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.

This was an incredibly fun game for me. You play as Mario, that lovable Italian plumber, and you have to rescue Princess Peach, whom Bowser has kidnapped away to his castle in the sky. In order to do so, you have to recover the stolen Star Spirits, which are scattered throughout the land, protected by Bowser’s minions. The fighting style is turn-based, which proved to have a very small learning curve. I’m not at all used to console games, having done all PC games in the past since my childhood with the Atari 2600. However, Paper Mario was easy for me to pick up because the fights rely on your strategical skills only: knowing which partner to use, which attacks to use, when you should use an item or star power, etc. You don’t have to be good at jumping to win battles, though improving at performing Action commands during a battle greatly helps you.

The game is very cute and it just made me grin while playing it. The graphics are pretty, the characters are adorable, and you feel bad for whacking the Whacka, despite how it helps you. “WhackOWWWWW! Don’t hit me!” Any game that makes me say, “Aww, I’m sorry buddy, but I need that egg!” before I pummel some critter with a hammer is a good game in my book.

I would really recommend enabling the Quick Change badge, because being able to adapt your partner’s fighting abilities to whichever battle you’re in is a life-saver. I found myself using Bow a lot during battles whenever I stood to lose a lot of health (e.g. boss fights, or when an enemy increased his attack power) to go Outta Sight, which is incredibly helpful. If you get good at Bow’s Fan Smack, I found that to be a very useful attack, too. Kooper was excellent for deploying decent damage to a whole row of ground enemies. I think I used Bombette a lot earlier on but gradually tapered off my usage of her. I rarely used Parakarry, but I did use Watt a lot once I upgraded him, because his attack became pretty powerful.

The Paper Mario series is definitely my favorite console game series. The attractive and cute graphics, the RPG style, the lovable characters, and the energy you feel to hurry up and save the princess/save the world/save all worlds just really makes you love the game.

This is the second game in the Paper Mario series and, while not as good as the first, it’s still an excellent game. It’s very akin to the first Paper Mario in that its fights are turn-based, so they rely on your strategical skills as opposed to your talent with operating the joystick. This time, instead of Mario having to save the princess, he has to save the world, because the Thousand Year Door is about to break open and a horrible monster will come out. You run around collecting seven Crystal Stars, which are scattered throughout the lands, much like the seven Star Spirits in the first game. In this one, your time with Mario is broken up by running around doing stealth operations as Peach, who has been kidnapped again, and also as Bowser, who is trying to get the Crystal Stars before Mario does.

I think the fighting is improved in this game because of the little details added on. Now you fight inside of a little stage where the audience and the stage itself can interact with you during a battle. For example, props fall from the ceiling, making you or your opponent dizzy if they hit you; the audience members can through things like Honey Syrup or rocks at you; and you have the opportunity to get your health replenished if you get the audience excited enough. It is also helpful that your partner has his own separate health bar, instead of his health being the same as Mario’s, as in the first game. When you do a first strike, you can perform an Action Command, which wasn’t allowed in the first game.

However, I preferred the terrains and enemies of the first game to those in Thousand Year Door. The Glitz Pit was one big annoyance because you have to fight your way to the Crystal Star in a scenario much like crappy TV wrestling; I found that whole area to be a bore. Traveling on the Excess Express to Poshley Heights was also not very fun; I missed the entirely fantasy lands of the first Paper Mario. I don’t want my fantasy game to involve real-life scenarios; I want to go to a haunted forest, I want to bring water back to a living water lily, etc. So, if Thousand Year Door had had its own fighting style but with the enemies, lands, and storyline of the first Paper Mario, it would have been a much better game.

I thought Thousand Year Door was the hardest of the three Paper Mario games for two reasons: succeeding at it requires you have good strategical skills, like in the first game, but its enemies and situations are harder than in the first game. The boss fight, for example, involved three separate fights, each of which was harder than the last because the opponents’ hit points were much increased. In battles, I used Vivian a lot to set opponents on fire and keep them burning (but watch out for Embers and other fiery creatures—burning them actually helps them) and, if I had one big enemy to fight, Mario’s Power Smash attack was very helpful.

Despite the cost of 7 Badge Points, I nevertheless enabled the Quick Change badge as I did in Paper Mario because it was extremely helpful. I also used up 5 Badge Points to enable Defense Plus, and for the boss fight, I upped my max health with a badge and also enabled Flower Saver to decrease how much FP was used for attacks.

I also appreciated the extra features that made Mario more papery, such as the ability to turn into a paper sailboat or a paper airplane. Such things were missing from the first game, and I think they really added to the gameplay. Besides offering a new challenge (I always had trouble flying the airplane), they just added to the feel of the game by making it more obvious why this was “Paper” Mario.