Overview
American McGee's Alice is a third-person action and platforming game, styled as a darker sequel to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". The game uses a heavily modified version of the Quake III: Arena engine.
Plot
The game is set ten years after Alice's previous adventures in Lewis Carroll's Story, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", with players taking the role of Alice. In the opening cinematic, Alice's house is burnt down by an accidental fire, killing her parents. As a result of her survivor's guilt, Alice attempts to commit suicide and is sent to the Rutledge Asylum. After years of unhelpful counselling, Alice is near catatonic until the White Rabbit summons Alice to aid a radically altered Wonderland, now under the tyrannical rule of the Queen of Hearts. The Cheshire Cat serves as Alice's companion through the entire game, frequently appearing to guide her with cryptic riddles.
Various famous characters from the books of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" make appearances in the game such as:
All of these characters have however been horrifically twisted or reconstructed.
Gameplay
American McGee 's Alice is a third person action game, emphasizing heavy platforming and third person shooting elements. Gameplay also consists of large puzzle elements, requiring Alice to traverse the environment and utilize her various weapons and powers obtained during the game. Using id Software's Quake III: Arena engine, The game is displayed in fully 3-D environments with smooth character and environment textures and animations.
Combat
Combat takes place from a third person perspective, with various items related to Alice's journeys acting as weapons. A deck of cards serve as a weak projectile type weapon, whilst a Jack-In-The-Box serves as a makeshift grenade. All weapons have a differentiated second function, often acting in new and different ways to the original function (i.e. Throwing Alice's Vorpal Blade, launching a barrage of cards at once). The varying effects of each weapon and its sub-function add a degree of depth and difficulty to combat. Other weapons include demon dice, a blunderbuss and the Jabberwock eye staff.
Toys
Toys are what Alice uses to combat the malevolent forces of the Queen of Hearts; most have two distinct methods of operation, the ones that don't activate their primary fire when you push the alt fire button.
Toy | Description | Primary Attack | Secondary Attack |
---|
Vorpal Blade | This weapon, visually a butcher knife, is named after the sword used to kill the Jabberwock in the original poem. Primary fire slashes and stabs, alt fire throws it at enemies. The Vorpal Blade uses no Will, but throwing it causes it to disappear, and Alice will be unable to use it until it magically returns to her a few seconds later. | Slash | Throw |
Deck of Cards | The Deck of Cards fires slow-moving, target-seeking projectiles in the form of razor-sharp playing cards. Primary fire launches a steady stream of cards as long as you hold the button, and alt fire launches a short-ranged blast of cards with a shotgun effect. | Card Throw | 16 Card Blast |
Croquet Mallet | Primary fire swings the Mallet, and successful hits electrify enemies. This has a a slightly longer reach than the Vorpal Blade, and hits significantly harder, as well as using no Will. Alt fire consumes Will and launches an electrified croquet ball at your target from a distance. | Bash | Electrified Croquet Ball |
Jack-in-the-Bomb | Primary fire tosses out the Jack-in-the-Bomb; it plays its jingle and then explodes with great force, like a grenade. Alt fire tosses it out as well, but this time it immediately begins to emit a powerful gout of flames in a slowly rotating blast, then explodes into a fireball once it runs out of power. | Explosion | Flame-Thrower / Explosion |
Ice Wand | Primary fire sends out a constant stream of frigid air that deals extreme damage to fire-based enemies, and heavy damage to most others. Killing an enemy with the Ice Wand causes them to freeze solid. Alt fire creates a small shield of ice directly in front of Alice that blocks enemy projectiles in theory, but given that in practice you really need to keep moving constantly, it's basically useless. | Ice Blast | Wall of Ice |
Jacks | Primary fire launches out the spike-tipped Jacks, which seek out an enemy and pummel them without mercy or hesitation for a short time, then return to Alice. As long as the ball is bouncing next to Alice, the Jacks are doing their thing, but they cannot be used until they return. Alt fire throws out a handful of Jacks in a similar manner to the Cards' alt fire. It deals almost no damage, though, so stick with primary fire. | Jack Barrage | Jack Throw |
Diabolical Dice | Depending on how many Dice you have, and what you roll, you can summon demons with these malevolent cubes. There are three types of demons that can be summoned, with this group destroying weapon, but be warned, summoning demons when no enemies are around will lead your summoned monsters to attack you.
