Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two brings Mickey back to Wasteland, the world inhabited by all of Disney's retired cartoons. While Mickey left this world thinking all was right, it seems a series of earthquakes and a new threat has gripped the world and Mickey is once again called in with his magical paint brush to help save Mean Street and the cartoon inhabitants.
This time around, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit joins Mickey on his quest as a co-op character, although I found myself questioning his purpose more times than not. This character can be controlled by a second player, or the game's A.I. Unfortunately, the second character doesn't really have a lot of work to do, so asking another person to sit next to you and be ready whenever you need an extra boost or a switch to be flipped is a bit of a waste. That being said, the co-op A.I. doesn't always do what you want, so some human intervention is sometimes required.
While Oswald does come in handy in order to shock enemies and helicopter you across large gaps, I always felt like these were obstacles thrown at me for the sake of giving the co-op experience a purpose and never really felt like a necessary part of the game. While co-op is all the rage and there is a lot of potential for a truly fun co-op experience here, there just isn't enough in The Power of Two to make it feel like more than a simple gimmick to make this title different from the first.
Epic Mickey 2 not only has the main story, but it also throws a ton of side quests at you. You are tasked with everything from finding rare objects, to collecting items, unlocking costumes and even taking pictures of the world around you to look for hidden Mickeys and Oswalds. Actually, I found this to be quite overwhelming, especially when you first get to Mean Street and every person you talk to seems to give you a new task to be competed somewhere along your journey. While the main story itself clocks in at around 10 hours, there is still a lot of work to be done afterwards.
As with most games headed by Warren Spector, there seems to be an emphasis on choices you make in Epic Mickey 2. It seems most of these choices are tied to your decision to paint or thin the objects around you. This supposedly influences a good-guy/bad-guy scale in the game and changes how some dialogue plays out, but quite frankly, I never really saw any evidence and I never really felt invested in the characters or choices enough to really care, especially since thinning an object rarely left lasting results since I could just paint it back.