(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Doug's playthrough of the video game Epic Mickey: Rebrushed)
Doug (vo): Let's finish up Disneycember with Epic Mickey: Rebrushed. Years ago in 2010, Epic Mickey was released, and while I never played it, I will admit, it looked pretty cool. Mickey is a totally passable character, but I have to admit I never really got into him that much. He's just a little too pleasant and too safe, so I always associate him with being kind of bland. But this was the first thing with him in a while where I really took interest. It looked cool, it looked different, it looked dark and strange and creative. It didn't look like something Disney would usually associate with Mickey Mouse. Again, they usually like him smiling with bright colors and being pleasant, but this looks like the Mad Doctor created a game. Hell, he's actually in the game. With that said, I never did bother to check it out because yeah, this job does keep you pretty busy. On top of that, I never really heard if it was good or bad. And now, having sat down and played it on my own, I can confirm it's pretty damn fun and creative, even if it wasn't 100% what I thought it was going to be.
Story[]
Doug (vo): The game starts with Mickey waking up, realizing he can suddenly walk through his mirror. Yeah, there's a lot of callbacks to classic Mickey Mouse cartoons in here, which is also kind of cool. You don't really see that too often in popular Disney media they're trying to put a lot of attention and money into. Hell, Plutotopia gets a level. I thought I was the only one who remembered Plutotopia! In this parallel world, he runs into the wizard Yen Sid. He's creating a magical land for forgotten characters with a magic paintbrush, you know the drill. Once the wizard goes away, Mickey steps in and starts causing trouble, playing with the paintbrush, accidentally creating a monster. He tries to destroy it with thinner, but accidentally knocks ink onto the magical land, which the monster retreats to. Years later, Mickey becomes a big star, going on all sorts of adventures, but suddenly, he gets called back to this magical parallel world by a character that might look familiar or might not, depending on your Disney history: Oswald the Rabbit. Oswald seems to take over the position of Mickey Mouse in this land, but he's not too happy because the ink that spilled all over the place literally consumed their entire kingdom. On top of that, the blot monster Mickey created seems to also wreak havoc. Mickey feels guilty and decides to help out, trying to save this magical world of forgotten characters, as well as maybe save a few little cute gremlins...if you're in the mood.
Review[]
Doug (vo): Okay, so that's the story. Let me get to some of the really fun stuff. First off, I was really shocked to find you don't always have to do the right thing in this game. Now, this is clearly not the first game to try something like that. Hell, there's been dozens, maybe even hundreds of games before this that do something like that. But with this character, this cash cow that Disney protects so much, I was really pretty amazed to find that you can choose whether to be Epic Mickey, that is to say, the hero, or evil Mickey, the douchebag that just lets people suffer or sometimes even makes things worse. Now, in the original designs, you were supposed to change, depending on how much you help people out. You're supposed to either look better or look more creepy and distorted, maybe even like the blot monster, you know, all inky and twisted and weird. They sadly took that out and I think it would have been more fun if they kept that in. But again, I should be thankful we got this at all. This is really not something they usually do with Mickey. And if you play games like this, you probably know the setup, the more good things you do and the more people you help out, the more they're going to help out in the game and make it a little easier. But, of course, me being a dirtbag, I decided to just let everybody suffer. Anytime a character is like, "Oh, I feel bad, I lost so-and-so" or "Oh, that poor little gremlin is caught in the cage", I always did the wrong thing and usually got shouted at by my gremlin sidekick.
Doug: (as Gus) Do you really want to choose a treasure chest over the safety of a gremlin? (normal) Like hell I do! (chuckles; as Gus again) You just launched Gremlin Calvin to who knows where for...a treasure chest? That isn't something a hero would do! (normal) Look, buddy, you just met me! You don't know me!
(Footage focusing on the worlds is shown, along with footage of Oswald the Rabbit)
Doug (vo): It probably goes without saying, but this game looks amazing. Levels like this in Disney games—at least when I was growing up—were usually like one out of 10 levels, they didn't take up the majority of the game. But every single level looks like this weird, dark, twisted world, and I just ate it up. Everything's supposed to have like a bizarro take on Disney World, and they're very, very clever about it. It is so surreal seeing this Disney statue holding the hand of Oswald. And on that note, it is really cool seeing Oswald in this game. Not only that, they throw some love to some of his old cartoons, too. But I also kind of like Oswald, he's a bit of a jackass. For a moment, I was really thinking he might be the main villain, which just makes so much sense when you know his history. Again, apparently, they were going to go further, like, he was going to be a boss you had to fight at one point, but I guess they pulled back on that. But the more you play, the more they do flesh him out and make him actually kind of interesting without going too complex. I mean, these are simple cartoon characters and the story is supposed to be pretty simple, too.
(Footage focusing on the story and gameplay is shown)
Doug (vo): But that's also where it gets a tad complicated, funny enough. So there's so much built up in this setup. Like, what is Oswald up to? What is that ink monster? Where did it come from? What is going on around here? Everything is building up like there's a couple big twists coming, and I'll just tell you right now, they're not. The story in the opening really is it. There's maybe like two surprises in the entire thing. There's some stuff about Mickey's heart being taken away and you can't really leave if you don't have a heart because Kingdom Hearts was a big hit, so I guess they're trying to do something like that. But the same way with Kingdom Hearts, I had to get used to a different kind of storytelling. It's a little bit the same thing here, it's simple and complex in areas I wasn't expecting it to be. So, yeah, in terms of story, if you're looking for some sort of big reveal about this place, there really isn't one. And honestly, there's not even a big boss battle, that was really surprising. Like, okay, this game does have bosses. I mean, there's not a ton, but there's a fair amount. So you think you're getting to the end of the game, you've gone through all the levels and then they do the stupid thing where you fight a big boss and you think, "Okay, well, there's going to be like one big boss left at the end". And nope, you have to go back to all the other levels and do some weeding, which is really lame. I really hate it when they do this in games. Does anybody like this when they do this in games? Like, yeah, you're going to go to either the last level or the last big thing. It's like, "No no, you got to go back to all the other levels you've been through". I mean, I get it, filler, you got to really pad out that gaming time. But come on, my adrenaline's high, you're destroying the momentum! But I will say it wasn't building up that there was a big boss coming next; it was more building up that there was an entire new world coming up next, so that was a little better. It still felt pointless, but I didn't feel as cheated when I knew there was a whole other level waiting. It wasn't like, "Oh, you're just going to fight some big bad guy."
