With Regards to Ms. Alice
Jan. 15th, 2012 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlI've wanted to do a bit of a thing about Alice: Madness Returns since I finished it. But my brain twists and my stomach knots at the idea of "Writing a review". So here are some THOUGHTS I have about the game, spoiler-rich thoughts I want to add ATTENTION THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS, and maybe you can read them or whatever.
The original American McGee's Alice did basically the laziest thing it is possible to do, which is "reimagine a beloved children's classic as some kind of ghoulish nightmare", and did it pretty well. For using the Quake engine, I mean, which is absolutely not suited to being a third person platforming game in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Alice: Madness Returns (A:MR from now on) uses the Unreal engine in a much BETTER way. And nobody looks like they're sculpted out of three hundred pounds of pork, either, which is a common Unreal engine complaint.
The game is about... ...oh... how do I... okay.
The game is ABOUT exploitation. It's about memories, real and twisted, and how much it sucks when someone tries to take them away from you. It's about finding yourself when you don't know where you are. It's about being young and having every single authority figure in your life dismiss, belittle, and shun you. It's about catharsis. And... that exploitation again... it's about those authority figures doing really, really awful things to people. Breaking them on purpose. Of course, it's also about retreating into insanity to escape.
That's what the game is ABOUT.
What you DO in the game is jump between platforms, twirl a lot, look for secrets, and kill monsters with a knife or occasionally a pepper grinder pretending to be a chaingun.
Now, I respect that the people who made Alice: Madness Returns tried to do more than usual with it. It's really nice to have a game that isn't MANGUN MCDICKFIST SHOOTS EVERYBODY. And they clearly had -some idea- what they were doing. One of the enemies in the later part of the game, for example, is a doll girl who covers the cracks in her chest with her arms and screams flames at you, because to beat her you have to expose her heart and destroy it.
That's good. I respect that, it shows they -thought- about the symbolism of what they were doing.
...
And then you get to the next enemy, which is a flying head called "Bitch Baby". And I just go "...oh. Really? THAT'S what you're going with?"
That's how I felt about the whole game. You had these interesting setpieces that reflect an interesting psychological state of mind... and then the next level takes place in "The Mysterious East" where everything's made of Shogi tiles and painted in Sumi-e style, simply because one of the characters (and developers) has a hard-on for Japan.
So I spent a lot of time going "...Man, did they really know what they were doing here, or is it a lucky accident?"
Protip: It's bad when your players -do- that. It means they've lost faith in your ability to convey a narrative.
Another example:
The opening of the game starts with a cutscene of Alice being hypnotized into forgetting some of her past.
It introduces the antagonist, it recaps the story so far... and then the opening ends with her stuffed rabbit EXPLODING INTO BLOODY CHUNKS and she TEARS AT HER FACE UNTIL ALL THE MUSCLE IS REVEALED and I just started laughing hysterically because seriously guys I get it this is dark and edgy now stop you're embarrassing yourself.
Now, I really enjoyed the platforming parts of the game. I -didn't- so much enjoy the combat. So I hacked the .ini file (yay PC gaming) to unlock the otherwise-unavailable DLC dresses, and put one on that gave me infinite regenerating health, and just hacked the hell out of things with the vorpal knife until they died.
(...That's another thing that fascinated me in a "What are you doing?" way. A bit of the plot deals with exploitation of orphan children and forced prostitution and the main bad guy is represented in Wonderland as a dollmaker pulling the heads off children and putting them on perfect fake doll bodies... and okay, that's not subtle, but it's something that's genuinely an issue... except that -just about all- of the in-game rewards are... incredibly pretty, elegant dresses you can choose to put Alice in so you can look at how beautiful she looks in them...
Uhm. Now, it was well done! There's a great scene where Alice essentially goes Dress Super Saiyen to bust out of her Asylum clothes and it's PERFECT. She's taking charge of her life and nobody's going to stop her. Doesn't mean I didn't have moments of, again, "Did you think through this whole idea?")
So... that's basically it, honestly. I -liked- the game? I really did? But I had a lot of moments where I -wondered- about the game. Of course, as a friend of mine pointed out, EA is kind of evil and there's no reason you should buy their stuff, but if you OBTAINED this game somehow and tried it out (and looked up that .ini hack) you might enjoy it. Or you might not. I do not know.
