Rock_On's Full Review: Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey for GameCu...
Intro:
Well it looks like Universal Studios: Theme Park has found it’s match for the worst game on the Gamecube, or even more. When I was looking into Mickey’s Magical Mirror, it looked like it could have been a really fun platform game where you jump around(“jump around, jump jump, jump around, jump jump“) and collect different power-ups and other cool little items. Usually platform games don’t have to have an incredible story to be fun, so even though it was Mickey Mouse, I still expected it to be fun. But c’mon, you’re never too old for Mickey Mouse right? I’m proud to say that I love going to Disney Land, because I’ve had the most fun there than I have ever had in my life, and plus it doesn’t matter WHAT age you are, there’s always a kid in somebody. Anyway after I rid my nose of snot from that tender moment just a moment ago(*sniff* *sniff*), I popped the game in and started playing, and I must say I was VERY disappointed, read on...
Plot/Story:
I believe this will be the shortest paragraph I have ever written. Ok so you’ve got Mickey sleeping in his crib, catchin’ some Z’s. All is going down well until ole’ Mickster sees a ghost staring back at him from inside his bedroom mirror. So Mickey goes to the mirror, and is hesitant to enter at first(you know, his first time in a mirror, first time jitters), however the ghost beckons him more and more to come into the mirror, and so he steps in. But, Mickey is still asleep, so this is a dream. Once “dream Mickey” steps into the mirror, he’s transported into a twisted mansion inside the mirror, and the ghost has broken the entrance back to the real world into little pieces, so now Mickey must put his best foot(or claw? since he’s a mouse you know) forward and find the mirror pieces so he can return home to the real world.
Gameplay:
Ok so after the small little introductory scene, I’m waiting for it to stop so I can start to control Mickey. But there was a small problem, when I came into control of the game on-screen, I was controlling a hand pointer thingy. So I was like, ok maybe this is just for this little area and it wasn’t part of the actual game so I’d actually get to control Mickey if I go into one of these doors. I open a door, what do I control? The pointer still, and that my friends, is how you control Mickey during the whole game. As you explore the game, you’ll have to point where you want Mickey to go.
Now the whole point of the game is to find the scattered mirror pieces, so you’ll explore this mansion which has different rooms(doesn’t this seem familiar?), and find keys to unlock doors that lead to more puzzles to solve. Oh wait, I didn’t mention it yet, this game is one giant puzzle, you’ll go to the different rooms, point the cursor on different items and cabinets and stuff like that to pick stuff up. When you point your cursor over different items, the pointer will change into different cursors to let you know that you can do something. If the pointer is white, that means you can click it once and Mickey will walk to wherever you clicked the pointer, and to make Mickey move his little a$$ you can click it twice to make Mickey hustle over to the spot where you want him. So for instance if there’s an item layin’ somewhere that you can take a closer look at, the pointer will change into a magnifying glass so you can take a closer look at things, which can discover new passageways or allow you to pick items up.
When you move the cursor over to a door, the cursor will change into a door which lets you know you can go into another room. Of course some doors will be locked(NOW is this starting to resemble something?), so you’ll have to find keys which are usually found after completing an easy little puzzle to open the door, and now you’ll enter the next room, with more puzzles to complete, which leads to opening more doors, which leads to finding keys to open those doors, which then again leads to more puzzles, which will then lead to another repeat of what you just got done doing 20 minutes ago, only now for another 20 minutes. That’s ALL you do in this game, and aside from two or three mini-games, this is the most boring game I have ever played in my entire life, even over Universal Studios: Theme Park which unless you’ve been living in a cave with Bin Laden somewhere, you would know how horrible THAT game is. For those who didn’t catch on to what game this had a strong resemblance too, it was Resident Evil, only Resident Evil was fun and this game is a piece of trash. So this is what my buddy and I don’t understand, and that’s how they can take a game in the year 2002(now for those who don’t pay attention to our society), and turn the gameplay in it into a game from 1992, which is what the point and click part is about.
So anyway, when you come to a place where you can use an item that you’ve collected, an item bag will replace the pointer and that will let you pick the item to use on what you’re pointing too. For example, early on in the game you’ll find a piggy bank with some type of gear in it, but you can’t get it out. So as you explore more, you’ll find a coin. If your brain ticks right, something should have clicked about what to do, and you go back to the piggy bank and see the item bag appear over the bank, so you click on it and choose the coin, throw it in there, but that’s not enough. So you have to find more coins to fill up the Piggy Bank in order to get the item out of it. Most of the puzzles consist of this kind of stuff, and it gets SOOOOOOO boring. The only slight innovation to the game, is the trick points. Your trick points are in the upper left corner, and you have to find blue Star Holder’s to increase how many Trick Points you have. You use trick points when the cursor turns into a star, and most of the time this’ll appear when there seems to be nothing going on, however if you have enough trick points which is specified inside the star pointer, you’ll do some weird thing and the screen will turn weird colors. Ok so maybe it’s not really innovation, how about this game is horrible. Mickey is almost impossible to control and it takes forever just to look at an item.
There could have been one thing that could have saved this game, and that would have been if they ditched the stupid click and go process, and went with a platform style game where you actually control Mickey and can jump, and collect items, and do everything you do in the game now, only without the stupid point and click. Mickey’s Magical Mirror could have been a surprise platform hit a lot along the lines of how Pac-Man World 2 turned out to be an awesome platform game. I mean, I know it’s Disney and this game is intended for the little kids, but it’s not that much harder to control Mickey himself.
Graphics:
Are you kidding? You call these graphics? Well for a little child, then they’re going to be top dollar to them and they’re going to have fun no matter what, but for me this is WAY to colorful to me and it actually started to hurt my eyes. But that’s not it, the game just looked like a big Saturday morning cartoon minus the coolness and everything. In fact, the cartoons look BETTER than this game, as the visuals in this game are very bland. Plus there’s nothing complicated, they have the basic square, circle, and other geometric shapes that make up the foundation of the game.
I mean, there’s nothing really to say here, the graphics are very cartoon like, although they’re extremely lame and plain. But then again, you’re not going to see a 16 or 17 year old guy playing this or anything, most likely, so the kids really aren’t going to care because they’re so wrapped up in telling their favorite cartoon character where to go.
Sound:
The sound in this game is EXTREMELY annoying, and if you haven’t muted your TV within a minute or so of playing, you must be extremely deaf. This is a time where I’d like to be deaf, however I must have been cause I didn’t mute until I had gotten pretty far in the game, but in that time there were a couple 2 minute scenes where some really cool classical songs were played. Like when you’re in the kitchen and you inspect a cabinet to find the silverware pop out and start marching as Mickey orchestrates like in Fantasia to one of my favorite classical songs of all time. But other than that, all the sound there was, was little squeaks and beeps and Mickey’s annoying “All Right!” in that high voice EVERYTIME he got something, even a stupid key. It’s like a child who spazzes out when he gets “what he always wanted” for Christmas.
Rock’s Thoughts: Mickey’s Magical Mirror has my vote for THE WORST GAME EVER and I’m sure anyone else who plays it will agree with me. This even has Universal Studios: Theme Park beat, only because of how horrible the controls are, especially the 1992 “point and click” type of gaming. Point and click belongs to PCs where you’ve got a mouse, not on a controller on a next generation console in 2002.
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