TEH. BEST. GAMES. EVAR.
By Andr'e Swartley

Issue #13
American McGee's Alice
Developer: Rogue Entertainment
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: Mac, PC
Rating: M for Mature

Not satisfied with his recent remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton has wrangled Johnny Depp into unflattering makeup yet again, this time to play the Mad Hatter in a new version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The story is, as everyone hopefully knows, based on a book that Lewis Carroll (actual name: Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) wrote for the daughter of a good friend way back in the 1860s.

But wait, Burton's Alice is not a little girl. She's 19 years old, and the film's story sees her returning to Wonderland to depose the Red Queen's nightmarish regime. The story has definitely matured from Carroll's original concept, and it shares a good deal in common with today's game, American McGee's Alice.

In the late 1990s, a relatively unknown game designer named American McGee (actual name: American McGee) joined Electronic Arts to create a video game based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. McGee's Alice was no longer a little girl, and in the years since she'd visited Wonderland, had lost her parents in a house fire.

The trauma of that event cracked Alice's mind, leading to a suicide attempt. The game opens upon the teenage Alice huddled in a padded cell of an insane asylum.

The slow destruction of Alice's mind has also caused major ripples in Wonderland, which was after all a figment of Alice's mind. Contributing to Alice's dementia, the White Rabbit suddenly reappears in her padded room and begs her to return to Wonderland to dethrone the Red Queen and restore order to the realm.

Sound familiar? Considering that American McGee's Alice was supposed to be made into a movie with a 2010 release, perhaps the Burton film has more in common with today's game than most people would suspect.

American McGee, like Tim Burton, developed a rather darker version of Wonderland than Carroll ever intended. The game's art design combines John Tenniel's original illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, steam punk, and Todd McFarlane's hit comic book series, Spawn. Locales are crumbling and often covered in soot.

The Queen's playing-card henchmen patrol their beats like hired goons in a mafia movie. The Cheshire Cat's bones are visible through his ragged coat, which is now also covered in rune-like tattoos.

In fact, nearly all of the familiar faces from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, make appear considerably worse for wear in American McGee's Alice.

Without spoiling anything, you'll encounter Tweedle Dee and Dum, the wise old Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, the Jabberwock, and of course the Red Queen herself. The battle with the Queen is particularly off-putting, though you'll have to play the game for yourself to find out why.

Despite the game's rather moody atmosphere, it is a platformer at heart. There are many enemies and just as many weapons with which to dispatch them, but the bulk of the game involves navigating and/or jumping through familiar locales from Lewis Carroll's original Alice tales: the pool of tears, a life-size chess board, the Queen's maze and castle, and even a few surprises.

Alice controls pretty well with mouse and keyboard, and the immovable third-person camera is surprisingly competent at following her around. Equipping each of the weapons produces a clear target reticule for aim and area of effect.

Enemies respond and animate according to how you attack them. It's worth noting that players accustomed to contemporary action games will need to slow down. The "reload" time, which actually depends on a blue magic gauge on one side of the screen, is slow enough to make combat more strategic than twitchy.

The real problem with the game's control scheme stems from "slippery" geography. Jumping onto round objects like giant mushrooms or round rocks typically results in Alice sliding awkwardly off the side.

Not only that, Alice will sometimes inexplicably drop off flat level geometry as well. This is an unforgivable oversight considering that major areas in the game require extremely precise jumping.

However, excellent story and art direction save Alice from spiraling down the porcelain rabbit hole, if you get my drift. The gameplay truly doesn't hold up against modern platformers or action games, but then again, the game is ten years old.

It's a surreal and messed up take on an already surreal and messed up story. Too bad the actual gameplay holds Alice back from the fairy tale ending she deserves.

Final Grade: B-