Sony has decided to publish this game on the PlayStation Vita and add a couple of new features specific to the platform. Is this game better on the PlayStation Vita or is it the same mess that came out last year? Let’s find out.

Epic Mickey: The Power of Two is presented quite well. The game has a fantastic art direction that is true to Disney and charming to the audience at the same time. Voice acting is fabulous, and the Disney musicals throughout the game are perfect. The soundtrack fits the story and the Disney characters are personable and like-able all around.

However, the presentation does have a few issues. First there are a couple of freezes/slow-downs in the game at certain parts of the game. Second, the frame-rate is not solid and tends to be choppy throughout the majority of the game, which is a shame. Vita is a powerful handheld system and Epic Mickey: The Power of Two doesn’t actually boast amazing graphics, despite that, the optimization was disappointing and could have been much better. As a matter of fact, the graphics and frame-rate is far superior on the console version.

"Feeling a bit nostalgic? Here's a Gameboy-like monochrome layer to go along with that! It’s silly, but in a game where the point of progressing requires you to perish anyway, I didn’t mind it all that much."

The game’s graphical performance and shoddy optimization bogs down the experience and gameplay. The potential for crisp graphics was here; instead the game felt rushed and just ported over for the sake of putting the title on a different platform.

Gameplay in Epic Mickey: The Power of Two is perhaps the best part of the game, even though it has some flaws and bugs. The game’s main mechanic is based on the magical brush that Mickey has to use in order to save the world. Mickey joins up with Oswald, the famous Disney rabbit in order to reach their goal.

Throughout the game the player can either paint or thin out pieces of the world and that includes enemies, objects and surrounding environments. Thinning out the world makes objects or enemies evaporate and disappear, this can be used to find hidden secrets throughout the game or to kill on coming evil enemies.

Meanwhile, painting the world makes things come to life. If the paint is sprayed on enemies, then they become your friends and fight for you against other enemies. Both mechanics are well done and serve the gameplay purpose well. Thinning and painting mechanics are also used during certain story choices and quests. Depending on what you decide to do, you may get different outcomes and receive different rewards.

"Combat in itself isn't terribly deep, but offers a good variety of options and feels quite satisfying thanks greatly to the easy-to-grasp controls. "

What I love about the gameplay, is the collecting of hidden items and completion of side-quests throughout the story. The game rewards players for exploring worlds and levels. Players may come across treasure chests that include currencies for upgrades, pins that unlock character items and quests that reward with more stuff. Everything in the game is super well hidden, and it’s fun to try to thin or paint every nook and cranny to see what happens. Experimenting with the paint/thing mechanic rewards the player in many ways.

While the gameplay has a decent pace to it, however it still has many flaws that certainly hamper down the overall experience. Since the player always spends time with Oswald or Mickey, there are times in the game where both must cooperate to find hidden secrets or continue the main story line.

Epic Mickey: The Power of Two does have a co-op mode which can be a ton of fun when playing with a friend, and this is where the game truly stands out on its own.

Oswald’s A.I. is super buggy, there are times when he just sits there and doesn’t do anything when he’s supposed to activate something, then there are times when you actually ask him to do something, and he doesn’t do it. It’s not unplayable, but it’s extremely annoying and irritating and makes the gameplay boring and uninspiring. This was also a complaint in the original console version of the game, and it hasn’t been fixed here either after all these months.

"By far, the best parts of Rogue Legacy are when you’re finally decked out with better stats and more skills, ready to explore a newly themed area. "

Overall, Epic Mickey: The Power of Two has a solid gameplay design with fun interesting mechanics, hidden secretsand quests to explore. However, the buggy A.I that plays am major role in the gameplay’s core design really hampers the fun.

Epic Mickey: The Power of Two on the PlayStation Vita is inferior in most every way. The touch controls don’t really add much to the gameplay and rather gimmicky. The graphical optimization is downright poor, Oswald’s buggy A.I. still persists in the game and hampers the gameplay even after almost 8 months of development time.

The gameplay was marginally enjoyable on the consoles due to the inclusion of online co-op and better graphical quality. If you’re a die-hard fan of Disney you will love the story, and it’s presentation regardless of the game’s problems on any platform. However, if you’re looking for an enjoyable and innovative platformer on the PlayStation Vita, look elsewhere.

This game was reviewed on PS Vita.

Have you missed out on the latest sequel of Epic Mickey last year? Well, fear no longer because Sony has finally announced a release date for Epic Mickey 2 for the PlayStation Vita for June 18th 2013 via PlayStation Blog.

The Vita version of Epic Mickey 2 will contain hardware features that can only be possible on Vita such as touch-screen controls and ad-hoc functionality for local co-op play.

Don Mesa said that players will be able to use the touch-screen controls for a variety of gameplay functions such as painting, telling A.I what to do and more. For full details regarding PlayStation Vita features for the game please take a peek at the official PlayStation Blog post.

Epic Mickey 2 may not have been the most successful game that was released last year due to some camera problems and frame-rate issues. Hopefully the PlayStation Vita version fixes all of those issues

Let us know if you’ll be buying Epic Mickey 2 for your Vita on June 18th 2013.

