleans Square becomes Bog Easy. From every individual piece of tat that forms Mickeyjunk Mountain, to the bright neon desolation of Tomorrow City, each location has been faithfully recreated – only adding small features that feel fully appropriate and respectful of the Epic Mickey lore.
Although no longer an ambitious game for its current year, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is worth the occasional technical annoyance for a detailed and lovingly made recreation of a 2010s classic. It's fun, it's sweet, and it redeems itself for any clunkiness by heaping on piles of nostalgic affection. Playing as a Disney aficionado, a fan of the original game, or a parent and child looking for a common thread is sure to be a rewarding experience, just don't expect too much from the controls or to have your mind blown. The bulk of the experience lies in the story, the references to days gone by, the charismatic characters, and the newly polished aesthetics of these classic animations.
