I cannot believe it's almost been 11 years since American McGee's Alice came out. When this game originally came out, it was under my radar. Around Christmas of that year, I remember noticing the box at the store with my girlfriend at the time. She commented on how cool the artwork looks and I should get it so we could play. I was a poor Senior in high school and I never did get a chance to play it back then...I remember in desperation downloading a cracked version but it ran super poorly(which was probably a combination of it being a pirated game and my computer being horrible).
Well the wait is finally over, but a lot of time has passed since this game came out, does it stand up?
I was very excited to hear that the online pass for the new Alice game was actually a copy of the original. I was a little on the fence about the new game but this sealed the deal. After starting the game I noticed that this game seems to be exactly as it was in the past, that is to say that there has been no HD remix/uprezing or any other fancy bells and whistles. This is the original game with remapped buttons to work on consoles.
The first thing I noticed when I finally started moving around as Alice, was that this was using a variation of the Quake III arena engine. If you have ever played Quake, you could tell how the character runs, jumps, and shoots. This was jarring to my modern game-playing preferences because of the floaty jumps and molasses platforming. After just finishing infamous 2, I felt my character had both their legs broken. There seemed to be a heavy emphasis on combat, but I never fully enjoyed that portion. Alice would fight various enemies (card guards, Soldier Ants, Mushrooms) with an array of story-appropriate weapons (vorpal blade, deck of cards, etc.) While the variation of weapons helped make the combat a little fun, it was the story, exploration, and puzzles that I enjoyed the most.
This game, especially for the time it was released, has a pretty complex and deep story rich with artwork, setting, and environments. As I played throughout the game I enjoyed looking at all the varied "twisted" versions of Alice favorites. It was shocking to see the sincerity this story has, I originally assumed it was just a Dark sequel to an old classic book. Similar to the original book, the game plays with themes about adulthood which I found refreshing and added an extra layer that I wasn't expecting.
I don't want to make this too long and I don't want to giving everything away, but I would suggest playing the game if you are at all interested. That being said, it plays like an 11 year old game. There is an entire underwater level that made me want to pull my hair out, there were also the familiar envirotments like a lava level and a clockwork gear level....but at least you can quicksave whenever you want.
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