Epic Mickey: Rebrushed

Written by Joseph Moorer on 9/25/2024 for PS5  

As of late, we have had an abundance of remakes. Most of these did more than just pull directly from the source material. Remakes like Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 are amazing to look at. Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth added more lore and expanded storylines, keeping fans on baited breath, while impressing with a full graphical and detail upgrade from the polygons that made up the original. In a remake or remaster, sometimes it's something as simple as a frame rate boost. Then some use the remake thing too soon and as a cash grab. I don't know if I can fairly say that's what happened here. I can say that Disney and Purple Lamp came together to remake, or Rebrush the old Nintendo Wii exclusive Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, and Rebrushed is a statement. 

The story goes like this. Back in the day, our cartoon heroes were a little mischievous. In this game, Mickey Mouse passes through a magic mirror, with a similar opening from “Thru The Mirror” cartoon from 1936, and on the other side is the wizard Yen Sid (Fantasia 1940), and he seems to be putting the finishing touches on another world. Once he puts the brush away and turns in, Mickey finds his way to the table, and accidentally makes a Blot Monster with the magical paint. Thinking he could get rid of the monster with the Magical Paint Thinner, he hears Yen Sid coming down the steps, and scurries away, knocking the entire bottle of thinner over into the world, and causing what is known going forward as Wasteland. An undisclosed amount of time later, Mickey is pulled back through the mirror, and into the painting by the very monster he created, into a world now run by the Mad Doctor. You know, the Mad Doctor, from that one Mickey Mouse cartoon in 1933. This cutscene is amazing, and gives me hope for the game. 

Mickey wakes up bolted to this machine, also run by the Mad Doctor, who wants to take his heart out with a plunger. Mickey breaks free, and finds Yen Sid’s brush. The Blob stands in Mickey’s way initially, and then runs when he then threatened with the brush. He is then sort of saved by Walt Disney’s first cartoon creation Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit, who thinks he’s shutting down the swiss army torture machine, but it just malfunctions, and turns into a more evil swiss army torture machine. You beat the machine, and your quest starts. Find Oswald, and see if he can get you home. Mickey then meets Gus, and he takes your hand, figuratively and literally. 

Gus is a magical gremlin, who is leading you on this adventure. Gus will tell you everything you need to know about the game. Gus will tell you that you have a spin move and a double jump. He will detail everything you find, and everything you stop and look at. Gus will tell you where to go and what to do through the ENTIRE game, so much so that there’s a way to turn some of  the chatter off. Gus tells you about your main weapon and the thing that’s going to get you through this game; the paint brush.

Gus will tell you that you can use this paint brush using paint and thinner. Paint will fill in spots that are translucent to your gaming eye. These could be bridges, trees, doors, full houses and more. You can even find different chests in the game using the paint. More so, the paint is used to befriend. Gus tells you that you can befriend your enemies with paint, and use them against other enemies, but I only used this to stop them from attacking me. The paint doesn’t work on all of them. 

Thinner is to erase things and defeat enemies. Thinner can be used to erase entire walls and floors. You know you can use the thinner on something when it’s the most colorful thing in the game, as most of the game is dark and bland. You can also use thinner to defeat pretty much anyone, or whittle them down to expose a weak spot, to then defeat them with the spin move. You can also shoot out a splash of paint at any time. Both come with their own reservoirs too, but if you run out, you never run out. It just slows the flow. All you have to do is spin attack a barrel or a light, and voila, you’re all filled up. You can even get paint back by filling, or thinning things. 

Don’t worry about memorizing any strategy here. The enemies are few and far between, and they’re all the same. I unlocked a trophy for discovering all the Beetleworks and blobs at 30% into the game. The scoff I let out is not suitable for regular audiences. There are blobs, brooms that shoot out blobs, spiders, animatronics, and pirate animatronics. Sometimes there’s six or seven blobs at a time. In this case, just move to higher ground and befriend them all, if only to watch them plow into each other to no end, because THEY CAN’T DEFEAT EACH OTHER!  

Gus will then tell you that you have Guardians. Guardians are supposedly used to show you the way, but Gus will always be there to show you the next way, so there’s no point. You can get up to three, and you get them based on how much paint or thinner you use. You can have up to three of either or, and shoot them from a distance to instantly defeat, or befriend, a blob monster. These don’t necessarily work on the Bettleworks, but you have them. So use them, or they just float around until you do. 

Gus sticks around, and tells you to free other gremlins, who make the game easier. Gremlins will weaken a boss, or open a door to a treasure chest, or even let you skip an entire part of a section. The game is easy enough as is, with Gus telling you via a cut scene what everything does. There is no voice acting in these cut scenes. Just grunts and reactions, in the voices of the characters. Donald Duck’s is the worst. I would think Rebrushed meant Remake. Maybe I misconstrued that. The cut scenes are nicely animated, but subtitles and grunts are not what I thought I would see here. I get it during gameplay, but the cut scenes could get a little more love. 

You will venture into some towns, and the first one is the main hub called Mean Street. It’s from here you will find your way to the rest of the game. You can stay on the main quest, and go and do what you need to do to find Oswald and get to the bottom of this. But then the game just sideswipes you with sidequests. And this becomes troublesome, because some of them are not sidequests. Some of them are required to complete even if they’re not part of the main game story.

