Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed Review

2010’s Epic Mickey remains one of my favourite games to have launched on the Nintendo Wii. At a time when it had already long felt that Disney’s mascot had become little more than a corporate shill more likely to be found on mugs than movie screens, it not only put Mickey back into a lead role but gave us a refreshingly well-rounded, heroic but fallible take on the mouse that’s remained one of the most potent uses of the character to date.

Epic Mickey puts its titular lead in an unusually vulnerable position right from the outset, with Mickey’s curiosity and impulsiveness accidentally unleashing catastrophe on an entire world, one created by the sorcerer Yen Sid to house forgotten Disney animation characters. By the time Mickey eventually finds his way into this world, now known as the Wasteland, it’s exactly that – a realm on the brink of erasure and overrun with a menace known as the Blot. It’s here that Mickey also meets Oswald the Rabbit, who Disney fans and trivia nerds will know was Walt Disney’s earliest major cartoon character before essentially being usurped by the now-ubiquitous mouse.

Disneyland Resort has seen better days

It’s a bold take, sending Mickey on a tour of a world full of things abandoned by the very establishment he’s a figurehead of, and Epic Mickey (led by Warren Spector of Deus Ex fame) deftly explores ideas of resentment, envy, and guilt as much as solidarity and forgiveness. Mickey’s actions throughout the story portray him with his typical heart of gold but also with flaws. Hell, up until the third act he keeps his direct involvement in the plight of the Wasteland completely to himself. It’s a precious piece of Disney history in my eyes – something you wouldn’t have thought the company would ever do, at the time, and something you really can’t see it doing again.

Aside from its surprising philosophies, Epic Mickey is also a decidedly more “mature” gameplay experience than most Disney animation fare. As much an action-adventure as a platformer, it’s a game built around player agency in many ways. Mickey’s primary means of interaction with the world is through his ability to throw either paint or thinner on anything made from “toon,” which usually includes big portions of the environment as well as the “Blotling” enemies. This essentially allows players to erase or fill in things around them to find hidden secrets, create new paths, or solve simple puzzles.

Kingdom Hearts 4 looks great

Often, the choice to paint in or thin something in the world can change how you progress or have varying consequences, with painting usually offering the more noble and constructive route while thinning things out will typically reveal shortcuts to success at the expense of someone else. The quests you’ll undertake are frequently filled with similar quandaries. Crucially, most of the choices or branching paths you’ll be faced with aren’t moored in moral “right” or “wrong” but simply ask you to assess the cost of kindness in that moment and budget your time and effort accordingly.

In keeping with this, the game offers a refreshing amount of leniency in how your actions shape the overall course of the story. There are absolutely pivotal moments and important quest lines to consider, but for the rest you’re relatively judgment-free and so don’t really have to sweat the small stuff too much. There isn’t some unknowable deity doing checks and balances against your character, rather you can see in front of you the impact you’re having on this world and decide for yourself the kind of hero you want to be.

Nice legs, Daisy’s head, makes a mouse go “Oh, boy!”

These things are, of course, all true of the original version of Epic Mickey and remain completely intact in Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, the latest effort from Purple Lamp Studios in refreshing a licensed classic under the THQ Nordic banner. The studio has proved in the past that it’s more than capable of reproducing a classic 3D platformer in a way that’s faithful for fans and still palatable for modern players. Like SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated before it, Rebrushed has been rebuilt “from the ground up” to bring new life to the source material while ever-so-slightly tweaking things beneath the canvas.

The most obvious upgrade here is, of course, the game’s visuals, which have been given a mighty “rebrush,” as it were. Rather than simply polish up or recreate the original assets, Purple Lamp has gone all-in here and put its own touches on absolutely everything in sight. The end result is a visual package that features much more environmental density, drastically different lighting, brand-new details, new animations, and even whole new character presences. It’s surely a tall order, painting over a classic with modern techniques and tastes in mind, but in my eyes (and with the support of Spector himself) the studio has done an absolutely fantastic job here, skilfully avoiding an “Ecce Homo” situation. Playing on PS5, it shines especially brighter in 4K and 60FPS.

How it feels when my alarm clock goes off in the morning

Playability has also been hugely improved in this new take on Epic Mickey. Our hero now has an expanded moveset that makes him faster and more agile in the hand, which will no doubt be music to the ears of anyone who played the original. To go with this, level designs have been tweaked in a lot of areas to provide a more robust platforming experience, including a heap of new secrets and “museum” collectibles to find. As a whole, and also by virtue of having ditched the Wiimote, the game plays and feels infinitely better than it ever has. Even the annoying back-and-forth between distinct areas broken up by loading screens, though still present, has been made much more agreeable with the ability to skip the 2D “projector” levels that used to mask those lengthy load times, after you’ve done them once.

The important detail here is that nothing has been done to dilute Epic Mickey’s divisive but defining tendency to be a little vague and a little weird with it, putting the trust in players to comprehend what they’re seeing and doing. I do wish Purple Lamp had updated a few of the more dubious quest descriptions/bits of dialogue to fix the original’s nature of being frustratingly unclear at times, but thankfully there’s plenty of existing documentation out there to fill in any gaps.

It’s that guy from A Goofy Movie

There were also some minor rough edges I encountered during the review period, a weird collision thing here or there and exactly one instance of the otherwise-buttery framerate collapsing during a pretty full-on encounter, but otherwise this is a very nicely polished construction.

Final Thoughts

A remaster of Epic Mickey didn’t need much to be a slam dunk, other than to save this inventive and introspective piece of Disney history from finding itself in the same state as the ‘toons it spotlights – unworthy of the current corporate image and left to decay in the dark. As a bonus though, Purple Lamp’s capable brushstrokes have managed to both preserve the art and make it easier than ever to appreciate.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics