After working through a quick tutorial in Yen Sid's workshop and navigating a floating path made of rocks, a 2D travelling level features a series of very simple door puzzles, while OsTown sees us locating three fuses to power a thinner pump that will drain the nearby fountain. In terms of objectives, the section we're allowed to play is not particularly inspired, however. When platforming is called for, the camera seems to anticipate where you're trying to go, and it can even cope with a new special move in which Oswald's ears turn into helicopter blades and Mickey hitches a ride on his feet. The split-screen leaves both players with plenty of space to see the environment, and it feels a little easier to target NPCs for a chat. The camera was a real issue back in the first game, but 20 minutes or so spent in the new version of OsTown, a large 3D space with a fountain right in the centre, suggests that the team is making noticeable improvements, even if there's still some way to go. The adventure still seems to be split between 2D and 3D sections, and Spector's said that his goal is for players to make their way through the entirety of the main campaign without ever having to touch the camera controls, which are located down on the d-pad. If you're playing alone, meanwhile, the AI isn't bad, and it looks like you can switch characters with the press of a button. If you're playing with a friend, it can all feel pleasantly clumsy in a pantomime sort of way. Mickey's still armed with his paint and paint-thinner, allowing him to rub out parts of the environment or build it back up again - on a pad, this is done with L2 and R2, with the right stick controlling the reticule - and Oswald has a remote control that he can either use to zap electrical equipment to life, or to throw and then catch, like a kind of boomerang.Ĭo-operation's the order of the day, and plenty of the game's very early puzzles rely on Mickey clearing a path with his thinner while Oswald powers an electrical platform that will move them along some tracks. Playing on PS3, this makes for scrappy, rather chaotic fun. So that's the first thing that's changed, then: you've got local split-screen co-op that sees you teaming up, drop-in, drop-out style, throughout the entirety of the campaign. In the sequel, however - which is coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as the Wii - Oswald and Mickey are partners, and they're off on a new adventure that sees the Wasteland suffering strange seismic events that threaten to pull it apart. This was a Mickey Mouse game that kicked off with an attempted surgical disembowelling, remember, and things only got weirder and scarier from that point on. In the first game, in fact, Oswald spent a lot of time as the villain of the piece, a spurned and bitter cinematic icon left to wallow in the Wasteland, his toxic version of Disneyland, while some newcomer got all the attention. You don't see much of that any more, but you did get a little glimpse of it in Epic Mickey. Disney cartoons were once brash, inventive, and even mean. Oswald used to be mischievous and anarchic, and so did Mickey Mouse. To cook them, Pete holds Oswald against the train track until his pants catch fire. They want something to eat, so they pull the head off a chicken and shake out a few eggs. Oswald and Peg-leg Pete are hitching a ride on a train. Hungry Hobos - one of now just 14 of the original 26 Oswald cartoons to have survived - is refreshingly cruel, in fact. They don't feel as subversive.īack in the days of Oswald, though, they were. Disney shorts tend not to be funny and violent the way that Warner Bros. When you think of Disney cartoons - I'm talking about the shorts, here, rather than the full-blown features - you may be picturing something that's lavish and beautiful, but rather tame and rather bloodless. Spector screened it for us before launching into his game presentation - I wish all press events worked like this - and it was astonishing stuff to watch. It was an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon - he was the precursor to Mickey Mouse - made by Walt Disney's animation company in 1928, and long thought lost forever.Ī copy of the film travelled with Junction Point boss Warren Spector when he visited London last week to show off Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, the unexpected sequel to the odd and rather troubled, Wii exclusive from 2010. The tin was labelled "Hungry Hobos", and a quick check on Google revealed that it contained a genuine piece of movie history. Last November, a film archivist in Hertfordshire found an old tin sitting on a shelf.
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