Check back on GamingBolt for more updates and review of the game in the coming weeks.

Warren Spector has written a letter after his studio Junction Point was shut down.

“I’ve had some of the most magical times of my life, fulfilling several life-long dreams. I’ve gotten to know Disney fans and Disney cast members, gotten hands on with Disney’s history, walked where Walt walked. ‘Magical’ really is the only word.”

“The Junction Point journey is over. To all those who’ve asked, or want to ask, I’m sad but excited for the future,” Spector said in he wrote. “I honestly don’t know what that will be yet, so don’t ask.”

Epic Mickey 2 was released recently and didn’t fare that well with critics and that has been always a case with Spector’s games.

“I’ve had some of the most magical times of my life, fulfilling several life-long dreams. I’ve gotten to know Disney fans and Disney cast members, gotten hands on with Disney’s history, walked where Walt walked. Magical’ really is the only word.”

Junction Point was formed by former Ion Storm members and the studio was acquired by Disney Interactive back in 2007.

Thanks, VG247.

Warren Spector needs no lengthy introduction; the creator of Deus Ex and System Shock is one of the prominent figures in the gaming industry. We recently got the chance to ask him some questions and you can check out Spector’s witty and informative replies below.

Pramath Parijat: The first Epic Mickey was obviously met with a bit of a polarizing reception critically. The camera, especially, seemed to put most people off. Were those complaints at the forefront of your mind when you started work on Epic Mickey 2?

Warren Spector: I wouldn’t say people’s complaints were “at the forefront” of anyone’s thinking. I mean, we were aware of them, but we didn’t need a ton of outside input to have a sense of what did well – and less well! – in the first Disney Epic Mickey game. We knew we could do a better job on the camera (though, I think the team did a better  than some give us credit for, dealing with a tougher problem than a lot of people realized we were trying to solve!). Anyway, we worked hard to do better on camera… We developed several strategies for improving player direction from the first game to the second (some of which result from the decision to record full speech in the new game)… And we certainly upped the level of consequence when it comes to all the choices we allow players to make in the game! But we did all that because we’re all gamers here at Junction Point and knew, as well as players and critics did, what we could do to make the sequel better than the original!

PP: The original Epic Mickey was Wii only, and it did well enough at retail, selling over 2 million copies worldwide. What prompted you to make the sequel multiplatform?

WS:  What prompted the move to multiplatform was simple – or, two simple things. First, we heard from plenty of 360 and PS3 owners, in particular, that they were intrigued by the game and our gameplay ideas, and felt left out. Second, on the first game, we were trying to reach a broader audience than usual and, at the time, the “broad audience” existed only on Wii – now, the PS3 and 360, thanks to the passage of time and reduction in prices, are beginning to reach that broader audience, too. Put all that together and going multiplatform was an easy decision to make.

PP: As a multiplatform title, Epic Mickey is notable in that the Wii is the lead platform, and the game will then be up ported to the other systems, rather than it being developed on the HD consoles, and then being down ported to the Wii. What led to this decision?

WS: We created all new assets – ALL new – for the HD versions, did lighting from scratch, made audio changes and, of course, control and UI changes. We didn’t “up-res” the game or “down-res” it – we crafted the gameplay we wanted and then built it on multiple platforms, simultaneously – the HD versions ran about 4-6 weeks behind the Wii just because the Junction Point team had all the Wii experience from the first game, but that still meant there was a lot of back and forth on the team about ideas for one version migrating to the others. And it wasn’t just a one-way street of ideas moving from Wii to HD…

The game was developed, on all platforms, by an enormous team, spread out around the globe, at multiple studios, with Junction Point providing the direction and the glue, if you will, that ensured we were all building the same game. The development process, ably managed by Junction Point’s Studio Director, Paul Weaver and his team, was pretty miraculous.

PP: Let’s discuss the game’s co-op mode. What prompted the decision to include it in the game? From what we understand, it feel a bit like the co-op in the Donkey Kong Country games. Do we have the right idea?

WS: Well, first of all, I’m not going to complain about a comparison with Donkey Kong Country! That’s sweet! If there’s a DKC feel to co-op, that might have something to do with the fact that Paul Weaver, the Studio Director I mentioned a minute ago, worked at Rare, as a tester on DKC and DKC2 before working as co-designer on DKC3! So, sure, there’s probably a bit of the “right idea” there. But the decision to go co-op in DEM2 was made before we started working on the first game. We introduced Oswald in DEM… made him a playable character in DEM2 and… well, let’s not talk about the future just yet! The idea of making Oswald an AI-controlled character in the game came from Chase Jones, the Design Director. It’s great having a Lucky Rabbit along on the adventure with you.

PP: At least on the HD twins, and on the PC and Mac versions of the game, will the co-op mode be supported over online?

WS: No. There’s obviously no technical reason we couldn’t have done online co-op, and the decision to do only split-screen or “couch co-op” wasn’t driven by budget or schedule, either. We all just thought that, if you’re making a “game for everyone” and you know the first one appealed to kids and adults, boys and girls, men and women, you should actually allow those people to play together… really together… not virtually together.

