Epic Mickey is a piece of shit. You probably already knew this based on nearly every review out there, but I'm not the type to take critics at their word. They could put up a sign that says "Danger: Killer bees will sting your dick beyond this point" and I would still walk past it like an optimistic moron and wonder why my dick suddenly hurts.

I'll try to keep this review short because you should already know the gist of the game and my wrists are still hurting from playing it, which is actually my first point: Epic Mickey is the very first and only Wii game that has ever made my wrists hurt from playing. The pointer is so unresponsive and the camera tried so hard to fuck me over at every turn that I just spent the last twenty minutes wrenching my hand in order to aim the paintbrush around corners and overtop of knee-high obstructions. I'm being absolutely literal here: I couldn't throw paint at a wall that was directly in front of me because Mickey's shins were blocked by a grassy hill. He just stood there spraying paint at his feet like an idiot pissing into the wind.

The game is supposed to be an adventure-platformer hybrid yet has nothing but contempt for either genre. The appeal of adventure games is in solving environmental puzzles that give you a reason to explore a series of beautiful settings. Epic Mickey tries to emulate this, but the settings all look like shit even for a Wii game and every single puzzle involves spraying thinner at things to dissolve the scenery until you find a hidden path or area. It's the evolutionary form of the ancient art of pixel hunting (ghost type, immune to fun).

The platforming side of things is even worse, in part due to the aforementioned camera problems, but also because Epic Mickey has the worst double jump ever. Eighty per cent of the time the mechanic didn't work at all and I ended up falling into a pit of toxic thinner. During the few other times when Mickey would defy physics by propelling himself off of thin air like a good little mouse, even if I pushed the A button at the apex of his jump there would be a delay causing the second jump to occur when the fucking rodent was already half-way through his descent. But even this wouldn't be so bad if the ledge-grabbing mechanic—which is supposed to save you from slightly miscalculated jumps and help you reach even higher areas—worked even four times out of ten. Rather than play with controls that actually worked, though, I had to sit and watch as Mickey threw himself into walls and off of platforms over and over again. I can't blame him, though, because I wanted to do the same thing.

The cinematics are the final thing I'll bitch about. The in-engine cutscenes are slow, with way too many panning shots of the levels and the dialogue text runs just two lines at a time with a delay before you can press a button to continue. The hand-drawn cutscenes are slightly better thanks to the different art style and the dialogue running at a quicker pace; but the text progresses without warning and it's very easy to miss a change in the dialogue while also trying to watch the animation above it. Now, I'm no expert on game design theory, but perhaps some goddamned, motherfucking voice acting would have solved this one problem. Of course, that would have set the quality of these cutscenes significantly higher than the rest of the game, which would in turn ruin the consistent feeling of cunt rot that Warren Spector was obviously going for while designing Epic Mickey.

The Final Word: Epic Mickey is a light-hearted romp through a twisted, mirror version of Disneyland, held back by some minor flaws, but still fun for kids and adults alike. B+