Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed review – “A detailed and loving remake of a 2010s classic”
Mickey Mouse was once a lively, mischievous character, but for the past few decades he’s been mostly a simple silhouette – his iconic ears little more than a logo for one of the world’s largest corporations. Despite being the face of Disney for nearly a century, these days we rarely get a glimpse of his original character – which itself has been molded to fit a range of different personalities, from Kingdom Hearts’ wise King Mickey to the sterile Saturday morning host of Club House.
Enter Epic Mickey, a 2010 Nintendo Wii exclusive that revives Mickey’s cheeky but kind-hearted character in a truly unusual setting. Part Defunctland episode, part Psychonauts-style adventure, the creative vision of Warren Spector and his Deus Ex team paved the way for a flood of subversive and dark ideas that pierced the Disney glamour and gave us one of the most interesting games to hit the Wii console.
As far as remakes go, this one hits the aesthetic mark. Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a game that looks good in 2024 but doesn’t erase any of its past as a Wii classic. It combines vintage animation styles in 2D side-scrolling segments with full 3D exploration and the occasional sketchbook cutscene. The game looks and feels like the original but has a very modern level of quality. It may have lost some of its Wii-era eeriness, but that’s been replaced with a shiny new coat of paint that’s hard to fault.
An encounter with greatness
Short info
Release date: 24 September 2024
Platform(s): PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, Nintendo Switch
developer: Purple Lamp
editor: THQ Nordic
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (Walt Disney’s original creation) in his first appearance as a main character in over 70 years. Set in Wasteland – a world of forgotten cartoons, Epic Mickey introduces our titular hero as an accidental villain. In a Fantasia-inspired sequence of events, Mickey accidentally covers the world – which is made of a painted substance called toon – with paint thinner, unwittingly destroying Wasteland. Months later, Mickey is dragged back and forced to face the consequences of his actions. 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, you’ve come to the wrong place.
The paint/thinner dichotomy represents a basic morality system, where you can destroy or befriend almost any enemy and any of the main bosses. Blue paint restores the world, while green thinner dismantles and obliterates it. Your choices affect the story and its ending, changing minor details like the sound design or how much your character resembles The Blot’s dripping ink. Most quests can be completed in a variety of ways (leading to different outcomes) or skipped entirely – sometimes significantly changing the outcome of the rest of the game. Characters you’ve helped may show up and return the favor, or if you chose not to help them, they might have met a bitter end. As such, there’s a good ending, a neutral ending, and a bad ending, and there’s certainly enough here for a few playthroughs.
In fact, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is jam-packed with content, from pins and e-tickets to original concept art and full vintage cartoon reels. Every ledge you drop onto, every secret door, every seemingly unreachable location promises a new gem for the collection. Finding secrets is a big focus of this game, but this is where the charming exterior starts to give way to some unfortunate problems.
The problem with the color
Although the original’s infamous camera issues have been fixed in Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, the controls still feel just as slippery. In a game full of hidden promises, a game that actively encourages you to jump onto buildings and fall behind the scenes, you need clear, responsive controls. All too often, Mickey would default to a sliding animation when I tried to land a jump on a perfectly flat rooftop or get stuck between two buildings and hover in mid-air. Most annoying was the ledge-grabbing feature, which worked when I didn’t want it (with Mickey clinging onto a useless ledge and refusing to let go) and didn’t work when I desperately needed it (during some sections involving moving platforms or long-distance jumps, he would slide off the side of a ledge instead). You can never rely on Mickey’s movements to get you where you need to be quickly.
Resizable scenery is difficult to get right. The parameters of these objects must allow for arbitrary manipulation with paint or thinner, but Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed struggles to implement this despite it being a central concern. For example, during a side quest to capture bunnies, one of the bunnies got stuck in the roof of a building, effectively locking that questline out for me. The characters also struggled with several questlines and opened them for me, but then refused to close them and offer a reward.
If you are looking for the Magic Kingdom, you have come to the wrong place.
For a game this visually impressive, with so much emphasis on making the world respond to your touch, the glitches and clunkiness are particularly annoying. Even the accuracy of the brush is sometimes poorly implemented, it doesn’t highlight when things can be painted, it misfires badly, or it just doesn’t work as promised. Many of these issues were present on the Wii, but I had higher expectations running the game on a powerful PC in 2024.
The game also has issues with progression. There’s no difficulty setting, so the first three-quarters of the game are far too casual compared to the drawn-out showdown at the end, which requires you to dig deep and find a wealth of skills you’ve only had a cursory use of before. The sketch mechanic, for example, is introduced very slowly, giving you one sketch in each level. These can be used to power up machines, slow down time, or drop anvils on enemies’ heads, but their (very occasional) use is clearly indicated each time. Suddenly, in the home stretch, you’ll need up to eight of these sketches at once, despite having had no real need for them in the previous 15 hours of gameplay.
In terms of level design, however, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is a perfect transition from the small, straightforward and self-contained earlier levels to the sprawling, side-quest-packed later levels. The atmosphere 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 single piece of junk that makes up Mickeyjunk Mountain to the garish neon desolation of Tomorrow City, each location has been faithfully recreated – only small features have been added that feel entirely appropriate and respectful to the Epic Mickey story.
While Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed is no longer a demanding game for its current year, it’s worth the occasional technical inconvenience considering it’s a detailed and loving remake of a 2010s classic. It’s fun, it’s cute, and it makes up for any clunkiness by exuding tons of nostalgic affection. Playing as a Disney fan, a fan of the original game, or as a parent with a child looking for a common thread is certainly a worthwhile experience. Just don’t expect too much from the controls or you’ll be blown away. The majority of the experience lies in the story, the references to days gone by, the charismatic characters, and the newly polished aesthetic of these classic animations.
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed was tested on PC using a code provided by the publisher.