That's all.
The original American McGee's Alice did basically the laziest thing it is possible to do, which is "reimagine a beloved children's classic as some kind of ghoulish nightmare", and did it pretty well. For using the Quake engine, I mean, which is absolutely not suited to being a third person platforming game in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Alice: Madness Returns (A:MR from now on) uses the Unreal engine in a much BETTER way. And nobody looks like they're sculpted out of three hundred pounds of pork, either, which is a common Unreal engine complaint.
The game is about... ...oh... how do I... okay.
The game is ABOUT exploitation. It's about memories, real and twisted, and how much it sucks when someone tries to take them away from you. It's about finding yourself when you don't know where you are. It's about being young and having every single authority figure in your life dismiss, belittle, and shun you. It's about catharsis. And... that exploitation again... it's about those authority figures doing really, really awful things to people. Breaking them on purpose. Of course, it's also about retreating into insanity to escape.
That's what the game is ABOUT.
What you DO in the game is jump between platforms, twirl a lot, look for secrets, and kill monsters with a knife or occasionally a pepper grinder pretending to be a chaingun.
Now, I respect that the people who made Alice: Madness Returns tried to do more than usual with it. It's really nice to have a game that isn't MANGUN MCDICKFIST SHOOTS EVERYBODY. And they clearly had -some idea- what they were doing. One of the enemies in the later part of the game, for example, is a doll girl who covers the cracks in her chest with her arms and screams flames at you, because to beat her you have to expose her heart and destroy it.
That's good. I respect that, it shows they -thought- about the symbolism of what they were doing.
...
And then you get to the next enemy, which is a flying head called "Bitch Baby". And I just go "...oh. Really? THAT'S what you're going with?"
That's how I felt about the whole game. You had these interesting setpieces that reflect an interesting psychological state of mind... and then the next level takes place in "The Mysterious East" where everything's made of Shogi tiles and painted in Sumi-e style, simply because one of the characters (and developers) has a hard-on for Japan.
So I spent a lot of time going "...Man, did they really know what they were doing here, or is it a lucky accident?"
Protip: It's bad when your players -do- that. It means they've lost faith in your ability to convey a narrative.
Another example:
The opening of the game starts with a cutscene of Alice being hypnotized into forgetting some of her past.
It introduces the antagonist, it recaps the story so far... and then the opening ends with her stuffed rabbit EXPLODING INTO BLOODY CHUNKS and she TEARS AT HER FACE UNTIL ALL THE MUSCLE IS REVEALED and I just started laughing hysterically because seriously guys I get it this is dark and edgy now stop you're embarrassing yourself.
Now, I really enjoyed the platforming parts of the game. I -didn't- so much enjoy the combat. So I hacked the .ini file (yay PC gaming) to unlock the otherwise-unavailable DLC dresses, and put one on that gave me infinite regenerating health, and just hacked the hell out of things with the vorpal knife until they died.
(...That's another thing that fascinated me in a "What are you doing?" way. A bit of the plot deals with exploitation of orphan children and forced prostitution and the main bad guy is represented in Wonderland as a dollmaker pulling the heads off children and putting them on perfect fake doll bodies... and okay, that's not subtle, but it's something that's genuinely an issue... except that -just about all- of the in-game rewards are... incredibly pretty, elegant dresses you can choose to put Alice in so you can look at how beautiful she looks in them...
Uhm. Now, it was well done! There's a great scene where Alice essentially goes Dress Super Saiyen to bust out of her Asylum clothes and it's PERFECT. She's taking charge of her life and nobody's going to stop her. Doesn't mean I didn't have moments of, again, "Did you think through this whole idea?")
So... that's basically it, honestly. I -liked- the game? I really did? But I had a lot of moments where I -wondered- about the game. Of course, as a friend of mine pointed out, EA is kind of evil and there's no reason you should buy their stuff, but if you OBTAINED this game somehow and tried it out (and looked up that .ini hack) you might enjoy it. Or you might not. I do not know.
That's all.
