Mickey's Wild Adventure was released last week in Europe and I now have
spent two hours or so playing it. What will first strike you after
completing the first stage (which is easy): It gets increasingly
difficult. The collision detection with enemies is very lax, so if
you are near anything that sucks your life energy, it will.
Based on the almost ancient, first cartoons with Mickey Mouse and his
friends, Wild Adventure takes the player into several levels
(Steamboat Willie, The Mad Doctor, ...) that are based on the look
of the films they are titled after, while each level is seperated into
several stages. The first level, Steamboat Willie, is black-and-white
at first, with a beautifully staged coloring in a later stage.
The stages come in various flavors. While most of them are standard
platform levels (with interesting obstacles and platforms here and
there), some are fast and sideways scrolling and telling from the
demo mode, there are even 3D levels, where Mickey runs in the direction
of the player, while being chased by a huge bad guy. This looks great!
Another type of stage is a round tower with steps on it's side, where
Mickey can run around, while the tower is turning in the background.
There was once an Amiga game using the same technique, but I forgot
the name...
The graphics are very nice, although not as great as in Rayman or
Johnny Bazookatone. Perhaps this is due to the comic origin of the
characters - they look exactly like in the comics, while the
background and other enemies look more "advanced". The sound
is appropriate, CD music in the background and Mickey occasionally
saying something like "Oooh, these are sharp" when approaching some
swords.
Apart from jumping, Mickey can also throw marbles at the enemies,
which is vital because you cannot get past some of them by only
jumping.
There are two things about this game that I don't like. First of
all, there is no password system and no memory card saving. You
get several lives and several continues and after you used all
up, you have to start at the very beginning of the game! When you
lose all lives, you have to start at the beginning of the level,
which isn't that great, either. The other criticism I have is
that often you can't see what hit you. I've had it several times
that Mickey said "Ouch" (losing energy) and I didn't know WHY!
There was nothing. There's also some inconsistency: When you
kill a large skeleton, several large and small bones fly through
the air. You lose energy when you get hit by a large bone. Later
in the game, there are other skeletons that only generate small
bones when they are destroyed. But this time, you lose energy
when being hit by a small bone!
Criticism aside, Mickey's Wild Adventure is a very good and
entertaining game, which I think is far better than Rayman and
Johnny Bazookatone because it's FASTER. The character doesn't
shuffle along while almost falling into sleep... If you
like a not-so-easy game (I don't want to say difficult because
I'm sure there are 4-year-old kids that are better than me),
Mickey is for you!
--
Thomas Meyer
  Student of Computer Science @ University of Bremen, Germany
  E-Mail: i03a@zfn.uni-bremen.de     WWW: http://www.uni-bremen.de/~i03a