At some point, you’ll meet a gremlin who will open up certain worlds, but he needs something called power sparks, so then he FORCES you to go complete the most mundane side quests I’ve ever played. I know they’re not supposed to be difficult, and the rewards aren’t supposed to be amazing, but to give the pirate some ice cream, or some flowers, and then choose what he should give his crush, is a very odd sidequest. Especially since the love interest in question tells you she is lactose intolerant. Then later in the game, she asks for MORE ice cream.  Also, you can fail the sidequests if you make the wrong decision, or give the right item to the wrong NPC. There were some quests I had already completed before interacting with the NPC in question, so then I had to go through the entire dialogue only to hear “Hey, you found it! Thanks Mickey!”

Again, no worries though. Don’t let your decision making get the best of you. You can find E-tickets pretty much everywhere. Again, using your spin attack on barrels, treasure chests, lights, and more will net you e-tickets. Defeating an enemy will as well. They’re hidden all through each location, and if you leave that location, and come back, all those barrels and treasure chests you broke, respawn. All that to say, you can pretty much BUY power sparks. You can buy anything in this collect-a-thon of a game. Which is another gripe. 

You collect pins, gold, silver, and bronze. They do nothing. There are no special powers, or cartoons that unlock. You don’t get a ticket to Disneyland. They do nothing. There are also commemorative pins for doing things in game, like befriending a boss (which you can do), or doing all the quests for an NPC. There is concept art you can unlock, and three, count em, three cartoons. Just three. They’re all on Disney+, and probably somewhere on Youtube. A lot of my frustration came from this part alone. Not only can you buy power sparks, you can buy practically anything. At some point, a quest is “go and buy these two parts from 2 different shops in two different worlds, and bring them back to me, for a pin, that again, does nothing.

The worlds are usually just classic relics and rides from yesteryear theme park attractions and cartoons. The world of Tomorrow is shown here, as well as Mickey Junk Island, a place that is littered with paraphernalia. Lunch boxes, phones, and even SNES games are used here. Gus is right there again, giving you an overview of the level, and telling you EXACTLY what you have to do. “Looks like those blobs are in the way, Mickey. You’re going to have to turn those three gears, jump over that hedge, paint that bridge, and defeat that one guy to unlock the room, to go to the next level.” Gus, with all due respect, shut up! 

Between each world is a film strip, and it’s usually based on the classic cartoons like Steamboat Willie (1928) or Lonesome Ghosts (1937). These side scrolling levels re-render most of the art and hazards in 3D. This makes no sense to me. More so, you have to do this every time you advance to a new level of the world. So you’ll get Lonesome Ghosts parts 1, 2 and 3. And these levels aren’t a platforming masterpiece by any means. Mickey has the highest, floatiest jump ever seen, and with the double jump and the spin attack that heightens each jump, it was super easy to reach what should be hard to reach spots. This also applies to the actual levels, too. If Mickey slips off of something, just get closer to the edge, and jump, double jump, spin attack. Easy. The good news is that once you complete these film strips, you can find them again in the theater on Mean Street. Use the theater to collect any reels and turn them in. You at least get something from doing that. Also, if you have to go back into a level, WHICH YOU WILL, you can slip a gremlin 10 tickets, and skip the film strip. I just wish he didn’t have to ask every time. 

The start menu will show you all your quests, all your unlocks, and points of interest. Gus ain’t the only one holding both of your hands as you cross the street. The quests tab will tell you exactly what to do, and where to find what to do most of the time. “Go defeat the boss and use this”. I can do it myself, Gus! You can find your options, including a camera to take screenshots, if that’s your jam. You have to buy the filters though, because Epic Mickey wants those E-Tickets. You also have costumes, because yes. 

There are different moral paths you can take. You can choose to be more of a problem by destroying everything, not meeting the quests, and filling every mechanism with thinner. I wouldn’t know, because I chose the good side, so most of the things were painted or filled with paint.  Some bosses were way easier to defeat with Thinner, and when you defeat them, you get a max paint or thinner upgrade. This matters not, because again, you don’t really run out of paint. You also get sketches sometime in the game that add more weapons and powers to your arsenal. The TV distracts, the anvil crushes, and the clock slows things down. Hardly even used them.  

The game runs at 60FPS, but it’s not a system seller. The game it remakes sold 3 million copies, so maybe those fans will play it again to see the revamped UI, and the fact that you can click L3 to run faster. The game is dark and the lighting is not something I would think would be on my PS5. I'll give credit that they wanted to stick close to the source material as possible, but then maybe don't charge me full price to paint over a hole in the wall. There is an auto save, but Mickey doesn’t have lives, so if you die, you just respawn in the very same spot, and lose about 10 tickets, and you gain those back by bashing a barrel. I know who this is for, and I’m a Disney fan, but I know you’re not out there watching Oswald cartoons. You’re playing Cuphead, or Mouse P.I.

The platforming is simple, the hand holding is egregious, and "rebrushed" is a stretch. The game became an absolute drag for me. Mickey Mouse has better games, and now I remember why I stopped playing the Nintendo Wii version.