#Mickey mouse castle of illusion review series

Though the levels themselves are linear, players have a certain freedom to move throughout the castle at will. Along the way you’ll see sparkling gemstones and your unstoppable impulse to collect them will be correct.

#Mickey mouse castle of illusion review series

Players progress through a series of levels with plenty of jumps, moving platforms and enemies to be fruited or bounced on. So of course Mickey must come to the rescue. An evil witch, with the ultimate goal of stealing her beauty, has kidnapped Minnie Mouse. The game is a spiritual homage/remake of a much older game by the same title and nowhere can it be seen more than the slapdash story. The only 3-D segment I truly delighted in was one in which you have been suddenly shrunken down and are on the run from a tumbling apple of destruction in a very Indiana Jones-esque sequence. It might sound like this is a bad thing, when in fact the 3-D portions of the game are the most frustrating due to the looseness of the controls. Despite the three-dimensional graphics and some fully three-dimensional sequences the majority of the game is played from a classic side-on perspective. Presumably in the greater Disney canon, all apples are poisonous.

Moving Mickey is accomplished via a virtual analog stick and tapping the other side of the screen makes him jump and a red button throws any apples you may have collected. Unfortunately that enchantment wears off rather quickly as you speed through what is underneath all the polish, just another platformer. Castle of Illusion isn’t anything unusual in that regard, but the game is unexpectedly enchanting, even for an adult. Even in the Kingdom Hearts series despite the fact that players could take iconic characters into combat, there was nothing that verged on ‘adult content’. Much of this can be attributed to Disney’s careful control of their characters to ensure no potential tainting of their family-friendly brand. There have been very few Disney video games that have truly challenged and engaged adults.