- Small Demon -- uses ¼ of your Will meter; the demon is small and winged and has a mild electric beam
- Medium Demon -- uses ½ of your Will meter; the demon is snake-like, with both slashing and flame attacks
- Large Demon -- uses ¾ of your Will meter; this is a large and mean demon, and it has electric and pounding attacks
| Throw Die/Dice | ----- |
Jabberwock's Eye Staff | Primary fire charges up for a few seconds before unleashing a purple death ray that causes extreme damage to whatever you care to point it at, and lasts until you run out of Will. Alt fire launches a number of purple projectiles into the sky, which soon come down in the direction Alice is looking. | Eye Beam | Meteor Shower |
Blunderbuss | This is the most powerful Toy in the game, it takes a full Will meter to use and kills every enemy in the area you fire it into. Only bosses can survive even a single blast from this devastating beauty. Unfortunately, it's hidden... | Burst of Will | ----- |
Deadtime Watch | This watch will freeze time, giving you twenty seconds in a frozen world to do whatever you want, and it's always amusing to watch a group of enemies drop dead the second time starts again. Unfortunately, it has a very long cooldown. | Time Freeze | ----- |
Levels
- Dementia
- Pandemonium
- Fortress of Doors
- Beyond the Wall
- Fortress of Doors, pt. 2
- Skool Daze
- Skool's Out
- Skool Daze, pt. 2
- Pool of Tears
- Hollow Hideaway
- Just Desserts
- Wholly Morel Ground
- Dry Landing
- Herbaceous Border
- Rolling Stones
- Icy Reception
- Fungiferous Flora
- Catterpillar's Plot
- Pale Realm
- Castling
- Checkmate In Red
- Mirror Image
- Crazed Clockwork
- About Face
- Burning Curiosity
- Jabberwock's Lair
- Catterpillar's Plan, pt. 2
- Majestic Maze
- Airborne Terror
- Mystifying Madness
- Water Logged
- Labyrinthine Revenge
- Machinations
- Royal Rage
- Battle Royale
- Ascension
- Castle Keep
- Hearts of Darkness
Enemies
Common Enemies
- Club Card Guards
- Diamond Card Guard
- Boojum
- Mechanical Ladybug
- Army Ant Soldier
- Snark
- Army Ant General
- Mushroom
- Pink Rose
- Antlion
- Fire Imp
- Lava Man
- Phantasmagoria
- Spade Card Guard
- Heart Card Guard
- Red Pawn
- Red Knight
- Red Rook
- Red Bishop
- Clockwork Guard
- Lantern Spider
- Fire Snarks
- Jabberspawn
Bosses
Voice Talents
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for American McGee's Alice was composed by the musician Chris Vrenna.
Track No. | Title | Running Time |
---|
01 | Falling Down the Rabbit Hole | 01.20 |
02 | Village of the Doomed | 03.35 |
03 | Fortress of Doors | 03.51 |
04 | Fire and Brimstone | 03.46 |
05 | Wonderland Woods | 03.59 |
06 | The Funhouse | 03.39 |
07 | Skool Daze | 04.10 |
08 | Time to Die | 03.55 |
09 | I'm Not Edible | 03.09 |
10 | Taking Tea In Dreamland | 03.44 |
11 | Fungiferous Flora | 03.35 |
12 | Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum | 03.46 |
13 | The Centipede | 03.31 |
14 | Pandemonium | 03.55 |
15 | Floying On the Wings of Steam | 04.35 |
16 | Late to the Jabberwocky | 03.17 |
17 | Pool of Tears | 04.08 |
18 | Battle of the Red Queen | 04.11 |
19 | A Happy Ending | 03.44 |
20 | Flying On the Wings of Steam (remix) | 04.03 |
PC System Requirements
- OS: Windows 98/ME/2000
- Processor: Pentium 2 @ 400 MHz
- Memory: 64 MB
- Hard Drive: 580 MB Free
- Video Memory: 16 MB
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
- DirectX: 7.0
Trivia
- The game's release offered a pewter Cheshire Cat figurine (approx. 2 in. tall) as a Gamestop/EB Games pre-order bonus.
- An alternate front cover was attached to later releases of the game; it appears almost identical, but the Cheshire Cat is less bony and emaciated, and Alice is carrying the Ice Wand, not the Vorpal Blade. A third cover was later attached which appears identical to the second one except that Alice is carrying the even less threatening Deck of Cards.
- At one point in development, the team considered casting Marilyn Manson as the voice of the Mad Hatter, but decided against it.
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