oh my GODDDD this game was frustrating, and not in a fun way. shitty controls and combat made this a slog to get through. there were WAY too many levels with the same enemies over and over and the combat was repetitive as hell. however, this game has incredible artistic value for both its character design and environments. we simply do not see games like this or vampire: bloodlines anymore, and it made me miss 2000s goth culture. i would recommend watching a playthrough for anyone wanting to experience this game.

a bealtiful goth dress that's filled with annoying plastic spikes that poke and scratch you everytime you wear it.

thats how i'd sum up this game, its bealtiful, clever, gritty and witty at the same time.
the voice acting is amazing and the art direction is the star of the show here.
HOWEVER
in order to enjoy it you must go through a slog of a clunky combat that is vert selective of when you are dealing damage to a enemy and when your weapons are ineffective because youre slighly under them, or next to them, or above them. actually i don't know the criteria, sometimes you just don't do damage at all but oh they will give you damage don't worry about that.
trollish levels that i think mcgee borrowed from the time he was a doom level designer, and he can go eat a onion for all i care with that shit, be mindful of silly traps and shoving a room full of enemies to pad gameplay.
whose idea was it to make underwater sections with mandatory combat in a game where hitting the enemy requires god to be on your side and some sprinkle of luck ???
don't forget to save, seriously don't.
to sum it up this is a bealtiful game that requires you to feel PAIN in order to play, even getting this game is some jank, you gotta order a disc from someone else, buy the madness return and edit the config files to make it playable through the exe of madness return, oh but you also need to download the files as well. do i hate it for all it has done ? no, its charm and style makes up for it, but beware of this mistress stupid personallity

I really want to like this game, but it's so frustrating and boring to play I can't stand to waste another minute of my life on it. I love the art style and dark themes of this game, but it's not enough to redeem its mediocre game play and platforming.

Also, a really weird audio glitch happened after skipping a cutscene that made the audio sound deep fried. Unfortunately, I saved my game merely seconds before the audio glitch kicked in and it will not go away every time I reload the game. I took that as a sign to just shelve the game.

I love id Tech 3 and is one of my fave game engines, but why do developers insist on using it for platforming, like it's so not made for platforming.

i played this after madness returns so i was a little spoiled by how polished it was compared to this which of course makes sense. also i played the original game on disc for pc which is a mess to set up for controller since it wasnt supposed to be played with one. once i was done with that tho (thx to xpadder still existing), this game was a huge journey. at some points i believe it was even a little bit more immersive than the sequel. its also nice having alice hang on to objects since that was always a point that bothered me when playing the platforming elements of madness returns.
it looks nice, has really cool voice acting and an amazing story. its worth looking into it and crying about the fact the 3rd game was canceled.

O jogo é bom, muito bom se considerar a época que foi feito, mas achei bem datado, em questão de jogabilidade e em todos os outros aspectos na verdade. Não sei se por se tratar de um jogo antigo ele não rodou bem por causa das especificações do meu pc, mas sei que eu nem se quer conseguia ver o dialogo nas cutscenes e nem consegui jogar a luta final inteira, pois a tela travou eu não conseguia enxergar a rainha vermelha. Eu baixei uma versão pirata, talvez seja esse o problema, mas ainda deixo minha indignação pois se o jogo tivesse o mínimo de atenção da EA ele estaria numa plataforma bem mais acessível e eu não teria que baixar uma uma versão pirata. Eu nem peço por um remake, um remaster já seria de ótimo tamanho.

Mas deixando de lado as coisas ruins, o jogo me pegou totalmente de surpresa, pois eu joguei ele apenas por ser o jogo anterior do madness returns, mas acabei gostando mais do que esperava, eu apenas me frustrei com todos os problemas antes citados, porque eu realmente estava gostando de continuar esta obra, ela tem uma estética agradável, personagens legais e uma historia que satisfaz bastante. Muito interessante essa parte de ver como seria uma wonderland, em uma mente deturpada da Alice, ja que a wonderland original sempre me pareceu um escape para ela, refletindo sua mente, e agora que sua mente ta totalmente imersa em pensamentos negativos e alto destrutivos, da um ar ate de silent hill para essa terra que antes era agradável. Me animei bastante jogando e me deixou mais ansioso para jogar a continuação, espero não virar fã pois ja soube que esta franquia ja esta abandonada kkkk.

