Disney Epic Mickey Preview

Oswald's kids like Mickey, but they still cause him a few problems.

Of course, some of your fellow 'toons won't be too pleased if you run around destroying everything. There's always the option to re-paint obstacles once you've passed through them, but naturally doing this puts a drain on your resources. This creation versus destruction theme will play a big part in determining Mickey's character. If you take the time to help people out and to restore the structures you damage, NPC characters will trust and assist you - perhaps opening up areas you wouldn't otherwise see. Play more aggressively and you'll end up a lonely character - but you'll also be a paint-thinning force to be reckoned with.

I've only seen snippets of the game in action, but the locations shown so far suggest an interesting array of environments - many of which culled from well-known Disney cartoons. One 2D platform level has Mickey leaping over giant cogs and gears inside a huge timepiece - a setting based on the classic short "Clock Cleaners". Elsewhere you'll find characters from vintage 1930s Disney shorts, and even a few never seen before. This latter category will include The Gremlins - a set of monsters that Disney co-created with Roald Dahl; there was supposed to be a big film about them, but for some reason it never happened.

Clearly this game will appeal if you're a long-term Disney fanatic, but the sheer weirdness and darker-than-normal tone may also draw gamers who are less enthusiastic about the brand. Junction Point and Disney are certainly taking a few risks: One mission I saw kicked off with Mickey discovering Donald Duck's head on a shelf; the poor duck was still alive and well (although curiously he seemed to be half-robot, like Arnie in Terminator 2), but he desperately wanted Mickey to retrieve the parts of his dismembered body.

No, seriously - let's go over that again: Robot Donald Duck wants you to gather the pieces of his dismembered body. It's hardly The Lady and the Tramp, is it? Things get even weirder when you find one of Donald's limbs, as someone approaches you and offers to swap it for something that will make you more powerful. Who wants to buy Donald Duck's dismembered leg? Is he going to put it on eBay, or what?

It's definitely a break from the norm, but as it happens I have a lot of faith in Warren Spector. When I hear that he's chopped up Donald Duck, or that his game features boss fights that can be avoided entirely, I start to get excited. This game is a long way from release, at least a year, but there's potential for something genuinely interesting. Junction Point has sunk resources into their animation systems, and the action I saw last week was far more engaging than what the first screenshots may suggest. There are a lot of questions that won't be answered until we play the game for ourselves, but as gaming debuts go, this project has my attention.

Epic Mickey is due out exclusively on the Wii in Autumn 2010.