News

Matthew Byrd Jan 30, 2019

Cult classic American McGee's Alice may receive a prequel title called Alice: Asylum.

Game designer American McGee is reportedly working on a new American McGee's Alice game. This comes after years of speculation - and fan wishes - regarding the possibility of another entry into the cult classic 3D action/adventure franchise.

"American is hard at work on design, art, and story for the next chapter in Alice’s adventures," reads a post on the American McGee blog. "'Alice: Asylum' will present the story before 'American McGee’s Alice,' with young Alice fighting through the trauma of losing her family."

Based on that very early - and somewhat vague - information about the game, we can at least expect the next Alice game to be a prequel called Alice: Asylum that will cover some of the events that occurred before the 2000 sleeper PC hit that started the entire franchise,...

Anyone who’s played Doom knows about American McGee’s work. Unfortunately, despite knowing his work and his dedication to games, I just never got into his twisted take on Lewis Carol’s Alice In Wonderland with the Alice series. I know, hang my head in shame. Anyways, those who have been clamouring for a new entry in […]...

American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns gave us one hell of a bizarre time upon their respective 2000 and 2011 releases on PCs and consoles; and now, according to the American McGee website, we might just be taking a… Continue Reading →

The post American McGee Wants a Third Alice Game; Do You? appeared first on Dread Central.

American McGee, the man who brought us American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, has just launched a Kickstarter for a new project titled Out of the Woods, which is a blend of a card game, book of original stories,… Continue Reading →

The post American McGee Needs Our Help to Venture Out of the Woods appeared first on Dread Central.

American McGee on another Alice game Earlier this week, fan-favorite game developer American McGee tweeted out a link to a fan petition asking for a new Alice video game. “Doubt this will change any minds at EA,” he writes. “But what the hell. Sign the petition for a new Alice game!” A macabre re-imaging of Lewis…

The post American McGee Talks Chances of New Alice Game appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

A petition for American McGee to return to Alice has reached over 15 thousand signatures!

A single person has started a petition to tell EA to let American McGee continue his Alice adventures. You can sign the petition yourself and check out the number climbing higher on the petition page. At the time of writing this the petition was sitting at 15,500 signatures.

The petition has picked up so much traction that even American McGee has posted about it on Twitter, stating -

"Doubt this will change any minds at EA, but what the hell," tweets McGee, "sign the petition for a new Alice game!"

We have obviously been in support of this happening for some time now. We wrote great review of Alice: Madness Returns back when we were another website, and of course rumors of a 3rd Alice title came about and we voiced our support back then too.

For those that don't know,...

Microsoft's debut games console, the Xbox, made a big impact on gaming, but not all of its games got the attention they deserved...

Feature

The new generation console war may turning towads a two horse race, with Nintendo playing catch up, but wind back a few years, and Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo were all hard at it, competing for your money and loyalty. The PlayStation 2 would go on to win the war of its generation, but Microsoft's Xbox was a tough competitor, giving the company a secure foothold, which it would later take advantage of in the next generation with the Xbox 360's dominance.

The original Xbox had a host of great games, many of which have gone on to become successful franchises, with no better example than Halo, but not all of its good games gained the attention they deserved, even if sequels managed to appear in later years.

Shortly after winning gamers’ dark hearts with Alice, game designer American McGee decided to keep on corrupting childhood memories with Grimm, starring a rotund wretch named Grimm (natch) that sought to restore fairy tales back to their morbid roots. It was one of the few reasons I had a subscription to Gametap back in the day, as well as one of my earliest game reviews. Nostalgia!

Now, thanks to the democratic wonders of Steam Greenlight, which allows self-published titles to be voted into Valve’s PC distribution platform, American McGee’s Grimm is now available for 99 cents for each of its 23 episodes…or 10 bucks for the complete series. That’s an…interesting pricing model to say the least.

American McGee’s Grimm is available now on Steam.

