what were some of the bad points of the two epic mickey games? i ask having never played either game
Epic Mickey 1:
- The combat is not great, doesn't really feel all that great, no real depth
- Vertical component of jumping is skewed. Mickey jumps too high and falls too fast, double jump timing feels terrible. Platforming is rarely difficult conceptually, but very difficult to pull off.
- Camera, being a Wii game, is mostly an untamed beast that you need to fight with.
- Mapping a 2D pointer cursor onto a 3d world sometimes made targeting particular areas of geometry with paint/thinner frustrating.
- Level designs incorporate what amounts to "lava"--platforming errors result in very frequent deaths. Jumping is just a complete and utter mess, it never ever feels good traversing a level.
- Quest design is generally fetchy, "choices" are exceedingly shallow, and ultimately the game never really explains why thinner is the "evil" or "easy" choice, while paint is the "good" or "harder" choice. I mean, the theme is basically that "sometimes being good is harder than being evil", but the game doesn't really do things that way.
- Personally, I found the game more tiring than most Wii games because it required constant pointer contact and use. Not as exhausting as something like Trauma Center, but far more than I would have liked.
- The between-level 2D segments are pretty shallow
- Resource management issues; you are constantly getting more paint and thinner and constantly using what you have--it's not clear why either is scarce to begin with, because it's never a key component of game design.
- Tons of low-impact collectibles, very little of interest.
- Level designs are not particularly strong, don't really do a lot to take advantage of alternate paths.
- Who or what is the target audience? The games are basically fan love letters to Disney's pre-feature film short animations, with a little bit of Disneyworld/land thrown in. I think most Disney fans would not really see characters, worlds, ideas, or themes that they actually enjoy.
- Some people didn't like the silent, hand-animated cutscenes, which I understand were themselves a throwback to some previous Disney era none of the target audience had heard of. Personally, I liked them.
I think by far the biggest issues stemmed from the fact that the game was on the Wii. The paint mechanic was built around the Wii remote and never works all that great. The Wii remote's lack of analog stick resulted in the automatic camera, which is the worst design element. Since the Wii couldn't handle patching, it was impossible to deal with bugs or improve the camera post-release. And the presentational elements could never really live up to expectations, given the system's hardware constraints.
With Epic Mickey 2, very little of the above is fixed or improved (based on what I've played so far). They've added voice acting for cutscenes, and musical scenes, but neither are great. The non-Wii ports do look cleaner, but the Wii was clearly the lead platform. The paint mechanic is TERRIBLE on a dual-analog controller, because it's analog-as-mouse-cursor. I'm only near the beginning of the game though.
It looks like Avalanche and Wideload are the last two Disney Interactive studios that aren't focused on mobile gaming.
Wideload hasn't made a console game since Guilty Party, and their most recent game was mobile. I wouldn't count unhatched chickens