No, the camera is not completely blameless. This is not trying to claim that at all.

The point is that I found I had problems that had nothing to do with the camera. Quite often I would get the manual camera just where I wanted, or even the fixed camera would be at an optimal spot to where I want to go, and I would still miss a jump.

This is because the camera often isn't the problem. The problem in those cases is the same problem all 3D perspective games have: the lack of depth perception. Super Mario Galaxy was praised for having a near perfect camera. Those people have it only half right. The camera was done well combined with the levels being made to fit the camera.

Note how in Galaxy that quite often ledges were spaced apart to match Mario's jumping distance. And then the camera was almost always placed to make it easy to tell the optimum jumping point. Plus the camera was placed in a way you could always see Mario's shadow (something that is omnipresent in platformers, as it's the only way to tell if the hero is over a platform without depth perception), and the levels almost always used bright colors to make his shadow easy to spot. I found my sister and I have the most problems when you can't see his shadow.

Heck, even games light on platforming can have this. How many times in some action games, especially those with the camera on level with the player character, have you missed an attack due to not being able to judge the distance? This is why I hate the "Don't miss with attacks" missions in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, as it's easy as hell to miss, even without the way some of the keyblades work.

But back to Epic Mickey, its problem is that the levels were not optimized for platforming even more than the camera. If they were optimized, then the levels would be designed to take advantage of the spots when the camera fixes in a position. The colors wouldn't have been so muted to make it easier to spot where to jump.*

Hopefully the sequel would take these into account, or even reduce the platforming, the way the Kingdom Hearts games did after the first one, so it can focus on perfecting the brush gameplay.

Now this might seem like I'm arguing semantics, but if the other problems are there, and further games only fix the camera, it won't be enough.

Also, some might argue the 3DS can solve the depth perception problem. I'll just have to play some platforming games on it first.

* Yes, the color choice was for both mood and to differentiate what could be affected by the brush, but they didn't have to be that muted.

As someone who has recently enjoyed many games in 3D via Nvidia 3D Vision, I concur. The added depth really makes some games shine. I fired arrows in Oblivion and shot zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 much easier than before, and it felt that much natural.

I never realized depth perception was such a problem in games. I played some Epic Mickey at the store and didn't have any trouble adjusting to the controls or the camera. Same with Kingdom Hearts I, a game that supposedly has a terrible camera but I never struggled with it. Maybe I'm different but still.

As for Super Mario Galaxy, that game has such a smooth camera that sometimes I feel like I'm watching a movie.

This makes sense to me. It is often the subtle things which people overlook which cause problems. That is likely why a lot of games sell well when on the surface they don't appear to be doing anything better than the competition. Excellent analysis, I agree 100%.

Depth perception rarely bothered me in my runthroughs. The only issue i had there was in sometimes overestimating his double-jump length

This is actually a very good point you raise, Lord. Take Crash Bandicoot on PS1 as another example: when the camera is set behind him and you make a high jump (in other words, jump on an arrow box which propel Crash into the air)  on a tight edge,  the only way you can tell if you will land right is by watching his shadow, and then there's the side-scrolling parts, which makes the platforming a whole lot easier. The only problem it can suffer is timing spin attacks right, but this was fixed in later iterations (Crash 2, 3).

Now personally, I never had problems adapting to these supposed awkward cameras.

I think a fair amount of reviewers just jumped on the bandwagon of using the camera as an excuse to mark down the game.

I do agree that a well-designed pairing of level design and camera would have made it work far better...

Having said that, I think that those with extensive experience with 3D platformers will agree with me when I say that it didn't cause me any real trouble. And I think this is the primary problem - it's difficult to enjoy them until you get used to them properly, thus creating a barrier to entry.

3D may help, but I don't think it will entirely solve the problem. This is because video game cameras don't work the same as real life perspective, even when in first-person. The problem won't be completely resolved until holodecks or true virtual reality is introduced. In the meantime, the best they can do is design the levels and the camera to minimise that barrier to entry.