Prepare to
jump into to the deepest,  darkest
realm of the mind in American McGee’s Alice. Forget the
innocent and confused Alice you remember from the age-old Alice in
Wonderland and introduce yourself to the butcher knife wielding
psycho who has taken over her mind. Alice has been declared mentally
unstable and is locked away. Left to fall deeper and deeper into a fit
of dementia, she now needs you to guide her through to sanity.
This
game was tested in both Mac OS 9 and Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2.1). It installs
in just over 5 minutes. In Jaguar it loaded slowly and crashed frequently.
However when I booted up with OS 9, it ran fine, loaded quickly and
never crashed once. Having the OS 9 environment running in Jaguar does
not affect the problems with Alice. This will obviously cause problems
for anyone buying a computer after Jan. 1st, 2003. Upon starting up,
it takes less than a minute to load the level. Afterwards, saved games
and new levels load in about half the time. Graphics and sound run seamlessly
and seldom stalled. For best performance, I suggest running Alice by
itself although it  will
run fine with one or two other apps running at the same time.[Editor's
note: At this point in time, many Mac-compatible games still tend to
run better in Mac OS 9. This is expected to change as developers get
better at porting PC games to Mac OS X.]
Alice is a good mix of action and time-consuming puzzles. The use of
the Quake III graphics engine has been well used to provide either a
first-person or third-person view. The difficulty of the obstacles that
stand in your way give just enough complexity to make you think for
awhile and yet does not push it so far that you feel you can possibly
give up. This combination makes for a highly addictive game. The only
downside is that there have been no updates yet to make it compatible
with OS 10.2. It continually crashed when running in Jaguar. Crashes
usually occurred during loading of levels or loading saved games. Other
problems in Jaguar include slow, choppy graphics, lack of control, and
late and/or absent of sound.[Editor's note: This
game would perform better on a PowerPC G4-based Mac, as the iBook's
processor and video card are not as powerful as found in the flat-panel
iMac, any Power Mac G4, or PowerBook G4. Most games that utilize 3D
hardware perform best with PowerPC G4 processors.]
The
only bugs involve the incompatibility with Jaguar but otherwise it runs
without a hitch in Mac OS 9.
Alice is definitely a good buy, as long as you don’t mind running
it in Mac OS 9. It provides plenty of challenging fun and enough action
to keep the story moving at a steady pace. This, added in with excellent
graphics and sinister audio tracks, makes this game a thrill ride well
worth the money. [Editor's note: Be advised that
this game is rated "M" for ages 17 and up. It contains realistic
animated violence.]
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