IN the mid- to late 00s, there appeared to be a push to bring back character platformers, with all their cute, collecting goodness.
Many of these were licensed deals with everyone from SpongeBob to Mickey Mouse getting involved in the action.
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As with many licensed games, these varied in quality, meaning they’re the perfect games to be remade.
This is what leads us to the latest upcoming release, Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, a game that is supposedly the same story and gameplay from the original with all the modern changes you’d want.
Except it might stick a little too closely to the original, so much so that it straddles the line between remake and remaster.
It’s obviously been built from the ground up with gorgeous visual and quality of life changes, but it’s faithful to the original, always to a fault.
Epic Mickey takes place in a world of things that have been forgotten from Disney’s long history.
Forgotten Mascot, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, begins to wreak havoc on the Wasteland, and it’s up to Mickey and his enchanted brush to save everyone.
It’s a pleasant story that’s told in a frustrating way. It’s told through endless different cutscenes, and unskippable dialogue with NPCs.
You can barely take a few steps before you’re interrupted, but this is worse near the beginning when you are also overloaded with tutorials.
The gameplay still shines. Levels are small but open playgrounds that mix platforming, painting, and cleaning up.
It’s a unique and satisfying take on puzzle platforming, and what the original Epic Mickey did best.
You’re free to explore and solve puzzles, and Rebrushed gives you more chances to refill your resources than the original.
We would have loved to see the level design, as it can be easy to erase a platform you’re standing on and fall to the bottom of a long section.
It’s also not incredibly clear where to go, even if you can see where the next objective is, the path isn’t always obvious.
The worst part are the 2D platforming sections between levels, which while gorgeous are too simple, and feel out of place.
However, Rebrushed makes up for not erasing these by upgrading the camera, from almost impossible to use, to perfectly functioning.
Epic Mickey is the perfect game for the remake treatment. It’s old enough to require shiny new features, but still has a good game at its core.
It’s just a shame that more changes weren’t made to bring it right up to the modern day.
If you want to read more about recent releases, check out our Astro Bot review.
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