Back in the days of the Wii, one of the more interesting and bizarre major third-party releases was Epic Mickey, a project headed by Warren Spector—the renowned creator of the Deus Ex franchise. This 3D platformer placed the famed mouse in an unusually dark premise that presented him with various moral dilemmas, and though it had its issues, Epic Mickey certainly stood out as a memorable adventure for the mascot and did well enough to warrant a sequel and a weird 3DS spin-off. Now, Disney has decided to give the game a revisit with Epic Mickey Rebrushed, and though it still has some jank, we’re happy to report that this remaster fixes many of the original’s problems.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Epic Mickey’s story begins with the titular mouse visiting Yen Sid’s workshop, where he quickly misuses the wizard’s magic paintbrush and inadvertently brings ruin to his prized project, a magical world for forgotten cartoons. Years later and long after forgetting the incident, Mickey is accosted in the night by a shadowy ink creature that drags him screaming into the world he destroyed, but not before he manages to grab the magic paintbrush on his way. Now abandoned in the Wasteland, Mickey needs to find a way to escape while either finishing the work he started or using his newfound power to help the toons who have been struggling to survive in the wake of the destruction he caused.

Though it’s not quite as dark as the creators originally intended, the narrative here is noticeably heavier than Disney’s usual output. Mickey is constantly faced by the consequences of his past mistakes throughout this story, and there are plenty of opportunities for you to roleplay as either hero or villain. For example, one early quest sees Pete asking Mickey to clear his name after the residents of a local village accused him of purposefully crashing his steamboat into their property. When you investigate what happened, it turns out that Pete was telling the truth, and you can then either use the evidence to prove his innocence or suppress it by selling it to a villager for your own gain.

We appreciated the dilemmas that situations like this pose, as there are consequences and rewards for whichever decision you pick. In this example with Pete, we opted to do the honourable thing by clearing his name, and even though the short-term rewards for this were lesser, we inadvertently avoided having to endure a mini-boss battle later due to him being on our side. It’s cool to see decisions you make have unexpected ramifications later in the playthrough, and beyond that, this focus on player choice adds a decent amount to the replay value as there's often exclusive content locked behind the varying paths.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Epic Mickey otherwise follows typical 3D platformer tropes in which you navigate obstacles in the dilapidated world, battle enemies, solve puzzles, and snag all kinds of collectibles. The main gameplay gimmick here—closely related to the morality system—is that you can use your paintbrush to either create or destroy various objects and characters in the environment, which adds some nuance to solving puzzles and combat encounters. In most fights, you can either choose to ‘charm’ most of your enemies with paint or erase them from existence with thinner. And the world is rife with various flawed surfaces and structures that you can either fill in or erase to make platforming easier and uncover hidden secrets.

Though most of the quests you’re given by NPCs are little more than basic fetch quest activities, it’s really enjoyable to come to a new area and experiment with how you can alter the environment with your brush. The rewards for exploring are typically either pieces of concept art you can then view in the menu or Pins, which sort of act as the stars or jiggies that cap off beating a platforming challenge or solving a puzzle. You can’t actually do anything with Pins, but collecting them is nonetheless enjoyable on its own, and there are various themed Pins you’re given at key junctions to mark decisions you made and make it easier to track past choices for replays.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Aside from the expected bump in visual quality, this Rebrushed version of Epic Mickey has also made some welcome changes to improve on the more notable flaws of the original. For one, the awful camera has been binned and replaced with a competent system that virtually every third person action game uses where you can freely use the right analogue stick to get the best angle. The fixed camera is still present in the boss battles, but it’s not an issue there because they were designed with it in mind, while the free camera for the rest of the runtime sidesteps a lot of the problems the original had where you often were forced to actively fight with the camera while attempting to cross gaps or get a view of enemies attacking you.

The side-on levels that act as the portals linking each major hub and level have also gotten a bit of a makeover, with there being many more interactive elements now to make them more dynamic and interesting. These 2D stages are still over in a flash, but they’re a nice change of tempo as you move between worlds, and we appreciated the attention to detail they display in lovingly recreating various old Mickey cartoons.

Visually, Epic Mickey has obviously gotten an overhaul here, and it now looks how you remember it looking in 2010. Although you can still tell that this was a game built for much simpler hardware, the higher resolution and improved textures go a long way towards masking its age. And that's to say nothing of the outstanding art style, which showcases a lot of imagination in its interpretation of the whole ‘Disney gone bad’ aesthetic. Whether you’re talking to the severed head of a Goofy animatronic or clambering up the side of a trash mountain of old and discarded Mickey Mouse merchandise, there’s a lot of memorable moments as you're wowed by the clever fusion of edginess and Disney magic in the design of this world.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Matching these visuals is a soundtrack from James Dooley that creates a playful and somewhat devious tone that calls to mind the popular work of Grant Kirkhope and Danny Elfman. The music never steps fully into outright sinister territory, but its whimsy is laced with a subtly menacing vibe that you would likely never hear in a more traditional Disney project like Illusion Island. We really enjoyed what this soundtrack brings to the table and how it enhances the atmosphere of the Wasteland—it feels distinct without being too far off from what you would expect out of a Disney game.

The only issue we have with this do-over of Epic Mickey is that performance can feel rather subpar at times. We didn’t experience any major crashes or glitches during our playthrough, although there were persistent problems with unstable frame rates and noticeable pop-in. The frame hitches don’t directly impede gameplay, but it’s quite common to see drops of 5-10fps even when there’s not much happening on screen, while the pop-in can be a bit egregious when entering new areas and watching assets slowly loading in. Loading times can also be pretty rough—we clocked some when loading into larger areas at just under 40 seconds.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

These performance problems are disappointing and do drag down the gameplay experience somewhat, but not to the extent that they totally take you out of it. In our playthrough, such issues amounted to an irksome but ultimately tolerable downside that was largely outshined by the quality of the gameplay.

Conclusion

Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a welcome return for one of Mickey’s most memorable adventures, this is just about everything one could’ve wanted out of a revisit to a lost classic. It fumbles its execution a bit with the performance, but there are enough novel ideas and enjoyable gameplay concepts here to make the experience more than worth your while. Enjoyable gameplay, a captivating world, lots of replayability, and a raft of tweaks and improvements over the original make this one an easy sell. We’d recommend this to anyone looking for a big-budget 3D platformer that does things a little differently from the genre norms, and of course to anyone who considers themselves an avid Disney fan.

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