Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two Impressions

June 7th, 2012 by

We were able to have a decently long playtime with Epic Mickey 2 on the PS3 at E3 yesterday, and what we saw was fairly promising.  Using the Move controller, I ventured to tackle a boss battle in which I had to paint or thinner-ize various parts of a large robotic dragon while trying to avoid its fire-breathing and circular-saw covered tail.  As is to be expected, the jump from Wii controls to Move controls was indeed a smooth one as the game handled in much the same way as its predecessor.  It was certainly not the easiest boss battle I’ve ever tackled and I’ll even admit to having died once or twice.

As with any game running on the PS3, Epic Mickey 2 wasn’t without some aliasing, but I’m sure most people will take “some” aliasing on their HDTV instead of the giant aliased mess that is the Wii on modern TVs any day.  Aliasing aside, Epic Mickey 2 has graphically benefited from the jump to the HD consoles with higher resolution textures, Havok physics, and cleaner character models.  The gameplay, from what I saw, still involves 3D “hub” worlds connected by 2D platforming levels based on animated shorts and the like from Disney’s rich history.  The improved graphics help these platforming sections look even more like the segments on which they are based, but they may not be able to entirely help out the otherwise fairly average puzzle platforming mechanics.  I was not able to experience the co-op play offered in the game, which may be its saving grace, so you might want to hold out on passing judgement on the game completely until some co-op impressions come out too.

While the time that I had with Epic Mickey 2 was indeed fun, I have still yet to see anything that would bump this game up into the upper echelons of the various games coming out this fall.  Epic Mickey 2, unless some interesting aspects of the game are still kept secret, seems right now to be set to repeat the moderate success of its predecessor and become another slightly above average puzzle platformer appealing mostly to tweens and die-hard Disney fans.