ABC premiered "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland" Thursday (Oct. 10), a spinoff  of its popular family program "Once Upon a Time." This iteration takes place in pre-curse Wonderland, though like its predecessor, the show is full of mash-ups and not strictly telling the Lewis Carroll story with which you may or may not be familiar.

To clarify something we've seen some confusion about -- the female villain in "Ouat in Wonderland" is the Red Queen (Emma Rigby, pictured above), not to be confused with the Queen of Hearts, who we all know is Cora, Regina's mother. In Carroll's books, the Queen of Hearts is from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and the Red Queen is from "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There."

You may have noticed the Red Queen's chess piece palace (which is awesome) -- that's because she is the Red Queen from a chess game. Looking-Glass Land...

Reviewed by Jesse Miller, MoreHorror.com

Throw the works of Lewis Carroll and Clive Barker together, with a sprinkling of Silent Hill for good measure, and you've got yourself the twisted and highly entertaining tale Bedlam Stories.

The story goes that a young reporter fakes insanity and commits herself to the infamous Bedlam Asylum for a chance to tell what could very well be the biggest story of her career about the rumoured unethical horrors within.

What she finds in her investigation within the walls of the asylum is a secret far more sinister, fantastical and disturbing than anything she could've ever imagined - a secret pertaining to the bizarre worlds of Wonderland and Oz.

Bedlam Stories has the twisted and disturbing landscape of Silent Hill, the magic of L. Frank Baum's novels and the nightmarish creatures you'd find in a world created by Clive Barker.

It is material...

The Evil Dead remake was a film that snuck up on me even though I covered it at a few events leading up to it’s release. It was hard to tell how much the flick was able to stand on its own and how much winking/callback oddness there was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised by director Fede Alvarez from Uruguay, who had only been on the scene with his short, Panic Attack, before taking on a horror remake. Usually this results in Platinum Dunes-like misguided attempts to highlight what made the original series interesting by either referencing it or by blowing that one cool thing out of proportion in bombastic ways.

To some, I’m sure it sounds like I’m describing The Evil Dead remake, but in a genre that so often leaves me cold leaving the theater, Evil Dead had me grinning and energized.

When listing game designers that have their unique spin put into their products, a few names pop to mind, such as Suda 51, David Cage, and of course American McGee. Famous for American McGee’s Alice and its sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, McGee’s twisted version of Wonderland has taken gamers on some of the most disturbing rides of their lives. Despite the many interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s initial novel, McGee’s remains the most inspired, twisting Wonderland into a world that resides somewhere within Alice’s head, corrupted by her insanity after a tragedy that leaves her without a family.

Recently, McGee and his development company, Spicy Horse, have begun to branch out into using Kickstarter to fund their future projects. Although OZombie, an adventure contained within a warped version of Oz, failed to reach its goal, a new campaign seeking to produce short films based on the...

With the announcement that the OZombie Kickstarter has fallen through due to a shortage of donations, American McGee has moved on to more familiar territory, asking fans for donations to fund a new short film titled Alice: Otherlands. Meant to be a continuation of the Alice game series, McGee and his company, Spicy Horse, are asking for $200,000 in donations so they can produce the film.

Wait, that sounds a bit high, doesn’t it? Before you jump to conclusions, you’ll be happy to know that Spicy Horse has released a statement clarifying any and all questions fans might have about the high cost of the project. It turns out that the money will be used to buy back the actual film rights to “American McGee’s Alice,” which through some odd happenings, American McGee himself does not own. Check out the list below to see just what’s up...

You may have seen recent stories from us about American McGee trying to make another Alice game. These are some of our favorite titles, so we were really hoping that happens. However it seems he will be going into the Wizard of Oz instead!

American McGee and his studio Spicy Horse have been in talks with EA to do another title for Alice. The second game was a fan favorite, and a lot of his followers have been asking for more. Sadly the talks didn't happen soon enough so they are unable to do it. However McGee did note that talks to do the second Alice title did take forever, and it wasn't until they made a different game that EA decided to let them make Madness Returns.

