These days nobody will jump out of his chair when a new Disney game gets released. Not because people don't dig Disney anymore, but because they release extremely uninteresting games. Back in the 16-bit days this was a different story, Disney released quite a few nice platform games based on their cartoons and movies back then. One of the reasons the Disney games were fun to play was Disney's choice in developers, Westwood made the Lion King game and Capcom did Aladdin and a bunch of Mickey Mouse titles amongst others. Lately though Disney's games usually aren't too good, even though they still renowned developers. Now Disney announces a stealth based platform game for the Cube, which will be developed by Capcom, just like the terrible Disney's Magical Mirror in 2002. Could Capcom make this one worth playing through? Will Disney be able to shake off their bad reputation? Can Mickey out stealth Snake? Only time will tell, but this preview should give you a hint of what to expect.

The story behind Disney's Hide and Sneak is simple; it begins with Mickey and Minnie planning to enjoy a sunny day with a picnic. While looking for a good picnic spot, they stumble upon a giant mushroom. Minnie, curious as she is, climbs up, sits down and waves at Mickey, busy gesturing Minnie to get down again. Minnie should've listened to her partner because the mushroom doesn't appear to be a mushroom at all, it's actually a mushroom shaped alien life form called a Lu-Lu. The Lu-Lu doesn't like being sat on too much, so it decides to fly away with Minnie on its back. Time for Mickey to sneak his way through a number of Lu-Lu filled levels to win back his love. Ok, it's no Shakespeare play, but it's nice to see Disney not taking itself too seriously.

After the story sequence, the game begins with a simple tutorial mission in which the gameplay mechanics are explained. As mentioned before, Hide and Sneak is all about stealth, but not in the sniper rifle and piano wire way we're used to though. Mickey isn't too happy the Lu-Lu's took his darling, but he's the last guy to resort to violence. Mickey's solution to the missing Minnie problem is to sneak past the Lu-Lu's using his “tricks” to avoid being seen. Mickey's tricks range from hiding in barrels and jumping on crates to running along walls and jumping off them Matrix-style onto unsuspecting Lu-Lu's – to stun them of course, no Lu-Lu's were harmed during the making of this game or this preview. All these tricks are performed with the A button. Pressing A will freeze the game and bring you into trick mode. In trick mode you simply choose which object you want to do a trick on and press A again, Mickey will do the rest. While sneaking around and using your tricks you collect keys or open doors to advance in the game and find Minnie, most rooms consist of a few Lu-Lu's to avoid and a puzzle or two to solve. Nothing spectacular but puzzling is always nice in a platform game.

The way you look at all the sneaking and tricking is rather like in Luigi's Mansion, the camera is fixed on one side of the room and is only slightly movable using the C-stick. This works pretty well, but can sometimes get a bit nasty when a Lu-Lu is beneath the view of the camera. That way you can't see in which direction the Lu-Lu is looking without walking up to it, which is often not a good move. The game's graphic style is very simple. There are no spectacular visual effects to surprise you, but the simple look suits Mickey quite well. What is surprising is that for a Disney title Hide and Sneak is pretty dark. The first levels has you exploring a warehouse at night and the others are also set in gloomy places, a museum and ruins, locations that wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie. The dark look makes the sneaking around more exciting than you'd expect from a Disney game.

From what it looks like now, Capcom have made a decent Disney game. It has amusing puzzles and a very simple but fun trick interface, but it still feels a bit too Disney for serious gamers to enjoy fully. It has a dark feel, but is still way cuter than any game Nintendo made that got labeled as too “kiddy” – Mickey still has the highest male voice you've ever heard for instance. We'll have to wait and see how the final version plays, but from what it looks like now it'll be a simple but fun puzzle title for the younger gamer.