Is Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii Truly Worth the Buy?

I was pretty excited, like most gamers, when I heard about the release of Epic Mickey. It became one of those games I knew I would get, but at the same time, one I would not rush out for on release day. In fact, I entirely forgot about the game, up until I saw it displayed in the new releases rack at a local Target.

I was hoping that the game was a movie made video game, and that it would have a movie to game price, around $29.99 or $39.99 the most. Sadly for me, I had to shell out close to $50.00 for this new game. Being a fan of Mickey as a kid, and being the 'have to have it' gamer I am, I went ahead and spilled the dough on the counter, and waited till I got home to begin my new adventure.

The Game:
 
At first I was excited about the entire thing. The start up scenes were pretty awesome as far as graphics went, the storyline looked sweet, and my Mickey character was dressed up in his retro 30s wardrobe.
The plot is not very thick, but it makes sense all the same, and flows easily enough to follow at the very start. Basically it starts of with Mickey snooping around a wizards room where he finds artwork made by said wizard. You will note the cool wizard hat as one Mickey wears in an old cartoon; you know the blue one with the legendary silvery stars? Yeah, I do not recall the name of that cartoon, but it was an epic one to say the least.

At any rate, Mickey snoops around this wizards work and manages to spill ink all over the place, which in turn releases this evil blob of ink which becomes your enemy. Mickey is then thrown into a quest where you will see some old age characters that never made the cut as popular characters. Some however you will know, such as Goofy. His job is to clean up the environment to restore it.
In ways, I thought it would be like De Blob, a fun paint game for the Wii.

Anyhow, Mickey is armed with nothing but paint and paint thinner. These are his tools that will aid you on the quest. At first I thought this would be awesome, painting and erasing blobs of ugly ink on walls. However I found out rather quickly just how limited I was when it came to painting and erasing portions in my world. For one, you can only paint, and erase pre-selected tiles or shapes in the world. They give off a hazy invisible appearance making it easier for you to identify which parts need paint or thinner.

You will need to erase doors, paint walls, erase platforms, and fix staircases that are broken by painting in the stairs. You do this with a quick point and click of the button. Nothing complex or in depth.

The problem however I encountered with this paint, erase feature was that the camera angles were too shaky, so I ended up wasting a lot of my paint and thinner trying to figure out what angle I could shoot at a wall properly, or a door, and so on.

Its mildly frustrating, but does not make the game a total buzz kill, just a frustration.

As you make your way through your environment, Mickey will sometimes find old time screens that he can jump into to play mini versions of retro movies he has appeared in. It does not add too much fun to the game, but the neat black and white retro cartoon vibe you get while playing these small mini 'game within a game' worlds is pretty cool, and yes, some of you old timers will remember quite a few of these mini clip movie games.

Graphics:
 
The graphics are not killer sick in Epic Mickey, but they do the game justice. Each environment I encountered was bright, vibrant, and colorful. Even darker more broken down scary areas within the game are done up nicely.

Music and Sounds:
 
Nothing sticks out to me in this game as memorable, but the game does play some old tunes you may, or may not remember from the cartoons.

Controls:
 
The controls in Epic Mickey are all laid out for user simplicity. Nothing is difficult to remember, and the fast tutorial at the very beginning basically gets you to where you need to be at as far as the controls go, without further in depth learning later on. The wii mote and wii controller are used hand in hand, and work well without any flaws.

The camera however is the only glitchy aspect as far as controls go. You can look around your world using the control pad, but at times the camera will not let you rotate it a full 360 degrees, and sometimes it will only let you rotate so far, which could make or break your jump.

Difficulty:
 
Epic Mickey is not at all difficult, however some areas for younger players may prove to be too complex to figure out. Adults could help, but if you are not a gamer and you plan on picking this one up for your young ones, do note that they will grow annoyed with it quickly, and for the price it is selling for, there is no fun in that. Kids 7+ should be able to tackle this game without too much issue though.

Overall:
 
All in all, Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii is a decent game. Not decent enough though to be selling for the price it is going for at this moment. A few days of playing this one consistently and you can easily beat it, which is why I would lean more towards suggesting this video game as a rental instead of a purchase.