So he had a back up plan, a game based on the world of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. This is...

Spicy Horse Games has announced that their next title will be OZombie for the PC. The game will be an action-adventure game will take place in the land of Oz but with a wicked twist. Nothing is more fun than traveling with The Scarecrow, Lion, Tinman and Zombies!

Yes, Dorothy’s great-granddaughter will battle the undead.

Spicy Horse Games, the creative force behind Akaneiro: Demon Hunters as well as American McGee's Grimm and Crazy Fairies announced today that the Kickstarter for their latest project, OZombie, is now live.

OZombie is a narrative-driven action-adventure game in an alternate version of L. Frank Baum's famous Oz universe. While the themes and characters draw from all 14 of the Oz books, they are getting the stylistic and artistic touches Spicy Horse has used with titles like Alice: Madness Returns and Akaneiro: Demon Hunters.

OZombie is built around a single-player game with multiplayer...

The latest trend in the gaming world seems to be big companies coming along pretending to support the ‘little guys’. You know, the indie makers who make some really popular fun games? These same indie games have gone on to massive success in many cases, and now the big companies want in. Look at what MineCraft has done and how it has garnered deals from Microsoft to be exclusive. Other games are gaining deals from publishers, or are finally being listed on Psn and Xbox Live. However, with all this great news for indie games, console gamers are still missing out on a ton.

If you go to a PC and open up Steam, you will see absolutely tons of games to play for a variety of prices. A lot of these games go on sale as the developers simply want you playing the game. Now you head over to Psn or Xbox Live,...

Earlier this month the benevolent executives at Electronic Arts decided that the time was right to finally pay attention to three years of customer complaints, and drop their controversial Online Pass system from all their future games. Today, EA has taken the next step in that process and confirmed that they will also be removing the program in their existing titles over the coming weeks.

EA’s corporate communications representative, John Reseburg, announced the end of existing Online Pass codes to Game Informer, saying:

“As we discontinue Online Pass for our new EA titles, we are also in the process of eliminating it from all our existing EA titles as well. We heard the feedback from players and decided to do away with Online Pass altogether.”

Once the operation to eradicate the entire Online Pass system has been completed, all older titles on Xbla and Psn will offer the formerly...

Keen-eyed NeoGAF user Vert Boil spotted several titles from publisher EA on Xbox Live whose online passes had gotten a major discount: if you want to hop onto the the Cerberus Network with "Mass Effect 2," well, you're in luck because it and ten other titles' online passes have gone free.

The move follows EA's announcement earlier this month that they would discontinue the practice of charging for a separate pass to go online with its multiplayer titles.

Explaining the move in a comment to Game Informer, EA's corporate communications department said:

As we discontinue Online Pass for our new EA titles, we are also in the process of eliminating it from all our existing EA titles as well. We heard the feedback from players and decided to do away with Online Pass altogether.

Players will see it first with some EA Sports titles, where a prompt to enter an Online...

Akaniero #1

Writer: Justin Aclin

Art: Vasilis Lolos

Cover: Shu Yan

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Anytime one see’s American McGee branded upon a product, it’s best to approach with trepidation. One time, about a decade ago, the name was synonymous with originality and artistic vision within the video-game world. So after more abysmal than excellent games and blowing all his clout, American McGee, and his developing company Spicy Horse, decided to take to Kickstarter to fund his new game Akaniero: Demon Hunters, a loose re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, where it currently sits with a meta-critic score of 56%.

Unfortunately for Dark Horse Comics, American McGee decided to throw in a comic book series to help promote the game which was released way back in February. This puts Dark Horse Comics in a poor position, since they now have to promote a comic series based on a wildly unpopular game.

ABC announced Tuesday (May 14) that "Once Upon a Time in Wonderland" will be leading off its Thursday night lineup come fall and with it, the network released some sneak peek photos of the "Once Upon a Time" spin-off series -- see them all in our photo gallery.

