"The bigger they are, the harder they fall" - Mojo Jojo Cheshire Cat

In a way this is sort of a reflection of many games that suffer from eventually starting to run out of steam or start to get irritating after a while, with (American McGee's) Alice being a very good example of this...

IN FACT, after playing through other games that released after this (particularly Max Payne 1 and 2, Clive Barker's Undying and Prince of Persia The Sands of Time), my opinion on this game was slowly starting to deteriorate over time, where as I originally used to praise this with the "competent, if janky gameplay with good art direction and incredible soundtrack", I my opinion now feels more aligned to this:

"Bad gameplay with good art direction and incredible soundtrack"

And also in a few ways, I start to think more and more that after American McGee left id Software, it seems as though he became more and more someone who has great ideas for stories, AKA an AuTeuR rather than someone who actually knows how to make good video games, which in of itself is fine, Suda51 and Tim Schafer are also other people I could say the same about, the main difference is that their "best" work, particularly Killer7 and Psychonauts respectively, still have generally decent gameplay but have genuinely incredible stories that truly use the medium of video games to their fullest extent, where the more you explore and think about every single bit of imagery appearing, the more information you learn about its characters, their worlds and plots that otherwise you could have just easily brushed off without ever noticing. And this is not even talking about others like Fumito Ueda and Hideo Kojima.

I mean, sure he may not be (and thankfully isn't) a David Cage, where that guy just want to turn games into playable movies, which is just a stupid way of seeing games as "mature", if anything they would just go backwards if that kind of stuff happened, but it seems as though with McGee he tried to do something similar with the people I mentioned in the last paragraph, except that the gameplay (atleast in Alice) is just bad instead of competent-to-good like those two examples I mentioned before, which is baffling because unlike Suda or Tim, he worked on id Software as I mentioned before (as a level designer that is but still, he was one of the OGs), and at the time he worked on id Software, their games were considered the gold standard for first person shooters, particularly DOOM 1/2 and Quake, though to be fair, it was his first attempt in his career not only as the main head behind the game's development, but also his first attempt at doing a game outside the FPS genre so I might be more lenient with some of these issues, but then a few other questions arise:

Did American McGee never play a single good 3D platformer before the development of Alice?

Who in the right mind would use id Tech to make a third person shooter with platforming?

Though the answer for that second question is pretty obvious, since, again, he was once a member of id Software, that and he was working with Rogue Entertainment (one of the developers who had the most experience working with different versions of id Tech alongside Raven Software) as well, so naturally he would probably pick the Quake 3 Arena engine as his choice, doesn't help that another studio called Ritual Entertainment had also used that same engine to make a game with a similar gameplay style called Heavy Metal F.A.K.K 2, so McGee already had somewhat of a basis for what the gameplay of Alice could be.

But now it is about time I started to talk about the game itself, so I shall start with the bad right away, the gameplay... Holy man the gameplay...

Though it doesn't immediately starts out bad, in fact the earlier levels fare relatively well gameplay-wise, even if there are still issues like the impossibly bad melee combat (unlike a Jedi Academy) and cheap death traps in the same veins as the ones present in id Software's Doom, and in fact I don't really mind the ammo for every weapon being tied to a single mana bar (also called Willpower(?) in the game), since throwing the knife Vorpal Blade still deals a relatively good amount of damage against enemies for no cost at the expense of a longer cooldown for each attack (atleast early on), and later on the game introduces even more weapons that are both fun to use and relatively powerful, the Jacks and the Toybox (that's definitely not how it is called but I forgot the name so I will just call it that), the latter in particular is pretty good against bosses since it lights them on fire, making them take damage over time.

But then something happens that derails the combat into the worse, and that point is when you get the Jabberwock Staff, which at first I thought was just the classic McGuffin that would only be used to unlock the path into the Red Queen's Castle and that's it, but it is actually a weapon, a way too overpowered one at that, it throws a huge cock into the weapon balancing, and just about annihilates every single enemy coming at you, combine this with the overwhelming amount of enemies the game throws at you in certain levels after getting the Jabberwock Staff and the relatively low amounts of mana the weapon costs, it makes every single weapon completely redundant and trivializes almost all combat sections.

But combat isn't the only activity you will be engaging with throughout the game, there is also platforming, and again, I still wonder whether American McGee had played any good 3D platformer before the development of this game, because the platforming here sucks badly!!! Even if this game was released only a few years after the first major ones started to appear in the market, Super Mario 64 was released on the same year Quake 2 released, so I wonder why didn't McGee take atleast a few more cues from that game when it comes to the platforming in this game, since at the time it was one of the staples of 3D platformers. Alice's jump is really borked and feels like jumping in the moon, whenever you grab a ledge your camera turns into Alice's back which can really fuck up your jumps at times, and lastly are the certain platforming challenges involving those annoying flying demons that screech at you, pushing Alice into death pits, forcing you to savescum even more than what you would normally do everywhere else in the game, it sometimes manages to be as bad, if not worse than the platforming sections of Max Payne 1.

And I didn't even touch on the level design of this game, because honestly it is just mostly fine (if pretty unremarkable), most combat sections take place in tight hallways, with the boss arenas mostly being just big circles, with only the Red Queen's boss fight particularly standing out (in general I would say) and the platforming segments (when they aren't excruciatingly annoying due to certain enemies) have a fine level design that would have been much more welcome in other 3D platformers with much better controls.

But to be honest, while in terms of gameplay it fumbles pretty badly in certain areas, it is everything else that truly makes me like this game more than I would normally.

