Disney Illusion Island - Review
Disney Illusion Island is a kid-friendly Metroidvania that is not as good as its predecessors or the genre's classics, but it is still a great game for younger players. The game's cartoony graphics and simple platforming make it accessible to kids, while its Metroidvania-style exploration provides a sense of challenge and discovery. While I would have liked the game to feel more like a fully realized cartoon world, it is still Mickey's best platformer in a long time.
Transcript
00:00 Disney Illusion Island is a fun metroidvania for kids that doesn't quite live up to its
00:05 retro legacy.
00:06 "A thousand evils will rain down untold suffering and misery!"
00:07 "That's it?
00:08 For me, that's a Tuesday."
00:09 When it comes to gaming, Mickey is probably best known for his Sega's 8-bit and 16-bit
00:20 Illusion titles and, while Disney Illusion Island is a revival of sorts that'll delight
00:25 kids, it does fall short of rejuvenating the beloved retro series.
00:29 The characters have loads of personality, it's fun to jump around and you have lots
00:32 of assist options, but the basic environment design, co-op not adding much and it petering
00:37 out towards the end means that it's not quite living up to what we expected.
00:42 Disney Illusion Island stars Mickey Mouse and girlfriend Minnie Mouse alongside pals
00:45 Donald Duck and Goofy, sporting simplified designs, both the animation and comic writing
00:49 feel in keeping with the Mickey Mouse TV shows.
00:52 In cutscenes, their constantly squashing and stretching facial expressions are wonderfully
00:56 expressive and while the script's meta jokes can grate, it's still chuckle worthy and
01:00 should keep children entertained.
01:02 The excellent animation carries through to the game, with each four of the heroes having
01:05 their own distinct run cycle packed with personality.
01:08 And as you unlock skills to help you traverse the Metroidvania-style island, each one's
01:12 tools are bespoke.
01:13 Mickey, for example, can boost jump with a short-range jetpack that has him briefly snap
01:17 on goggles, while Goofy, for some reason, thrusts his hips into a red hot chilli pepper.
01:22 Their fun, distinctive flourishes, and with quite a lot to unlock in order to access more
01:26 parts of the expanding map, really add up.
01:28 It's excellent detail and quite the sight to see all four animating differently, popping
01:32 off their own moves in sequence as they jump from one platform to another.
01:36 Indeed, the Metroidvania structure isn't the only change-up to the level-based fare
01:39 that came before.
01:41 Disney Illusion Island is fully playable with up to four players, enabling some multiplayer-specific
01:45 moves such as a leapfrog jump and a Kirby-like embrace that rewards players with an extra
01:50 heart of health over their current maximum.
01:52 A rope can also be deployed to haul other players to higher levels, which is perfect
01:56 if a jumping sequence is too much for a little one.
01:59 Illusion Island can be played with any number of players, from solo to the full four, without
02:02 the design of the game really changing at all.
02:04 That does mean that there's not too much depth to the actual multiplayer in and of
02:08 itself.
02:09 While the rope move may add a nod to the 1994's World of Illusion game, players are never
02:12 required to work together as they were in that opus.
02:16 The co-op works best in the odd room where there are multiple collectibles to hoover
02:19 up, and boss battles where multiplayer targets spawn and you need to bash to disable them.
02:24 Other than that, you're mostly all just hopping one after another down a fairly straightforward
02:28 route, occasionally skidding to a halt when you notice a hidden pickup behind a bit of
02:31 foreground.
02:32 Obviously aimed at younger players, which is fine, the game can often feel frictionless.
02:36 Even though you'll only take 5-6 hours to hit credits, what you're doing can get quite
02:39 repetitive.
02:40 The powers you unlock are expected platforming fare, a wall jump, swimming, a glide, etc,
02:45 and the objectives usually just ask you to head to one corner of the map, where you'll
02:49 find you need a certain power, which is just around the corner.
02:51 Along the way you'll continuously come up against locked doors that always require 3
02:55 keys from nearby challenge rooms.
02:57 There's little here to surprise.
02:58 You'll need the map a fair bit, purely because the level design is bland enough for you to
03:02 easily get a touch turned around.
03:04 While visually each of the three biomes has some fun stuff going on, the platform level
03:08 design doesn't move far beyond what you might scribble on the back of a maths book,
03:12 and even the odd biome specific hazard doesn't provide much in the way of personality.
03:17 It's a shame as the past games in the series were much better at making you feel part of
03:20 the space.
03:21 It doesn't feel like you're exploring an interactive cartoon, merely navigating cartoon
03:25 characters through fairly rigid, boring geometry.
03:28 The extremely zoned out perspective doesn't help either, and good luck to you if you're
03:32 playing on a small screen because it's just as bad when you're playing solo, but if you
03:35 do you at least zip around quickly and the movement feels great and responsive.
03:39 If you die or take a whack, you do always feel like you were to blame.
03:43 Combine that with an almost pacifist approach when it comes to avoiding dangerous, often
03:47 spiky enemies rather than fighting them, and the shifting gauntlets of jumps can feel a
03:51 good way to worm your way through the levels, even if they don't offer much of a challenge.
03:56 Still as the moves add up, you start to feel the lack of say, Mario's elegant and simple
03:59 controls.
04:00 The multitude of moves are all mapped to different buttons, which risk becoming over complicated
04:05 for younger players.
04:06 Mostly inoffensive, the loop of jumping towards an objective and occasionally nabbing a slightly
04:10 off the beaten path collectible, many of which reference classic Disney cartoons, is enjoyable
04:15 enough.
04:16 It's a shame then that the final main portion of the game dumps you unceremoniously into
04:19 a lengthy underwater sequence without that pleasing cadence, and then into a final challenge
04:24 gauntlet that so stops start with story scenes that it's hard to appreciate the dialled up
04:30 platform challenge.
04:31 Disney Illusion Island is a lightweight metroidvania, which is perfect for kids.
04:35 Ok, it's not as good as its more level based illusion predecessors, nor is it as good as
04:40 the true titans of the genre like Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but I also wouldn't
04:44 expect 8 year olds to get on with those classics as much as this.
04:48 While I personally would have loved Illusion Island to feel a bit more like a cartoon world,
04:52 and less like a sketch on a napkin, it's Mickey's best platformer in a long time.
04:57 We give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
04:59 [music]
05:04 (electronic music)
05:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]