American McGee’s Alice

5 / 5 stars
By EA Games for the PC and Mac

I’m a fan of Alice in Wonderland anyway, so when I read about this game in PC Gamer several years ago, I was excited. American McGee, who used to work at Id, which produced the infamous Doom and Quake series, is the creator of American McGee’s Alice, and I think he did a wonderful job. He translated the happy story of Alice in Wonderland to a very creepy, dark, and twisted version. McGee used many more themes from the original books (including Through the Looking Glass) than Disney did in their movie interpretation, too, which was nice for a fan of the series like myself.

The story behind this game is that, in her youth, a fire burns down Alice’s house, killing her parents. This messes her up mentally, so she gets put away in an asylum. One day, her stuffed rabbit starts talking to her, and she gets pulled away into Wonderland. As Alice herself puts it, “Wonderland’s become quite strange,” which is definitely an understatement. The world is dark and its inhabitants are ruled over by the evil Queen of Hearts and her minions. Your job is to progress through the world, killing off the Queen’s minions until you can finally destroy the Queen herself. By doing this, Alice will face her internal guilt about having survived the fire, and she’ll regain her sanity. So pretty much, Alice is fighting her inner demons literally.

The scenery and atmosphere in this game is what I love the most. You’ll wander through a wide variety of landscapes, fighting enemies unique to those locales. You’ll visit the Pool of Tears, famous from the original book by Lewis Carroll, and have to struggle through it fighting ants, roses, and ladybugs. You’ll meet the Mad Hatter, who is such a gruesome character that he operated on the Dormouse and the March Hare to make them mechanized versions of themselves. You’ll travel through Pale Realm, which is like a giant chess board, in which you’ll get to play as different chess pieces to get past certain obstacles. You’ll wander around through an outside hedge maze toward the end of the game, defeating the Queen’s Card Guards.

Everywhere you look, there’s something pretty to see; a lot of creativity was shown in terrain decoration. The sky is always different in the different areas, and it’s interesting to watch. I really enjoyed the walls and floors in the Skool, in particular. One of the highlights of this game, as far as aesthetics are concerned, is the score, which was composed by Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails fame. Whether you like NIN or not, Vrenna’s style is perfect for such a creepy game as this. He uses ticking clocks, women’s screams, violins, and crying to make Alice extremely vibrant musically. I enjoy the music so much that I bought its score as well as extracted the game’s MP3’s, just so I could have as much Alice music as possible.

The characters throughout the game are deliciously nasty, even your friends. If they’re not outright sarcastic (like the Cheshire Cat) or cruel (like the Jabberwock), they’re gloomy and seem a bit crazy (like the White Rabbit). Alice is a smart, level-headed girl and seems to take all the bad news that she discovers with a calm attitude. She does get upset when her friends get hurt, however, which you’ll find out in the Pool of Tears area. I appreciated the fact that Alice wasn’t presented as a sexual object. She’s supposed to be an 18-year-old girl, but unlike Lara Croft or many other female video game characters, she’s not all boob. In fact, there isn’t any cleavage shown with Alice; she’s decently covered up in a darker and more bloody version of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland dress.

The enemies you face are all taken from the original books, even the more obscure ones like the Boojum (represented as a poltergeist-type thing in the game) and the Snark (a mean fish that lives in water throughout the game). You’ll fight a lot of Card Guards, which were definitely characters close to the Queen in the books, as well as the Duchess, the Jabberwock, and various chess pieces, just to name a few.

You fight these enemies with a variety of cool weapons, including the knife featured on the cover of the game box, a deck of cards, an ice wand, and a set of toy jacks. The most useful weapons for me were the cards, the ice wand, and the jacks. I rarely used the croquet mallet or the dice, though I did use the jack bomb on occasion. I loved the ice wand but it was a real drain on energy. The biggest drawback to the jacks is that, while they’re stabbing at your enemies, you can’t throw them again so you’re helpless unless you switch weapons. Because of this, I found a good combination was to throw the jacks and let them do their thing, switch to the ice wand or jack bomb, and wail on any enemies that got close to me. When fighting the Mad Hatter and the Tweedles in particular, using this combination was excellent.

My control setup was as follows:

• E – forward
• S – strafe left
• F – strafe right
• D – backward
• space – jump
• G – climb up/use
• V – swim down/climb down
• R – previous weapon
• T – next weapon
• K – quick save
• L – quick load

I found the quick save/load feature extremely useful because I’m a paranoid gamer. Whenever I would progress a short way, I’d just reach over and quick save my game so that, if I died or performed poorly in a battle/puzzle, I could easily jump back to a short time previously. This made getting through some of the trickier puzzles much more bearable.

The hardest regular enemies I fought were the mechanized warrior guys in the Mad Hatter’s area because their rockets would trace Alice. If the rocket blasts hit you, they were not only very damaging, but they would also knock you backward. That uncontrolled movement could be very deadly if you were, say, balanced on a skinny walkway over a pool of acid. The best way to kill them, I found, was to use the jacks on them. If you have to get up in their face, I recommend the ice wand.

For boss fights, I thought the Red King was a joke. Not only was he very easily killed, but he barely did any damage to me. I jumped over his laser blasts, grabbed what health appeared, and kept chucking jacks at him. The Hatter was trickier because he moves so darn fast, and his slap really knocks Alice for a loop. The Duchess was easy enough if you can stay away from her, lest she chew on your head.

The best technique I used in battles was the circle strafe. I strafed left or right while attacking an enemy, usually from a distance, and used the mouse to keep the enemy in my sight. Sometimes, it was best to let someone else do the fighting for me, though: when a big crowd of enemies was present, it was helpful to throw in the dice and let a conjured demon come and fight my enemies. Also when there was a big crowd, using the jack bomb worked well.

Alice is an extremely entertaining game because of its story, characters, appearance, and music. I greatly enjoyed running around Wonderland, cleaning up the mess of Alice’s insanity, and think it’s an excellent game.