PP: The sequel has voice acting and musical numbers, something that the first game didn’t have. Why did the first game not have them? Was it due to time constraints? Creative reasons?

WS: A little of both – time and creative. The very first Disney Epic Mickey design document included a wacky (by which I mean “overly ambitious”) interactive music system. As the design for the first game moved from concept to prototyping it quickly became apparent that making a dynamically changeable world was more than enough of a challenge for one game. The interactive music stuff just got put on the back-burner. Well, some of it survived in the way the soundtrack changes based not only on where you are and whether you’re in danger or not, but also based on your playstyle.  But a lot of ideas beyond that just didn’t make the cut. To be frank, with the passage of time, much cooler interactive musical ideas have come up than we had 5… 6… 7 years ago, so it’s probably for the best that we didn’t do that stuff in the first game! We’ll get to it someday, I’m pretty certain.

PP: How does this game tie into the 3DS Epic Mickey game?

WS: Other than the fact that both games are set in Wasteland and feature Mickey Mouse (with appearances by certain other forgotten cartoon stars), there isn’t much. But that’s plenty. Once you say “Wasteland” you’re kind of also saying “paint and thinner” and “dynamically changeable world” and both elements are front and centre in the 3DS game. But traditional consoles and handhelds – especially the 3DS – are very different things and we knew we couldn’t do justice to the games or the hardware if we just did a port of a console game to 3DS. From the start, Power of Illusion on the 3DS was going to tell its own story, feature its own cast of characters and settings, but most important of all, showcase a completely different approach – game mechanics-wise – than the Wii, 360 and PS3. I’ll tell you, I’m super excited about the fact that the 3DS game introduces the idea of forgotten VIDEOGAME history into Wasteland. That was all Peter Ong’s idea – he’s the Creative Director at DreamRift, the team we’ve been working with on Power of Illusion.

PP: The first game was a lovely tribute to the lost Disney worlds. What all do we get to explore in Epic Mickey 2? Are we going to retread old ground with a new perspective, or is there some new stuff there too?

WS: I’m not sure I’d use the word “retread” in the context of what you’ll be doing in Disney Epic Mickey 2!   But, word choice aside, you WILL re-explore some places you visited in the first game, but changed by events between the games and just… deeper than before. There’s more to do, more to see in places like Mean Street (and others) than there was before. We’ll also be sending players to new locations – we’ve only talked about one so far, the Disney Gulch, based on Frontierland, but there’ll be plenty of new stuff. Oh, and we have a whole new set of cartoon-inspired sidescrolling platforming levels – so far we’ve only talked about a couple of those, but there are many more players will discover. And the sidescrolling levels are much deeper, richer than they were in the first game. Frankly, they were kind of a side project on the first one and we were all taken by surprise by how popular they were. We’re putting even more focus on them in this game.

PP: Epic Mickey 2 supports the Playstation Move, and obviously, it supports motion controls on the Wii. Why was Kinect not supported by the game?

WS: Kinect is a really interesting piece of hardware. For some games, it’s absolutely perfect –but Kinect didn’t seem right for a game that’s all about exploring how you want, going where you want, doing what you want. Let me put it this way – if any of us had figured out how to walk or run, with the Kinect as the interface, we might have gone with it, but we didn’t just want to shoehorn support in to get a bullet point on the back of a box, you know? Someday, I’d love to see Junction Point work on a Kinect game but when we do it’ll be a REAL Kinect game, not a game that just features Kinect support because we’re supposed to or something.

PP: Are there any plans to turn Epic Mickey into a trilogy, a running series?

WS: Before I start working on any project, I sort of map out several games in a potential series featuring the characters and game world. Basically, if there’s a chance I’ll be spending ten years of my life (and a trilogy of games can take that long!) in a single universe, I need to know I’m not going to end up bored out of my mind! Before we started working on the first game at Junction Point, there were reasonably solid ideas floating around for what games 2, 3 and 4 might look like. So, to answer your question, I’d say there are “hopes” that Disney Epic Mickey will enjoy a long run as a series.  Will it happen? Let’s see how #2 does!

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Warren Spector, the guy behind Epic Mickey 2, System Shock, Deus Ex and Thief, does not care about how publishers treat him, and he has said that he isn’t too worried about it in an interview with Gamesradar.

“I understand who I am – I don’t care if publishers like me or not. I know what I want to do,” he said. “And if they don’t want to do it, someone else will, and if they don’t, I’ll go back and write novels again. Whatever.

“I want to write comic books so bad – and in fact I got to do that last year. “Oh no, someone isn’t going to fund my game.” Whatever. My obligation is to sell one more copy than I need to – that’s my only obligation to you, Mr Publisher. And if you don’t want to fund it, don’t fund it – I’m not going to make you give me money.”

He was pretty straightforward and mentioned that a publisher needs to properly read his pitches or the relationship simply won’t work.

“You’re all adults, just decide if you want to do it. And so I just say, here’s what I want to do, do you want it or not? But I’m very bad at elevator pitches – my elevator pitches are usually two to four pages long. And if you’re not willing to read that, we’re probably not going to get along very well anyway.”