Castle of illusion review series#

This last-minute surprise isn't helped by a short but unskippable cutscene before every attempt, and her constant jabbering during the fight, with just as much frustration coming from the fact that Mickey's floaty physics are as much a risk as her attacks. Even she’s a low-tier boss in the great scheme of things, but her flashy screen-filling attacks and multiple stages are far, far harder than anything that came before, to the point that she feels like she was air-lifted in from another game entirely. The only real difficulty spike hits at the very end, in the showdown with Mizrabel. Twice I felt the need to double-check I wasn’t accidentally playing on some special baby-mode for babies, and it wasn’t until the penultimate level that the platforming got mildly tricky. Bosses, for instance, include a Jack in the Box that more or less beats himself up, and a bell ringer who doesn't so much telegraph his attacks as schedule them a week in advance. There are a few tricky moments and jumps, especially when hunting for bonuses, but neither the levels nor bosses could be much easier without putting safety rails next to the death pits and corking the pointier enemies. Pre-release, the developers claimed things like “It’s a challenging game, it’s a gamer’s game,” as if it offered old-school brutality. While some cutesy games cruelly hide a black heart of obsidian that dreams of being jet, Castle of Illusion can be sleep-walked in one sitting. Watch those jumps.Even at its hardest though, there’s almost no actual challenge here. The full-3D sections play fairer, as well as moving smoothly in and out of the 2D plane with a flick of the camera, but inevitably raise a “grr” when the same slippery controls meet platforming’s greatest nemesis: precision 3D jumping. The level designers don’t help matters, with most of the action kept fair, but something of a love of cheap design like platforms that give way without warning, having an off-screen knight throw his weapon to hit Mickey mid-jump, and death pits out of nowhere. It’s not bad, but suffers constantly from Mickey’s movement being just a little too floaty and slippery, especially in moments when the camera struggles to keep up. The platforming itself could have done with a little more mechanical polish though. None of it pushes the platforming genre as a whole forward even an inch, and the themed worlds that seemed so imaginative in the ‘90s are now utter cliches, but these reworked return trips certainly beat Sega’s designers just copying and pasting from a ROM and having an early night. A clock tower whose grinding gears keep switching the perspective. A micro-scale bonus level set in a swirling tea-cup.

Castle of illusion review series#

A series of false platforms solved by referring to the true reflection behind them. It’s stylish, it moves well, and every stage is packed with character and gimmicks to uncover and enjoy. Castle of Illusion isn’t close to Rayman-level artistry, but its looks and personality easily earn its Disney logo. Everything benefits from great art and at least a little 3D though, with flat routes now able to curve around towers, follow train tracks, and other well-implemented effects. Older segments be can a mite bland if you have no emotional connection to their original versions, but the new stuff around them is surprisingly seamless. The actual game is a strange mix of old and new, with lots of specific level design copied outright, but expanded on every axis – the action mostly being 2D with polygons instead of sprites, but with the camera regularly zooming out into the third-dimension proper for bonuses, some set-pieces, bosses, and the Castle itself, which has now been upgraded from a few humble doors to a shameless copy of Peach’s place from Super Mario 64. Unlike the intrusive story of Duck Tales Remastered though, CoI’s plays behind the action rather than constantly interrupting it, and the narrator shuts up when returning to levels to sweep for collectibles. And, well, that’s about it, with the added detail in this remake limited to little more than a narrator on hand to constantly add comments like “Mickey bravely continued through the castle.” This narration can get irritating after a failed jump too many on a specific section, and contributes little.

Mickey of course races to rescue her, content from the title of this game that at least he knows exactly which castle his princess will be in. The premise (“plot” would be a little strong), is that Minnie gets captured by the witch Mizrabel – the Queen from Snow White working under a different name – to have her youth and beauty siphoned off.