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The new Alice game is pretty fucking awesome.

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My God this game is gorgeous. Only 30 minutes in and I love the Victorian East End and Wonderland. So much better than the original.
 

Eyeball

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Alright, I've played this game and am about 4 hours in, recently started the second chapter.

Starting to play it, I was filled with a vague sense of dread. Taking classics into the modern age is rarely an especially good idea and often ends in a moneygrabbing clusterfuck as in the case of Duke Nukem Forever, so since I loved the first game I really didn't want to find out the sequel sucks, especially considering American McGee has a very spotty record as far as developing good games is concerned.

And you know what? Alice actually delivers!

While it is clear that the new Alice is a product of the late 2000s as far as gameplay is concerned, it has avoided the worst part of new-gen hack and slash, namely health regeneration and overlong cinematic executions. The new combat mechanics are more hectic and furious than the somewhat mechanical battles of the first game. Alice is now far more mobile and can slash with furious speed using her vorpal blade and pepper her enemies with shots from a machine-gun like weapon found early in the game. The enemies themselves are also far more aggressive and you will find yourself dodging in and out of combat constantly using the teleport/dodge button in order to avoid dying.

There are fewer real weapons in Alice 2 than Alice 1, however, and they no longer have an alternative firing mode. This makes the fights a lot less strategic than the first game (although Alice 1 had 1 weapon that generally took care of any situation) and more of a reflex-driven buttonmashing contest than I care for, but so far the game does a good job of introducing new enemies or dangerous environments to fight in at a good rate, so I can forgive Alice 2 its catering to the console crowd.

The core of the game is still platforming and in this area it seems to have improved its mechanics as well, apparently borrowing heavily from titles such as Psychonauts, as Alice has a few more tricks up her sleeve this time around and can double-jump, float and shrink in size to enter narrow crawlspaces. There are a number of secrets hidden with goodies and "money" which you can use to upgrade your weapons, and as far as I can tell some levels even have different paths you can take through them. All weapons can be upgraded several times though, which adds extra incentive to explore as much of the
gorgeous levels as you can.

Writing is as confusing and illogical as the first game, but Alice is a confusing and illogical character to begin with, so it generally works well. I do not like how the Cheshire Cat is much more of a minor character this time around, as I much enjoyed his sinister commentary in the first game, but the way levels in Wonderland are structured around brief intermissions in the real world of a dirty 19th century London where Alice has no powers or weapons works well and both London and Wonderland are fantastically designed and more importantly VARIED. Wonderland keeps changing in character, one minute you're standing in a lush forest, the next in an industrial hellhole powered by clockwork, the third you're in an icy wasteland where even the moon has frozen solid. Compared to many other games who have maybe 2-3 tilesets max, this is fantastic graphical design.

If you liked Psychonauts, I see no reason why you wouldn't enjoy this game, and if you didn't like Psychonauts I'm sure you've got many other qualities which make up for you being a gigantic faggot.
 

Peter

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Eyeball said:
If you liked Psychonauts, I see no reason why you wouldn't enjoy this game, and if you didn't like Psychonauts I'm sure you've got many other qualities which make up for you being a gigantic faggot.

Oh shit, I have to check this out now.
 
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Eyeball said:
If you liked Psychonauts, I see no reason why you wouldn't enjoy this game, and if you didn't like Psychonauts I'm sure you've got many other qualities which make up for you being a gigantic faggot.

Haven't played that much of Alice yet, but Psychonauts did seem a lot more fun from the very beginning. And from what I'm hearing about Alice, Psychonauts has way more gameplay variety. Are my initial feelings wrong?
 
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Spicy Horse weren't the art team, they were the gameplay team. The art and art direciton was American Mcgee's group. So if you want to support them buy the lithographs or the art book.
 
In My Safe Space
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Codex 2012
abnaxus said:
Zarniwoop said:
Broken-ass piece of console shit!!!

:x

I was going to go on about how awesome the art direction & sound are, but then I noticed that whenever the game loads, my keybindings are gone. Not reset to default, FUCKING GONE. As in I cant do anything because no keys are assigned to it. Not even Esc works so you can't get back into the menu, have to alt-tab and close it. Also my savegames have disappeared.
You are not Monocause.
 

Peter

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Okay, I've acquired my copy in the bay of pirates and, without giving too much away, I'm up to the part in Chapter 2 where you're asked to collect a bunch of stuff by a character.