Sophie Lowe (above) stars as Alice, though a grown-up and seemingly darker version than the Disney heroine everyone is used to. According to ABC, the show starts with Alice in Victorian England, spinning tales of a land on the other side of a rabbit hole.

Everyone thinks this troubled girl is crazy and it's up to the Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha) and the White Rabbit (voiced by John Lithgow) to rescue her and take her back to Wonderland.

The series also stars Peter Gadiot as Cyrus, a genie Alice fell in love with, and Emma Rigby as the Queen of Hearts.

From these pictures,...

Madness is coming again! The response to the first series of figures from the hit video game American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns was so overwhelmingly positive that Diamond Select Toys is coming out with yet another version of heroine Alice Liddell.

Joining the standard Alice and Hysteria Alice figures is Royal Suit Alice, featuring Ms. Liddell in yet another outfit that provides different benefits and abilities in different regions of Wonderland. Alice acquires the Royal Suit, which helps her access her invincible Hysteria mode, in the ruins of Queensland, where the Queen of Hearts is slowly regaining her power.

Royal Suit Alice comes armed with her Vorpal Blade, Hobby Horse, and Pepper Grinder weapons. Check out the packaging below, and look for Alice to hit comic shops and specialty stores in April!

Visit comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest comic shop, and get regular updates from Diamond Select on...

Dark Horse Comics' "Akaneiro" #2, available June 26, 2013, is written by Justin Aclin and illustrated by Vasilis Lolos, with a coer by Shu Yan :

"...American McGee's re-envisioning of 'Red Riding Hood' takes shape in this all-new story, as brave young warrior 'Kani' battles a gauntlet of fantastic mythical beasts inspired by Japanese folklore. However, things are not what they seem, and danger lurks where Kani least expects it..."

Click the image to enlarge...

By Joseph Leray

American McGee’s “Akaneiro: Demon Hunter,” the gorgeous free-to-play action-rpg loosely based on the Little Red Riding Hood story, will be start receiving its Kickstarter-promised updates just as soon as the team at Shanghai-based SpicyHorse Studios gets back in the office after the Chinese New Year.

“Akaneiro” went live last week, offering prospective demon-slayers the option of downloading a client or playing in their browsers. At the same time, the company wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign to add new features and modes to the game, including weapon-crafting and co-op.

“We expect the initial ‘foundation’ work to take at least two months, starting around the end of February,” a SpicyHorse spokesperson told me. “We can’t start right away as we’re heading into the Chinese equivalent of the American ‘Thanksgiving+Christmas+New Year’ holiday vortex.”

The developers will need to re-work the game’s user interface to introduce the new features,...

By Joesph Leray

The artist formerly known as “Tera” has been re-branded and re-launched: the action-oriented Mmorpg is now “Tera: Rising,” and it’s free-to-play.

“Tera” first made waves because of its real-time combat, which is more similar to a console-style action game than the click-click-click of traditional MMOs. Players can form alliances and join political parties as they vie for position in the fantasy world showcased by “Rising”’s slick new trailer. “Tera” can be kind of grind-heavy at first, but it’s hard to whine too much about a free game, assuming the monetization model isn’t too pernicious.

Players who have already bought “Tera” will be automatically upgraded to “Founder status,” which comes with a few in-game perks. Any player can also pay to get “Elite status” which is even perk-ier. This handy chart details the different status levels.

“The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive...

By Joseph Leray

Let’s face it, Paradox Interactive has a bad reputation for publishing buggy, slapped together games, but that’s going to change moving forward, according to CEO Frederik Wester.

Speaking with GameSpy, the boss had some harsh words about his company’s games, calling the launch of “Gettysburg: Armored Warfare” “terrible.” The alternate history real-time strategy/third-person shooter hybrid was marred by bugs before being extensively patched.

