Look, I love me some Warren Spector. Besides the fact that he seems like a very personable and intelligent fellow who wears his passions on his sleeve, he's made some positively incredible games in Deus Ex and Thief. That's why I've been a little bit surprised about his methods of pumping up Epic Mickey – it's almost like he's taken a page out of Peter Molyneux's book, and reactions have been pretty much identical to what one would expect with Molyneux.
I don't know if it's because I've been paying attention to the first new Warren Spector game in years, or if he's actually been doing non-stop press junkets, but Spector has been laying the foundation for, if you believe him, the best game in a decade. A game that reinvigorates the persona of Mickey as not just a brand but an honest to goodness character and icon, while simultaneously offering up smart, Spector RPG-esque game design that forces the player into organic moral quandaries. I don't think I've ever read so much about a designer or his processes before a game has even come out. The problem is that the game hasn't (according to most review sites) lived up to most of what Spector has been promising.
This is really unfortunate for a couple of reasons, outside of the fact that Warren Spector is basically a game design god to me – namely, for some reason (I'm going to guess economics and the spotty track record of investment returns on third-party Wii games), he felt the need to basically label this Banjo-Kazooie-esque platformer as the game of the decade, which even in videos I could see was patently false.
It's better to take the tack of someone like Shigeru Miyamoto, who will say, "oh, I've come up with this new game design. I've been spending lots of time in my garden and I had this idea to make a game based off it," and then the game is PIKMIN. Or, you know, even someone like Jane Jensen, who's quietly been making what looks to be something even better than Gabriel Knight in Gray Matter. Sure, that game's not likely to sell enough to meet the demands of a benefactor like Disney (and also doesn't have the collective weight of Mickey and Disney nostalgia and expectations to meet), but I think it's probably best to let the game do the talking rather than spilling your guts about something that you're clearly passionate about, but isn't likely to blow people's minds.
In any case, I'll be taking a closer look at Epic Mickey when it's released, though I have to say that the Eurogamer review in particular has made me a little bit disheartened, basically spelling out all of my fears that I have about the game.