My initial impressions:

+Everything about the art design is brilliant. The different areas in Wonderland are all radically different and good looking, and Victorian London is stunning. I like how grotesque they've made the humans.
+The way they've made things in Wonderland represent things in Alice's life is quite subdued and tastefully done.
+Fun platforming.
+Cheshire Cat is awesome.
+Different enemies require different tactics, and when you have to take on a bunch of different enemy types at the same time, the game is pretty challenging.
+Genuinely funny at times.

-Poorly optimized (I haven't tweaked the .ini files as someone in this thread instructed yet, though; we'll see how that improves perfromance.
-Combat can become a bit of a clusterfuck.
-Lock-on camera gets pretty bad at times, especially in tight areas or when taking on multiple opponents.
-To further that, locking on to different targets is very unresponsive. Half of the time it doesn't work.
-Dodge move also doesn't always work the way I want it too. I've found myself trying to dodge an attack only to dodge into it a couple of times.
-Lack of proper boss battles (so far, at least).

It's no Psychonauts, but still one of the more creative games I've played. Huge kudos to the art team. Gameplay is standard platformer fare, but if you like platformers, as is the case with me, that's not really a problem.

I'm almost tempted to buy it, purely to try and show that there still is a market for something other than popamoles.
 

Eyeball

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An accurate summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the game, Peter. Not quite as good as Psychonauts but very enjoyable in its own right, and combat, while burdened by an annoying camera, is miles beyond the honestly fairly crappy Psychonauts model.

I pirated the game first and liked it enough to show my support for it with my wallet. Do the right thing, support games that are not shitty ripoffs of other titles!

The optimization can in my experience be improved by messing around with the .ini files as described above, so you might want to give that a go.

On a sidenote, something I completely love about this game is the way Alice's dresses change based on the environment. We seem to be at the same area in the game, Peter, and I just love Alice's fishy dress :D
 

abnaxus

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I found in combat against multiple enemies, it's best to not use the lock on at all (except when there are ranged enemies around), and run around using the Clockwork bomb to stun enemies and/or thin out the ranks.

Once you get the Teapot cannon though, it becomes pretty easy.

I really like, though, that all weapons are useful in combat and sometimes even combined use of weapons is needed against some enemies.
 

Peter

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Yeah, simply ignoring lock-on seems to be the way to go. Should get in the habit of using the bombs more often as well. Seemed too weak to me (taking out even the basic baby-face goo guy takes like 3 or 4 bombs).

And Eyeball, yes, we are in the same part. The dresses changing is indeed a pretty nice touch.
 

abnaxus

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Interestingly, judging from the credits this game apparently was mainly developed in Asia. 90% of developer names are Chinese, there are even Indonesian names.
 

Eyeball

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abnaxus said:
Interestingly, judging from the credits this game apparently was mainly developed in Asia. 90% of developer names are Chinese, there are even Indonesian names.
American McGee is on record as stating that Chinese programmers can do every bit as good a job programming as western programmers can and also work dirt cheap. He then went on to release the notoriously shitty Bad Day LA, making himself and his Chinese buddies seem like retards. They seem to have upped their game a great deal since then though, as Alice 2 is a hígh-quality product.

The irony of a man named American outsourcing his projects to China is not lost on me.
 

Konjad

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314s6rt.jpg
 

Falkner

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Is it bad that I want to play this just to see the pretty dresses?
 

Falkner

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Konjad said:
Falkner said:
Is it bad that I want to play this just to see the pretty dresses?

Yeah. You should want to play it to watch the pretty Alice as well.
I assumed that she is usually wrapped in these dresses, so I didn't think it was worth mentioning. Although her NOT wearing the dresses would also be an acceptable prospect.
Downloading now. :oops:
 

Ovg

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Yup, waiting for a good nude mod. That would sure be something.
 

Konjad

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Some more screenshots for those who haven't played it yet:
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115364298-3.jpg

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I don't get people who say this game is repetitive. Surely it is, but not more than any other. I haven't heard BG is repetitive because in every fight you select enemies and cast spells. Or - when it comes to platformers, like alice - why the fuck no one says Mario Bros is too repetitive, and it is 10000 times more repetitive than alice! Though magazines who say Alice is doing same shit again give Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops 90%+ because it's more of the same awesomeness, so fuck them. And how would you make a platform game which is different every time you jump?
 
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Found this thread, saw the screenshots at the end of it and thought "this might just be worth buying", then read the thread.. pass.

Sounds like a good piece of visual art, ruined.
 

Konjad

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Hater's gonna hate. For me it's one of the best action oriented titles ever and one of the best games released in recent years.

I have much more fun with Alice than with the Twitcher 2, even though I love cRPGs and dislike platform games in general. But yeah, don't play Alice, you've got blue alien sex waiting for you in Ass Effect 2.
 