“We did not do our homework,” Wester said. “It was a one-man team with some backup… we learned a lot from that release. We've had many bad releases before that, as well, and we learned something every time.”

Wester also explained that Paradox cancelled four different games last year because they were “not up to the standards we’re currently looking for at Paradox.” Losing four games worth of potential sales was hard for the company -- Wester called it...

By Joseph Leray

Boutique gaming mag Kill Screen has posted a great developer diary with the audio team behind “Dead Space 3,” particularly detailing how the audio cues were captured (the screaming Necromorphs are actually sound designer David Lowmiller’s niece) and how and when the game engine decides to use them.

Visceral Games implemented what they’re calling the Fear System into “Dead Space 3”: everything in the game has a hidden fear value between 0 and 1. At a fear level of 0, protagonist Isaac Clarke is cool, calm, and collected; at 1, his heart is beating out of his chest, his breathing is haggard, Necromorphs are screeching, and the game’s score has degraded into “a symphony of destruction,” says executive producer Steve Papoutsis.

I think most gamers assume that a game’s score or soundtrack is relatively straightforward to implement: you record a song, slap it into the background, and move...

By Joseph Leray

In the least surprising bit of news today, Polish game-house CD Projekt Red has finally, formally announced “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,” the last game in Geralt’s planned trilogy.

The announcement could have been a surprise if it weren’t for those meddling kids sleuthing out clues from CD Projekt’s “Cyberpunk 2077” trailer, but alas. The fact that the studio spent last week bragging about their fancy new tech, an engine capable of “creating an open environment with a complex, multi-thread story,” only added more evidence to “Wild Hunt”’s announcement.

In any case, the confirmation comes in the form of GameInformer’s March cover story. Details are somewhat scant, but we can glean a few things about Geralt’s latest gadabout: he’s got a beard now, for example. “Wild Hunt” introduces a new “monster hunting” mechanic that apparently involves gathering clues first. It will be an open-world game,...

By Joseph Leray

If you took Little Red Riding Hood, gave her a katana, and dropped her in a village in Edo-era Japan, you’d have a rough approximation of “Akaneiro: Demon Hunter,” a gorgeous new action-rpg by American McGee’s Spicy Horse studio.

The game’s Kickstarter was funded yesterday, but “Akaneiro” is already fully playable in your browser from places like Kongregate or Spicy Horse’s own site. Akaneiro has also been Greenlit for distribution on Steam. The game is, for all intents and purposes, finished: there’s a full-featured, stable game, with all of its maps, characters, items, and free-to-play monetization systems in place.

While the game is free-to-play, players can use real money to buy karma shards, Akaneiro’s in-game currency. Karma is used to buy items and unlock new maps, but there is a one-time, $20 buy-it-all option that unlocks the entire game at once.

The...

At the end of last year we got the first word on the beta for upcoming Arpg Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, and now Spicy Horse Studios and Dark Horse Comics have announced that this soon-to-be-released game will be expanding into comics.

From the Press Release:

From the brilliant minds behind video game auteur American McGee’s Spicy Horse Studios, Akaneiro mixes a foundation of Japanese folklore with an original mythology inspired by Red Riding Hood, yielding a fantastic and exciting setting for players to explore and perfectly setting the stage for the visual storytelling of comics. Written by Justin Aclin (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and illustrated by Vasilis Lolos (Conan the Barbarian), the comics follow Kani - a young woman torn between two cultures - on an epic adventure hunting devious Yokai and pursuing a destiny far greater than even she can perceive as a member of the fabled Order of Akane.

There is something that I love about taking children's classics and adding a horror twist! Below is the newest information on Diamond Selects new Alice: Madness Returns figure line. American McGee's take on the Alice in Wonderland story, as seen in the game Alice: Madness Returns, is now a line of "Select" action figures. The first assortment of 7-inch scale figures features the Cheshire Cat, a zombie Card Guard and Alice Liddell herself, comple…...