Pros
+Dark Gothic Vibe
+Story
+Puzzles

Cons
-Very Dated
-The game controls poorly
-Level design is bland
-Combat is TERRIBLE

tem uma parte, bem no começo desse jogo, que você precisa fazer uns desafios de plataforma em uma sala aberta, que o chão de laje xadrez fica trocando de lugar. exatamente nessa sala aberta, o cenário tem tipo um vórtex meio azulado que fica alternando de cor dentro desse espectro azul, e você ali meio que "flutuando" em um universo que acaba em si mesmo.
eu tava jogando esse jogo chapadíssimo, e essa porra desse vórtex me fez ficar parado brisando por tanto tempo, que quando percebi eu tinha fechado o jogo e começado a assistir um documentário sobre biologia marinha.
no final eu não zerei, mas fiquei sabendo que polvos conseguem usar seus tentáculos pra andar no fundo do oceano como se fossem bípedes e isso é muito foda

the more i think about american mcgee's alice, the more fond of it i become. its linear path is simple yet enchanting, perhaps addicting. i really enjoyed the "brutalist" nature of it. platforming is slow, and the atmosphere of each level feels oppressive. you will run into lots of sudden enemy and environmental encounters that leave you dead. combat is janky and unsatisfying at times, and can feel like a guessing game. the game isn't particularly hard as you can save at any point, but you can expect to die a lot.

the world itself is a gothic and more blatantly twisted tale of the original wonderland. you follow alice's narrative journey inside her own head, visiting old acquaintances and locations of the mind. it's a narrative journey of mental health, showing alice at her most miserable moments but also her endurance to keep going, which is reflected in the game-play itself.

despite any flaws it may have, "american mcgee's alice" is an incredibly solid experience that i stepped into blind and greatly loved. its gothic and 2000's emo aesthetics are what initially attracted me to it, (per usual) and are unmatched.

Now, it's a very good game for its era, with incredible atmosphere and music. The platforming is sorta wonky every so often, but overall pretty fun, and the ambience of the setting is pretty cool, in a dark but not excessively so way.

With that out of the way, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT set the difficulty to hard, because it's like HARD hard. I had to CONSTANTLY quicksave else some enemy would drop a bomb from the sky and instakill me or the like. Speaking of which, the combat is pretty clunky, specially at the beginning, not so much once you get the nuke emitter thingy.

Even with that, you kinda can't help but fall in love with the game. Alice's insanity and some twink cat's smooth voice telling riddles could not have been more appealing.

Playing American McGee's Alice is like watching the Room. It's bad on so many levels, truly truly bad. The platforming is awful with horrendous collision, the combat is completely unresponsive and feels like treacle, the story is trite and cliched, the soundtrack is lacking with only a few distinct tracks constantly playing and honestly, it's kind of ugly. For a game created by one of the chief level designers of DOOM and Quake, the levels here leave a lot to be desired. They're often too big, especially in the back end of the game. You spend so much time just walking slowly across huge corridors with no notable views to break up the monotony. The last few chapters drag in general, repeating the same maze motif over and over in what is blatant padding.

BUT. All that said, it's honestly just kind of cute. It's a bad game but it's oddly charming. The voice performances are fantastic, the Cheshire Cat's in particular was what fuelled me to keep going. And the whole thing is so gloriously edgy in the way only a game from the late '90s could be. I was honestly shocked there wasn't a Faith No More or other proto Nu Metal song playing over the credits. It's just so deliciously cheesy and extremely earnest in a very refreshing way.

Should you play it? Honestly, it really depends on your tolerance for early 3D PC game jank, but probably just watch a summary then play the followup instead. Unless you feel masochistic, which would be quite thematically neat really.