Hello kids, Henry here. In our last installment, I talked about Tales of Symphonia. Since then I have beaten the game twice and decided that I am not allowed to play it again for at least another year. Instead, I am playing American McGee’s Alice.

For those of you who don’t know, American McGee’s Alice is basically a Gothic re-imagining of the story of Alice in Wonderland. It’s a platforming action/adventure thing released about a billion years ago for PC and Mac.

Before I tell you about the game, I have a story to tell you about how I got the game.

I was lying in the stairwell, minding my own business, when my roommate mentioned off-handedly that she had a copy of the game. None of my spooky friends have shut up about it since it came out, so I was really excited about the opportunity to play it. So excited, in fact, that I decided I had to get down the stairs and to this game as quickly as possible. Since I was already in the lying-down position, it seemed like the fastest way to go would be face-first.

About halfway down the stairs, I realized that going downstairs face-first was a really stupid idea, so I tried to turn myself around before I hit the bottom. I very nearly succeeded, but instead of landing on my feet, I landed on my lower back. It made a very loud THUD and filled my mouth with a coppery taste and blurred my vision for a bit. Now I have stabbing lower-back pains whenever I sit, stand, or lie down. But considering that it’s a result of my own blinding stupidity, I can’t really complain too much.

And now, the game!

Alice opens with the titular character asleep in her bed. A cat knocks over a lamp, and her house is suddenly aflame. Lots of screaming ensues, and then we see Alice again, asleep in a different bed, only this one is in an insane asylum. A nurse tucks a stuffed rabbit into Alice’s arms and she wakes up a bit, snuggling the bunny, at which point the bunny shrieks, “SAVE US, ALICE.”

So begins our descent into Alice’s nightmare.

The first thing that struck me about the game was how old it looks. It’s really funny to read reviews of it now, since most of them praise the graphics. Compared to today’s high-definition hyper-realistic gaming, Alice falls flat on its face. Graphic quality overall could be compared to Super Mario 64.

As for gameplay, the controls handle as though one is sledding downhill while drunk. Even without that, the game is really, really hard, with no in-game tutorial to tell you how to move. I had to look up the controls online, only to find out that I struggled through the first level because the game hadn’t bothered to tell me what button to use to climb. (It is the ENTER key.) And even after knowing how to make Alice move around, her weapons are so weak, her health bar so small, and her enemies so numerous as to make the game nigh impossible.

Story is another area where the game is supposed to shine, but the problem is that most of the game’s story is told from a booklet that comes with the game. I do not have said booklet. So, yeah, no story for me.

So why am I playing this?

1.) To justify the aforementioned stabbing lower back pain.

2.) To increase my Goth street cred.

3.) The Cheshire Cat. Oh, the Cheshire Cat.

For those of you who know Bruce Maddocks, imagine playing a game where you hear his voice telling you creepy riddles throughout. For those of you who do not know Bruce Maddocks, imagine Stephen Fry, Tim Curry, or some other celebrity whose voice is known to make grown men weep with joy. The Cheshire Cat’s dialogue and voice acting are absolutely divine. Alice’s VA is passable, everyone else’s is painful, but the Cheshire Cat is a perfect delight.

previous parts:

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/09/26/games-youve-never-heard-of/

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/09/29/games-youve-never-heard-of-part-two/

http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/10/07/games-youve-never-heard-of-part-three/

Some of you who actually read this blog might remember my post from all of two days ago (http://www.umasstorch.com/blog/2009/09/26/games-youve-never-heard-of/) where I talked about the game “Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy” and how bad it was.

Yeeeeeeah… about that… I’ve clocked like 10 hours of gameplay since then. Can’t. Stop. Running. Around. Ancient. Egypt.

Okay, yes, the game’s plot is riddled with clichés and the gameplay itself is painfully linear but dagnabbit it is FUN, you hear me? FUN.

I can’t wait to go home this weekend and get my copy of “Tales of Symphonia” back from the friend I lent it too, so I can play something that doesn’t make me cringe.

…Wait, what the heck am I talking about? “Tales of Symphonia” is even less original than “Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy”! It’s not nearly as linear, but the plot/dialogue is even worse. Worse, I say!

Anyway, about me going home this weekend. I will be attending the Garlic and Arts festival (http://www.garlicandarts.org/) with at least two of my roommates. I will give you the full report on that when I return.

“Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy” is a horrible game.

I bought it used because an action-adventure game based  on the myths and legends of ancient Egypt sounded really, really cool. (I was terrified of mummies as a child, so my parents decided to cure that fear by making me super-informed about ancient Egypt.) Tragically, the game designers did minimal research (jotted down some big names and maybe even watched Disney’s “Aladdin” to get the setting), and stocked ancient Eygpt full of white people. That wouldn’t be so bad if the game itself weren’t so glitchy that saving at the wrong save points will corrupt your entire memory card. But let’s back up.

The premise is as follows: you are Sphinx, a young demi-god on a quest to stop the evil god Set from taking over the world. Sounds pretty good, yeah? Except that you have to take the back of the game box’s word for your demi-god status, as you have no powers that would speak to your godliness. You are half-lion (tail and all), but when you realize that 85% of the NPCs in the game are also half-animal without any discernable difference from the random white people in terms of social status or abilities, you start to doubt that is any clue to your demi-god state.

Anyway, the game starts off with Sphinx and his half-bird rival Horus getting sent on a mission by their half-baboon mentor Imhotep to retrieve the Sword of Osiris. You have to jump over a lot of lava to do so, and are predictably betrayed by Horus. Of course, he goes over a cliff immediately afterward, but true to video game/movie/comic book logic, that in no way means he’s dead. So you get the sword, escape the evil castle, and then -

- the game abruptly switches to an ancient Egyptian palace, where Prince Tutankhamun (or “Tut” for short, played by white guy #5) is waking up in his luxurious bed. He is now your playable character. And it is your birthday! Hooray! And your brother, whose character design was ripped directly from Jafar of Disney’s “Aladdin” and is in no way evil or about to betray you while cackling maniacally, is decorating the palace for you and has planned a big “birthday surprise” that totally won’t end up killing you so he can inherit the throne. Totally. (If you haven’t already guessed, this game is painfully predictable.)

Anyway, after meeting your (white girl #7) girlfriend, Nefertiti, and  doing a few short fetch quests, your brother’s surprisingly evil plot is unveiled, and he ties you down in a sarcophagus (or “really pretty coffin” for you non-Egyptology types) and starts casting some evil Egyptian hoodoo.

The game switches PCs back to Sphinx, who is running around a whole new dungeon and solving some puzzles and killing some monsters and generally thwacking things with the sword of Osiris until they do what he wants. Until you go through a particularly doorway and discover that, GASP! You’re in the selfsame dungeon that Tut’s brother is using to cast evil Egyptian hoodoo on him! And as you watch helplessly, poor Tut is turned into a mummy and sucked into hell along with his evil brother and his evil brother’s evil henchman! Nefertiti asks Sphinx to save Tut, and Sphinx gets right on that by going to the Big City…

…which is completely abandoned. No, wait, there’s a white guy. And another white guy. And a half-bird hobo. But other than that, the streets are empty and silent. Was there a plague? A massacre? Nope! THQ just couldn’t be bothered to program more NPCs.

I won’t bore you with more plot exposition (except to say that Horus comes back to plague you throughout the game, and Tut’s evil brother is really the evil god Set in disguise for no good reason, and if you jump in the wrong place or save your game in the wrong place or buy your items in the wrong order or cough while playing this game, it will glitch out and freeze up and die a horrible console-murdering death) because I need to take this time to tell you about what this game was SUPPOSED to be like.

You see, in the conceptual stages, Sphinx was supposed to be a true demi-god, complete with god-like powers such as fireballs, lightning bolts, and the ability to turn into an actual Sphinx and fly around killing stuff and solving puzzles and being awesome. All that plus the Sword of Osiris for plain-old run-of-the-mill killings. Cool, yeah? But apparently that was too much work, and with budget and time constraints, what we end up with is a Zelda knock-off set in ancient Egypt. Even just THAT would be pretty cool (who doesn’t like Zelda?) if they had gone whole-hog and ganked the GOOD parts of Zelda, like the part where the game itself actually works, and the part where there are enough NPCs to fill a town, and the part where you use more than one item to solve more than one kind of puzzle.

In conclusion, I hope this game gets remade with the proper budget and schedule, because the concept was AWESOME and the final product makes me want to bang my face into a wall.