Alice Pretends (American McGee's Alice (PC))

Member Name: The Solid Grey

Product:	American McGee's Alice (PC)
Date:	20/07/02 (678 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: visually stunning, engrossing and very playable

Disadvantages: very few

Tomb Raider, Starship Titanic, Discworld Noir, The Curse Of Monkey Island, Myst - are all games I've enjoyed playing on my PC, before then, The Legend Of Zelda:Links Awaking and Super Mario Land 2 and Wario Land - I loved playing on the Gameboy.

I guess you can tell what kind of computer games I like, the action/adventure puzzle based type of stuff. American McGee's Alice is no different, its in a similar vein to Tomb Raider only sufficiently different enough so as not to be repetitive and is certainly something quite different.

~~Details~~
Using an enhanced version the Quake III game engine, Alice is a 3rd person action/adventure game from EA Games/Rouge Entertainment. It came out sometime in 2000, and cost me around £14.99. The games comes on two CD ROMs together with an instruction book and another little booklet to accompany the game.

~~System Requirements~~
Windows 95 or higher
400MHz processor (500 recommend)
64 MB RAM (128 recommended)
4 speed CD/DVD ROM Drive (8 speed recommended)
16 MB Graphics (32 recommended)
600 MB Hard Drive free space (620 recommended)
Direct X 7 (included on CD)
Sound Card Direct X 7 Compatible
3D Accelerator open GL Required
Keyboard and Mouse

Anything bigger or faster helps.

~~Plot~~
You remember Alice In Wonderland don't you?, Alice following the March Hare, all the getting bigger and smaller stuff, the curiouser and curiouser, the Queen of Hearts and the Cheshire Cat. Well since then times have moved on and so has Alice, a fire in her house killed her family leaving Alice as the only survivor, racked with guilt and pain she withdrew from the world. Virtually comatose Alice resides in an asylum, where by the looks of it she has tried suicide, that was until now, Alice has been recalled to Wonderland where things are very wrong indeed.

~~Gameplay~~
Taking the role of Alice you make your way through
the nightmare 3D world of wonderland. Using the Keyboard and Mouse (which you can adjust to your own preferences), to move Alice around, you solve puzzles, encounter a variety of enemies whom you have kill, using an array of weapons you find along the way (including a dagger, a deck of cards, an ice wand, a box of fire and such), the objective being to put right whatever it was that turned wonderland into such an evil place.

You have the Cheshire Cat to call upon if you need advice (but gives little useful info I found). Included with the game are links to the website, also a help file that tells you a bit more about playing the game.

There are many levels to complete, grouped together under different sections, like with Tomb Raider each set of levels have their own style and enemies, also you have the end of section big boss enemies to defeat. Again, like other games you have cut scene sequences, to advance the plot, as you slowly uncover the true horror of wonderland.

~~Opinion~~
I bought this game because I wanted something I'd enjoy, something like I'd enjoyed before, some people on a Tomb Raider site suggested Alice as they said many people who liked Tomb Raider also liked this, actually this was one of three games I bought, this being the first I played.

Visually its a stunning looking game, it really looks good, its not blocky, its very rich in colour, in fact half the time you have to stop to take a look around because it really does look good. It has been well designed.

Difficulty - there are four difficulty settings, easy, medium, hard and nightmare, I chose medium, and found it reasonably easy to complete, I say reasonably because there were a couple of places I found quite difficult, but I still got through them without the thought of cheating or giving up. There were a couple of places where I wasn?t sure of what to do, but unlike some other games I didn't have to look on the Internet f
or the answer - well I say that but in one place I did look for a bit of guidance on how to defeat a boss enemy at the end of one of the sections, but I dare say if I had more patience I could have defeated the enemy on my own.

There were a few minor things I didn?t like about the game, the three title sequences to painfully wait and watch when you put the game on, the save game has good and bad points, you can save anywhere you like and save as many times as you like, but each time you save it does so in a new slot, meaning that every so often you have to delete a load of save games, but its only a minor point.

Anther drawback is that I found Alice to be less manoeuvrable than Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, but then the things you can?t do you don't need to, also there were places - in corners mostly - that looked like you could get into where you couldn't, again nothing that really mares the enjoyment of the game.

Its fairly liner in design, mostly you move forward with little question of where your going, but with each new set of levels the situation and enemies change therefore keeping your interest in the game. There are levels where you have to swim, climb ropes, float on steam vents, cross streams of molten lava, make your way through ice caverns, avoid giant boulders and so much more. I found it quite addictive because it looks good and you can?t wait to see what?s round the next corner.

~~Conclusion~~
It took me about four months to complete, but mostly at weekends and I really enjoyed it, I never got angry or fed up with it, which is a good thing, I've played games where I couldn?t do what was needed, or didn't know what I needed to be doing and hated playing the game, but for Alice it was all enjoyment.

It seemed to be a little different, its a good game and I recommend it.

So if you like the games I mentioned at the beginning of my opinion, particularly Tomb Raider then this is
something you'll enjoy, and of course if you know of a game like the ones I like then I?d love to know about them.

Wonderland will never be the same again.

The Solid Grey

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