(Footage focusing on the weeding is shown, along with footage from the ending if Mickey didn't help all the characters)
Doug (vo): But again, there's no big bad guy to fight. Like, you see him a couple times, and yeah, you do these old puzzles to try to figure out how to get out of his way or keep him off your tail, but the climax of this game—literally the last thing you do before it cuts to the ending—is just more weeding. It is super underwhelming. They maybe throw in a few more enemies, but that's about it. And yeah, I was kind of let down by that. But again, I will admit, I thought there was going to be more to the story, and really, the story is just what you see at the beginning. And I think it's a story you're not supposed to think that hard about. And maybe the designs and the setup were so cool and then the questions of what happens if you do good things or bad things and what that's going to equal out to, I think it was building up something a little different for me. But with that said, yes, it is so amazing seeing all these endings of all these characters you didn't help out at all and it's just got happy music playing over it. (chuckles) And oh, it's—it's a riot.
Doug: Oh my God, this is great to watch! This is like all the sad endings...(chuckles) just hearing all the misery! (laughs) Things are a little less crappy than before.
Doug (vo): So yeah, if you go with the idea that this is a very simple story—much, much more simple than Kingdom Hearts—I think you're going to have a good time with it and just enjoy the creativity. The gameplay is crazy fun. I love the paint and thinner mechanics, I love that you can use paint to fill stuff out or you can use thinner to get rid of it. And again, depending on what kind of mode you want to play—either Epic Mickey or evil Mickey—you can fill in a bunch of stuff and make people happy or you can just thin people out, literally make them melt, even if some of them do make questionable sounds afterwards.
(We see Mickey spraying one of the characters, who is definitely making some questionable sounds)
Doug: (laughs) Is anyone else hearing what I'm hearing?
Heather (vo): Oh, we are, Doug. Oh, we are.
Doug (vo): But what also makes it great, though is that you can still attack, you can spin around and knock things over and collect all sorts of little Disney bucks and hearts and whatever else. And while you do need to use either the paint or the thinner to defeat the enemies, you can still knock them over and it's just so satisfying destroying stuff like chairs and tables and then just whacking these things in the face and then using the thinner paint...Nah, nah, I only use thinner. Yeah, it's always the thinner, I'm evil Mickey. While also jumping on platforms, it reminds me a lot of a Mario game, it really has that vibe. And that's probably the biggest compliment I can give it because the Mario games are some of the most famous and fun games ever made.
(Footage focusing on the Easter eggs found in the game is shown, along with more footage of Oswald)
Doug (vo): There's a ton of Easter eggs in this, too. There's literally a whole island just made of Mickey merchandise, and man, was it surreal seeing a Mickey Super Nintendo game there. That was just so beyond bizarre to me and I love seeing it. And I'll admit, even though I knew the history of the character, I didn't really watch that many Oswald cartoons. In fact, I don't think I've seen an entire one all the way through. And you can actually collect Oswald cartoons as well as, like I said, play through a few of them. I'm not going to lie, I think I like this character more than Mickey Mouse. He's got a little bit of an edge to him, a little bit of a bite, he's a stinker. I kind of really like him. Maybe they should do more of this character. Hell, if this is the world I'll get if they dive more into Oswald the Rabbit, I'm totally down for that.
(Footage focusing on the camera movements and controls is shown)
Doug (vo): I also hear the camera movement is a lot better on this game, and I think that makes sense because I feel like a lot of people played this on the Wii and everybody said the D-pad was the camera. And I don't know, I never used the D-pad as a camera, but I feel like that'd be really, really awkward and wouldn't move right, just the normal way everybody uses a camera now with the second joystick. I think that goes a long way and again makes it a lot of fun.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): I had a blast playing it. I was always looking forward to every Friday, putting it on and just seeing what weird world was going to pop up next and what weird altered reality was going to be thrown at me and what fun way I was going to play throughout the whole thing. As someone who's never played the original game, so I don't really have that much to compare it to, I can say I had a great time playing this remake. It was lively, it was creative, I felt like I got more than my money's worth and it's a great addition to this character that has quite a legacy.
(Footage from various Disney projects reviewed in 2024 is shown)
Doug (vo): And folks, that's about it for this year's Disneycember. You know, I have to admit I still got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and it does knock me out every once in a while. It's a lot better than it was before, but yeah, it meant I really had to change around my Disneycember schedule and what I watched and when I watched it, when I edited stuff and recorded stuff. And I'm going to tell you, it's still worth it. I love doing these, whether through good times or bad times or a little bit of both. Disney always offers something that's worth talking about and it's interesting to talk about games, movies, shows, other franchises, other studios. I love discussing it all. And even though I feel like I'd still be doing something like this, even if people weren't watching it, like I said, I just really like doing this kind of stuff. I really do owe it to all of you for allowing me to still do it as a living, it means so much to me that you keep coming back year after year. One of Disney's big selling points is making dreams come true, and I can say you made my dreams come true, so thank you so much again. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, I'll see you next year.
(The Disneycember logo is shown once more)