The world can be a cold and dangerous place. We think about its darkest parts as we wrap ourselves in blankets and find a comfy armchair near a roaring fireplace, much like our ancestors did. Also like our ancestors, we turn to stories to understand how to survive the darkness: Don’t trust tricksters with magical powers, avoid suspicious fruit, and never venture into the woods alone.
These days, games teach us as often as classic novels and oral tradition. But they rarely explore the classic fairytales that entertained the generations that came before us, which is a shame. We need more games in touch with that rich tradition, like American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns. And once developers build them, we need to make sure that they remain playable for more than a console generation or two.
American McGee’s Alice launched in late 2000. Published by Electronic Arts, it earned an M rating from the ESRB, owing to its disturbing content. This was not the Wonderland you may have explored in Kingdom Hearts. The game secured a score of 85 on Metacritic, and came to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in June, 2011 as DLC.
In American McGee’s Alice , the resourceful hero returns to Wonderland, the place that made her famous. She finds it less familiar. Everything that was sinister about it has grown more sinister still. It rots from within, wounded by a malevolent force that only Alice can address. But doing so will require fortitude she never knew she had.
Source link