I will just start with the art direction first, which is generally really good (heck I love even the cover art). This distorted and demonic version of Wonderland is absolutely brought to life with the fantastic(al) characters and environmental designs, bringing characters from the classic Lewis Carroll story into the nightmarish territory with details that already made them odd further accentuated and new details that make them more terrifying than ever, particularly the Cheshire Cat with its exaggeratedly devilish Chuck Jones's The Grinch-esque grin(ch), and don't even get me started on the environments, making certain levels that would otherwise be very forgettable into something more special, and there is a decent variety of them too, with my personal favorites being the Pale Realm and even the Red Queen's Castle have a really strong visual design to it, mixing the architecture you would expect from the castle of the Queen of Hearts in the original story with the lovecraftian-esque fleshy tentacles devouring it, and those levels are pretty open in space (while still linear) so they have more time to shine, and then we have the Mad Hatter's Domain, mixing the already demonic architecture of this version of Wonderland and further complementing it with the mechanical monstrosities created by the Mad Hatter himself found in those levels. In general the art direction is an absolute sight to behold, and I played this on the original 2000s release, so I can bet that it may look even better on the remaster.

However, if there is one thing that will always sound great regardless is the soundtrack, composed by Chris Vrenna from Nine Inch Nails (originally going to be Marilyn Manson of all people), and I gotta say, unlike the engine used for this game, choosing him as the composer for this soundtrack was the perfect pick, the OST elevates this game to me (alongside the general art direction and story). The soundtrack evokes more Tim Burton rather than Nine Inch Nails in many ways, managing to be both whimsical and haunting at the same time, with the strong presence of the chorus making some songs all the more harrowing, but alongside the chorus there are also a bunch of rather unconventional instruments like clocks and bells, sometimes constantly ticking throughout the song, all in harmony with the main instruments to further contribute to this game's atmosphere, one of a dying mind and world, where hope still persists in the saving of it, and Alice is the key to saving Wonderland. Easily one of my favorite soundtracks in any game ever.

I deliberately decided to relegate the story to way later, since I wanted to get the rest out of the way first. There is a book that originally came with the game that would explain in more detail the events that occurred before the start of the game, but for the purposes of this review I will ignore it, since I find it rather unfair to judge a game's story based on supplementary material.

But even then, the story of this game, while superficially its pretty standard, it becomes more interesting when you start delving deeper into it. Alice's story themes are deeply rooted in traumas and troubled pasts, and her house getting lit on fire, killing her entire family, scarred her for the rest of life, and her mental scars not only turned Wonderland into a devilish and decaying world, but also got carried over to there as well, and this is evident not only by the fact the arena for the first Jabberwock boss fight takes place in a burning house, but also the first level in the Mad Hatter's domain (called Beyond the Looking Glass in the game) taking place in a asylum, and you fight Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, shown to be treating Alice in that horrible asylum, that and its distorted and cerebral design both in visuals and level design further show signs that Alice was abused and mistreated in that Asylum, further contributing to her frail mental state. Its also very fitting that the Cheshire Cat (played by the legendary Roger Jackson) is Alice's main companion throughout the game, since her cat was one of the few survivors of that incident with the house burning alongside her, so for many years the cat was her only real companion.

This game's Queen of Hearts honestly deserves her own paragraph, she is possibly one of my favorite villains in any game, easily in my top 10, there is a lot to her. First of all, one touch I really love about her is that, despite some characters referencing her, you never actually get to know how she actually looks like until the very end of the game, which adds a almost lovecraftian feel to her character. But wait, there's more, she isn't called the Queen of Hearts for nothing, the Hearts part is particularly important, since as mentioned by the Centipede earlier on in the game, you must defeat her to make Wonderland great again, but she is not just the HEART of all the horrors of Wonderland, she is the embodiment of Alice's traumas all into one, deeply rooted into Alice's mind, and to defeat her means also escaping the cycles of guilt and suffering from all the scars that came from the past (scars which are represented by the three frames with the Jabberwock, Tweedle-who and the Mad Hatter, all representing three of Alice's traumatic scars), but traumas aren't that easy to escape from, and it becomes more obvious by what she says before her second phase:

"I rule Wonderland alone.Your interference will not be tolerated. This realm is for grown ups alone; raw, well-ordered, ruthless, careening on the jagged edge of reality. Self-pitying dreamers are not allowed here; they cannot survive here."

"You fear the truth. You live in shadows. Your pathetic attempts to reclaim your sanity have failed. Retreat to the sterile safety of your self-delusions, or risk inevitable annihilation."

"If you destroy me, you destroy yourself! Leave now and some hollow part of you may survive. Stay, and I will break you down; you will lose yourself forever."

But despite everything, she still manages to defeat her, and manages to save both her mental state and Wonderland, while being capable of moving on from the scars of her past instead of clinging onto them for years to come. The last thing I want to gush about the Red Queen before finally moving on is her amazing boss fight (the first phase that is), her boss fight not only has a unique design for her arena, but is also far more challenging while still being fair, having attacks that can be devastating but still be dodged using the pillars present in the level, too bad her second phase is so disappointingly easy (doesn't help that you can get the secret weapon there too, in which you can't in the first phase unless you went through a secret passage way before her boss fight).

I may have been a bit of a asshat towards McGee in those first few paragraphs, but really, despite all of the mechanical failings of this game, he still managed to make something so unmistakably of his own mind, with such a incredible art direction and especially marvelous soundtrack by Vrenna, with a story that manages to have more than meets the eye and is somewhat inspired by American McGee's life, it is very evident he put his heart and soul into this game.

It is a genuine piece of ART, maybe mechanically failing art, but still absolute ART!

Edit: In fact, I take back what I said about I started to slowly dislike this game more and more, I might even like it more and more as I think about it.