American McGee's Alice
"Save us Alice!" moans the white rabbit, and thus begins one of the most surreal-looking games in a while. Come to think of it, when it comes to surreal Sacrifice must of course be remembered, which brings Alice down to most surreal looking 3rd action game in a while.
Anyway, Alice and her perverted wonderland looks great all the time through, testament to what a good 3d engine and some creative designers can come up with. Most of the levels are a joy to behold, down to the very last texture. Lava, strange towers, cogs and levers, tentacles and statues, they all look great. And this is before you see anything move. The animations are great as well, no effort has been spared in bringing the creatures of wonderland to life. In all, the graphics, levels and creatures have a great sense of luxury over them, things always look fresh, unique and innovative.
Notice how it's always "looks" in the above paragraph? That's the main problem with Alice, while everything looks (and sounds, see below) fantastic, gameplay is another matter. I have no big problem with the game being linear (it is, almost Soldier of Fortune-ly so), but gameplay just isn't fun enough. There are two parts to it (forget the minimum amount of puzzles): jumping and combat.
Jumping is really the more satisfying part, and me saying that means quite a bit. There's a lot of it in the game, but the difficulty of it is just right, so you never get frustrated at the jumping itself (especially not with the speedy quickload). Combat only improves when you find weapons so powerful that the whole thing is sped up and allows you to keep a distance to it, minimizing damage. Mind you, at least all the weapons look as great as everything else. The main motivation to keep playing is to see more of those fantastic-looking-but-linear levels.
Let's take something positive again: sound and music is great too! The music is creepy bells-and-child-choir-stuff and works wonderfully with the environments. The sounds are mostly just there, apart from the great voices. Cheshire cat's voice is just perfect (oh yeah, he looks great too of course), I only wish he'd got even more space in the game. Other characters are nicely voiced too, especially Alice, and they too could have used some more space.
More space for characters, yes. More story, that means! There's a good intro, a decent outro, and a few lines of speech inbetween. Maybe it's recently playing Metal Gear Solid that makes everything else look thin on the plotside, but the little things you do hear could have been used more. Like that army gathering, that you see fight once. And the griffin that gets so little time only Alice herself has time to grow attached to it. And the evil queen (or whatever it is), why didn't we get to see her more?
I'm not sure if I want a next time (rather something new altogether), but if we do get one, give it more plot, more entertaining combat, more secrets and exploration, anf maybe a little less jumping. Alice is a tour de force in graphics, music and level design (eye-candy-wise), but other areas, like gameplay, are just adequate.
