American Mcgees Alice

I was not able to play this one on my 64 RAM machine, altho this was the min. requirement on the box. It played and installed perfectly on WIN XP and 512 RAM. It is keyboard and mouse controlled-same as Thief. Mouse to "aim" alice and fire weapons and W and S keys for forward and back. A and D keys for left and right movement.Number keys to choose weapons. I found the game to run smoothly and the interface easy to use.

If you enjoy action games, don't miss this Alice-in-Wonderland story with a surreal twist. This bizzare adventure is not for the faint-hearted: Alice must find her way and fight through a series of ever more dangerous and difficult levels to reach her goal of restoring sanity and normalty to wonderland. But don't dispair-Alice, in her cute little pinnafore,and her Victorian English accent, has an interesting array of weapons to fight with and for you to find. No pistols or uzis for her.
Her trusty vorpal blade-a sword that can be thrown. A lethal deck of cards. A croquet mallet with a deadly ball.The jackbomb,a jack-in-the-box with a big bang. The ice wand-it can freeze enemies in their tracks. Jacks, which fly around and devastate even strong enemies. An eyestaff which sends out deadly lazer beams. And the blunderbuss for a most deadly explosion.

Her enemies are a weird, wonderful and scary variety of colorful characters: Black and red card guards lurk around corners. Phantasmagorias fly out of nowhere. Fire monsters pop out of lava pits.Ladybugs that sound like helicopters drop acorn bombs. Army ants march to military drums.Fish that make piranas look tame.These are just your smaller enemies. Alice will have to defeat some much bigger and more destructive ones:The dutchess-she shoots pepper at you. The huge centipede shoots little insects at you. Tweedledum and tweedledee-they multiply into smaller tweedles.The mad hatter shoots missiles at you.The red king and then the final two big boss battles with the jabberwock and the queen of hearts. You'll need to find the most powerful weapons for these. To put it mildly-Lara Croft never met anything like them!(even in the floating islands level of TR2)

There are also friends to help Alice on her quest: The Cheshire Cat appears at the beginning of each new level to offer a wry comment about what she has to face next and perhaps a hint or two.An old man and his flying machine.Some insane children.the Mock Turtle helps her swim underwater. Bill Mcgill the lizard man. The White Rabbit and the catarpillar give advice.The mighty Gryphon-half man and half bird trys to help. When enemies are done away with there are health powerups to get-jewel like hearts or diamonds that pop up-these keep Alice going.

She will have to navigate some 35 different game areas, each one different and more challenging than the next, with colorful, well rendered but slightly nightmarish environments.An underwater level,an ice level, huge plants and insects when Alice is shrunken down to tiny, floating islands above infinite space, lava rivers, beautiful but sinister castles, a hall of mirrors, My most memorable one:a maze of moving gears and wheels(inside of a clock?)and then a series of huge bicycle pedals going around and around and you had to jump from pedal to pedal.By the time I finished all this I was dizzy and my head was swimming!

After the final boss battle-what a relief! You got Alice through all her missions...and? Well I won't tell the ending-you'll have to play it and find out

Little Alice has come a long way, hasn't she? The game sounds amazingly creative. I confess that I am extremely curious about what the multiple tweedles are like. And the lethal deck of cards also sounds intriguing.

I remember how controversial this game was when it first came out. Did you think at any point that it used a symbol of childhood innocence in an evil, warped way?

Hi Becky-
Interesting that this game was "controversial"- I would be interested to know the reasons.Perhaps beacause it took a child's story and added so many violent elements. However, when Louis Carroll wrote it he was commenting on Victorian England, Royalty and the aristocracy, so was probably controversial in his day.
Anyhow, this game's story is (IMO) about Alice's escape from a nightmare world created in her mind after the death of her parents in a fire. She is institutionalised after her mental breakdown and is tormented by guilt, feeling that she should have saved her parents somehow. In the fight scene with the Jabberwocky, he taunts her by telling her it's all her fault that her parents died in the fire. Her quest is to set her mind-and Wonderland-free from the nightmare world created by the evil Queen of Hearts(the final enemy which Alice must defeat in the end)This seems to me symolic of Alice getting free from mental illness and the institution where she is trapped.
This being said-I didn't feel that the story centered around her being evil or warped as much as it did around defeating the evil of a nightmare world. You'll see this in the ending.

EDIT: I too got a little tired of the fighting but the fascinating variety of all the different worlds Alice has to navigate through kept me interested in the game and wanting to see what was around the next corner and what the next level would be.The beautiful graphics and great atmosphere really made the difference in this game. Must admit it was sorta fun trying out all the different weapons.

Thanks Bigmamma1 for the review. This has to be among my favorite non-adventure games. I loved the look of it. Although, I must admit, I used God mode for a few of the bosses. I'm looking forward to OZ.

Hello,
My name is Rick.
I used GOD mode in this game and loved it.
I was in a 12 step program.
I dropped out, at quick saves and walkthroughs.

I'm playing this now. Finding it tough in places. I think I did something wrong, I am on level 7 and I can't seem to follow the walkthru. Will have to go back a save or two. Love that Cheshire cat!
Bets

I couldn't manage to get past level 2 no matter how many times I tried. I really wanted to as the graphics were stunning. What is Gods mode, does it make it easier to play?
Sylvia

Yes, this game is tough and I thought about giving up a couple of times, but kept going back and trying again and finally got thru all the battles. Played in "easy" mode and even that was hard. The game environments and graphics are great and well worth the effort.

BTW-could someone tell me how to get GOD mode to work? I tried it and never could get it to work.

God mode definitely makes it easier to play.

Check here for a list of cheats, including god mode.
http://www.computergamers.com/Cheats/alice.htm

EDIT: I don't remember how I got it to work, but following the suggestions on that cheat webpage,

Look in the game's options menu and see if there's a "console mode."

Once that's enabled, you should be able to access the cheats.

Press the key with the ~ on it and type
god
then click the Enter key

The game may give some indication that god mode is on, I can't remember. Most games will say "God mode on" or "God mode enabled" or similar.

You'll have to refresh god mode whenever you start a new level, and you can't use it in the level where you're chased by a boulder. With some games, you have to refresh the god mode every time you start the game. So don't save while you're under attack.

Thanks Jenny-
I will try again, as I am now replaying some of Alice in "nightmare" mode (the most difficult) just to see what the difference is.So far, the card guards have been much more agressive, but I havn't got to any bigger enemies yet.
I'd forgotten the wild mine cart ride in Level 2-Pandemonium! What a rush