I was always keen on the first Epic Mickey game. Sure, there were plenty of issues with the camera and difficulty, but the sheer joy in the storytelling won me over. It's a game that I played a lot with my family as well. We would all get together on a Friday evening for some Epic Mickey time and work together to solve the puzzles and progress through the story.
If you've not played it the novelty was that you could paint in new platforms and walls with a magic paintbrush, and do the reverse with a pot of thinner. This formed the meat of a variety of platforming puzzles and was a nice fresh way to interact with a changing world.
Epic Mickey 2 extends the original game in a number of ways. Firstly it brings it to the PlayStation Move controller as well as the Wii. This is a welcome change of focus and means you can enjoy the higher resolution visuals on the PS3 along with those often under-rating motion controls on Sony's console.
FGTV Interview with Paul Weaver, Epic Mickey 2's Studio Director
Perhaps the biggest change this time round is the promise of co-operative multi-player in the main story. Although the original was only one player, Epic Mickey 2 introduces a new character with new abilities, Oswald, who can be played alongside Mickey. Not a million miles away from the same-screen co-op puzzles of Skylanders Giants, but here you can choose to progress without actually fighting the bad guys. Each major encounter is a choice where you can either attack or befriend -- and each decision makes a difference to the way the story progresses.
Oswald has a TV remote attack that matches Mickey's ability to paint or thin (remove) elements of the world. He can also hover and glide with a move that offers an alternative to Mickey's double jump. Best of all though they can team up and work together. This not only offers a more powerful set of abilities but a host of new ways to solve each puzzle.
Although time will tell if Epic Mickey 2 can answer critics complaints about the camera and difficulty of the original, the innovations here promise to extend the first game in new directions.