Peter

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But it isn't an FPS, so it gets trashed by review sites.
 

Wulfstand

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The gameplay does get dull after a while. How many times are they going to repeat that puzzlebox fetch quest?
Those 2d platforming minigames are so annoying and stiff to play through, they quickly get on your nerves. It's such a pitty, because the game's nothing short of amazing in every department, except the gameplay one.
Chapters 2 and 3 (the one I'm at currently) have been so sluggish to play, I couldn't take more than an hour of playing, even with those gorgeous landscapes, and the perfect voiceacting and good music.
 
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Konjad said:
Hater's gonna hate. For me it's one of the best action oriented titles ever and one of the best games released in recent years.

I have much more fun with Alice than with the Twitcher 2, even though I love cRPGs and dislike platform games in general. But yeah, don't play Alice, you've got blue alien sex waiting for you in Ass Effect 2.


:love: :love: :love:

eventough i am mass effect whore :bro:
 

Eyeball

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I also just finished this game. I have to admit that my initial impressions were faulty. Alice 2 is not a good game.

It's a fucking great game! Save for the lack of interesting bossfights save for the final showdown and occasional annoying minigame, the twisted environments, good voice acting, amazing art style and frankly horrifying storyline make this the best action platformer since Psychonauts, hands down.

What a fucked-up ending - I really didn't think the game would go there, although it strongly foreshadowed it previously through the memories you could collect. I didn't even realise that the game was essentially a whodunit until after the 3rd chapter. Anyone wanting to play through this: Please don't look in any walkthroughs for spoilers. While it is not immediately clear that Alice 2 even HAS a storyline, rest assured: It is there and it is great.

Fucking brilliant game. Professional game reviewers can feast on a bag of dicks for dismissing this as just another boring platformer while drooling at the prospect of gorging themselves on more uninspired FPS dogshit.
 

Konjad

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Eyeball said:
I also just finished this game. I have to admit that my initial impressions were faulty. Alice 2 is not a good game.

It's a fucking great game! Save for the lack of interesting bossfights save for the final showdown and occasional annoying minigame, the twisted environments, good voice acting, amazing art style and frankly horrifying storyline make this the best action platformer since Psychonauts, hands down.

What a fucked-up ending - I really didn't think the game would go there, although it strongly foreshadowed it previously through the memories you could collect. I didn't even realise that the game was essentially a whodunit until after the 3rd chapter. Anyone wanting to play through this: Please don't look in any walkthroughs for spoilers. While it is not immediately clear that Alice 2 even HAS a storyline, rest assured: It is there and it is great.

Fucking brilliant game. Professional game reviewers can feast on a bag of dicks for dismissing this as just another boring platformer while drooling at the prospect of gorging themselves on more uninspired FPS dogshit.

:love:

Indeed, it is one of the best games of the last years, but dumbfucks gonna dumb and complain it's not a straight action game, because they want to shoot things and watch sex scenes.

At the end of the game, there is a confusing scene. Alice speaks with her doctor, but then she changes the outfit to the one she has in the wonderland and pushes him on the tracks so he could be smashed by upcoming train. Does that mean that it was just her imagination? And she actually just walks away? Or is the whole scene just her imagination, as she's lying on a bed?
 

Konjad

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Let me summarise the game:

+ does not have regenerating health
+ gives you additional penalties if you die too many times in one place
+ require use of different weapons, even during one fight and sometimes just for one enemy
+ many enemies have different attacks and they require to be killed in a different ways (yes, some of these are really original and well made!)
+ it's the best art direction I've seen since Bloodlines! No, it actually beats Bloodlines!
+ The atmosphere is fucking great!
+ good voice acting and when it comes to Alice's voice - it's truly excellent, it's music in my ears!
+ Music is great as well, however there should be more tracks
+ requires some thinking from time to time
+ not a straight action game, it's actually more of platform game. I loathe platformers in general, but I really love Alice. Platforming in there is actually not only well put, it also has original (I think, I haven't played many games in this genre, so I might be wrong) ideas and it's so much more than just jumping around.
+ Dialogues are fucked up in a really good way. Think of Malkavians in Bloodlines. Hell, everything looks like it was a Malkavian imagination.
+ Variety of surroundings. Every chapter or short part of the game between chapters looks different and not in a cheap "hey, let's add snow to make it look cooler lololol" way, but they have totally changed art direction. And they all look amazing!


- some textures are low resolution and kinda suck
- invisible walls
- Puzzles are too easy in most cases
- While graphic in general is beautiful, bloom is overused in several places.

Just don't play it on normal, play it on hard and it's going to be a great and challenging game.
 

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