Warren Spector Says Reviewers "Misunderstood" Epic Mickey

Games get bad review scores all the time because they are a lot of bad games out there. But when it's something as high profile as Epic Mickey – look out. Warren Spector has come out swinging defending the game, relying on the age-old crutch that game reviewers misundestood it.

In an interview with MTV, Spector goes to great lengths to specifically defend the game's poor camera, which is generally uncooperative.

"First, there has never been a game that I couldn't break if you give it to me for 30 seconds," Spector says. "Third-person camera is way harder than I ever imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it."

Spector goes on to describe how Epic Mickey's combination of platforming and action/adventure requires a camera solution that apparently doesn't exist. "But here's the deal, what I try to be completely clear about is that this is not a platforming game. This is a game that takes platforming elements and adventure game elements and role-playing elements and merges them. So we couldn't tune the camera perfectly for platforming or for action/adventure. It's a very different camera style. What we did is try to find the best compromise in the moment and give the player as much manual control as we could. So we took the hardest problem in third-person gaming and made it harder by trying to accommodate two different playing styles."

Despite admitting that Epic Mickey gets it wrong, Spector stands his ground. "And I will go to my grave, imperfect as it is, proud as hell of my camera team. If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they're misunderstanding the game we made, it's not for me to tell them that they're wrong, absolutely not. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a Mario competitor, because we didn't."

While we sympathize with the problems that Spector, his team, and developers around the world have to put up with in game creation, Epic Mickey is by no means the first game to combine different play styles. Furthermore, if reviewers don't judge games based on the execution of their objectives, what are supposed to judge them on? Good intentions? It's a camera. Either it's letting you see what you need to see or it isn't.

Check out our review here, or better yet, go play the game yourself and revel in your own "misunderstanding."