GamesRadar reviews 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.
Category
🎮️
GamingTranscript
00:00Disney Illusion Island is a fun metroidvania for kids that doesn't quite live up to its
00:05retro legacy.
00:17When it comes to gaming, Mickey is probably best known for his Sega's 8-bit and 16-bit
00:21Illusion titles and, while Disney Illusion Island is a revival of sorts that'll delight
00:25kids, it does fall short of rejuvenating the beloved retro series.
00:29The characters have loads of personality, it's fun to jump around and you have lots
00:32of assist options, but the basic environment design, co-op not adding much and it petering
00:37out towards the end means that it's not quite living up to what we expected.
00:42Disney Illusion Island stars Mickey Mouse and girlfriend Minnie Mouse alongside pals
00:45Donald Duck and Goofy, sporting simplified designs, both the animation and comic writing
00:50feel in keeping with the Mickey Mouse TV shows.
00:52In cutscenes, their constantly squashing and stretching facial expressions are wonderfully
00:57and while the script's meta jokes can grate, it's still chuckle worthy and should keep
01:01children entertained.
01:02The excellent animation carries through to the game, with each four of the heroes having
01:05their own distinct run cycle packed with personality, and as you unlock skills to help you traverse
01:10the metroidvania-style island, each one's tools are bespoke.
01:13Mickey, for example, can boost jump with a short-range jetpack that has him briefly snap
01:17on goggles, while Goofy, for some reason, thrusts his hips into a red hot chilli pepper.
01:22Their fun, distinctive flourishes, and with quite a lot to unlock in order to access more
01:26parts of the expanding map, really add up.
01:28It's excellent detail and quite the sight to see all four animating differently, popping
01:32off their own moves in sequence as they jump from one platform to another.
01:36Indeed, the metroidvania structure isn't the only change up to the level-based fare that
01:40came before.
01:41Disney Illusion Island is fully playable with up to four players, enabling some multiplayer-specific
01:45moves such as a leapfrog jump and a Kirby-like embrace that rewards players with an extra
01:50heart of health over their current maximum.
01:52A rope can also be deployed to haul other players to higher levels, which is perfect
01:56if a jumping sequence is too much for a little one.
01:59Illusion Island can be played with any number of players, from solo to the full four, without
02:03the design of the game really changing at all.
02:05That does mean that there's not too much depth to the actual multiplayer in and of
02:08itself.
02:09While the rope move may add a nod to the 1994's World of Illusion game, players are never
02:13required to work together as they were in that opus.
02:16The co-op works best in the odd room where there are multiple collectibles to hoover
02:19up, and boss battles where multiplayer targets spawn and you need to bash to disable them.
02:24Other than that, you're mostly all just hopping one after another down a fairly straightforward
02:28route, occasionally skidding to a halt when you notice a hidden pickup behind a bit of
02:32foreground.
02:33Obviously aimed at younger players, which is fine, the game can often feel frictionless.
02:36Even though you'll only take 5-6 hours to hit credits, what you're doing can get quite
02:40repetitive.
02:41The powers you unlock are expected platforming fare, a wall jump, swimming, a glide, etc,
02:45and the objectives usually just ask you to head to one corner of the map, where you'll
02:49find you need a certain power, which is just around the corner.
02:52Along the way you'll continuously come up against locked doors that always require three
02:55keys from nearby challenge rooms.
02:57There's little here to surprise.
02:59You'll need the map a fair bit, purely because the level design is bland enough for you to
03:03easily get a touch turned around.
03:05While visually each of the three biomes has some fun stuff going on, the platform level
03:09design doesn't move far beyond what you might scribble on the back of a maths book,
03:13and even the odd biome specific hazard doesn't provide much in the way of personality.
03:17It's a shame as the past games in the series were much better at making you feel part of
03:20the space.
03:21It doesn't feel like you're exploring an interactive cartoon, merely navigating cartoon
03:25characters through fairly rigid, boring geometry.
03:28The extremely zoned out perspective doesn't help either, and good luck to you if you're
03:32playing on a small screen because it's just as bad when you're playing solo, but if you
03:36do, you at least zip around quickly and the movement feels great and responsive.
03:40If you die or take a whack, you do always feel like you were to blame.
03:43Combine that with an almost pacifist approach when it comes to avoiding dangerous, often
03:47spiky enemies rather than fighting them, and the shifting gauntlets of jumps can feel a
03:52good way to worm your way through the levels, even if they don't offer much of a challenge.
03:56Still, as the moves add up, you start to feel the lack of, say, Mario's elegant and simple
04:00controls.
04:01The multitude of moves are all mapped to different buttons, which risk becoming over complicated
04:05for younger players.
04:06Mostly an offensive, the loop of jumping towards an objective and occasionally nabbing a slightly
04:10off the beaten path collectible, many of which reference classic Disney cartoons, is
04:15enjoyable enough.
04:16It's a shame then that the final main portion of the game dumps you unceremoniously into
04:20a lengthy underwater sequence without that pleasing cadence, and then into a final challenge
04:24gauntlet that's so stop-start with story scenes that it's hard to appreciate the dialed up
04:30platform challenge.
04:31Disney Illusion Island is a lightweight metroidvania, which is perfect for kids.
04:36Okay, it's not as good as its more level-based illusion predecessors, nor is it as good as
04:40the true titans of the genre like Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but I also wouldn't
04:45expect 8 year olds to get on with those classics as much as this.
04:48While I personally would have loved Illusion Island to feel a bit more like a cartoon world,
04:53and less like a sketch on a napkin, it's Mickey's best platformer in a long time.
04:57We give it 3.5 stars out of 5.