According to this latest short from Dorkly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and their guardian Splinter) have more problems than Michael Bay messing with their origin story: Namely, Child Protective Services. Curious to know which Batmobile would win in a race -- the 1989 Tim Burton Batmobile or the Batmobile from the '60s TV show? Well the new webseries Super Power Beat Down has you covered. [via Nerd Bastards] Really diggin' the style of this Little Red Riding Hood short by Jorge Jaramillo and Carlo Guillot, complete with its freaky American McGee vibe. [via Tdw] Red from Red on Vimeo.

Read More...

In recent years the world of Video Games and Film have collided more frequently and more contentiously than ever before. As time passes more and more video games are being converted for the big screen, resulting in few success stories and a more regular burden of failure. The problem seems to be a lot of the games that are being selected shouldn’t and the ones that should are being neglected for possible franchise starters, Resident Evil I’m looking at you.

So today, once and for all, here on WhatCulture! I am going to give you a definitive list of the Top 5 games that Need to be made into movies and, you never know, if we get enough support it may just happen.

Now before I start I am just going to say that there isn’t going to be any of the following games in this list: Metal Gear Solid,...

As the title suggests, Alice in Wonderland is a tale of a girl who ventures to a wondrous world, the likes of which could only exist in dreams. The original American McGee’s Alice video game brought to life Wonderland, much like we knew it from books and movies. The latest game sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, goes one step further to create a more mature Wonderland that has been thoroughly twisted by time and possibly Alice’s own mind. Instead of a dream world, Madness Returns is intended to be more of a nightmare. While there are some very imaginative worlds to find in this new nightmarish kingdom, the game lacks the story and intrigue necessary to make it memorable. The tale is overtly linear and surprisingly filled with mediocre fetch quests, while visually the imaginative world is not pushed as far as the concept. Alice: Madness Returns begins with...

Chicago – We’ve all played games that start frustrating but eventually find an engaging rhythm. And we’ve all played games that start off successfully but fall apart over time. Rarely has there ever been a game that straddles that line for more of its playing time than “Alice: Madness Returns.” I regularly felt like the game was about to click into place and live up to its immense potential but then those feelings would fade. It’s far from a complete disaster but this long-awaited sequel is the definition of “almost works.”

Video Game Rating: 3.0/5.0

The biggest problem with “Alice: Madness Returns” is an abundance of repetition. What starts promising fades as you face the same annoying enemies over and over again across multiple chapters. The world of “Alice in Wonderland” is so ripe with potential that one would think that different chapters of a new story would have different enemies.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit headlines this week's UK PlayStation Network update. Released at retail last November, the critically-acclaimed racing title can be downloaded in full for £23.99. Other PlayStation 3 highlights include American McGee's Alice for £7.99 and a free Sonic Generations demo from tomorrow. For PSP, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars can be purchased for £23.99. > Read last week's PlayStation Network update The update in full: Full Games (PS3)

Akimi Village (£7.99/€9.99) Rating: Pegi 3

Availability: All locales

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (£23.99/€29.99) Rating: Pegi 7

Availability: All locales

Sonic the Hedgehog 20th Anniversary Bundle (£13.99/€17.99) Available from 23rd June Rating: Pegi 3

Availability: All locales

American McGee's Alice. (£7.99/€9.99)

(more)...

Years ago, there were rumblings that American McGee's dark take on Alice in Wonderland was going to be a live-action film directed by Wes Craven and possibly starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. While that project may have died on the vine, the twisted minds over at Mad Hatter Collective have cobbled together their own fan trailer. Check it out after the break! While the trailer features little more than Alice (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Garbage's Shirley Manson) being lured back to Wonderland by her own madness, it shows a genuine love and faithfulness to the source material…which makes sense, as the director, Zane Rutledge, did work on the CG trailer for the original American McGee's Alice...

This week's Xbox Live update deals a powerful hand with Magic the Gathering, The Adventures of Shuggy and discounts on Dance Central tracks. Games Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012: Challenge the AI or online opponents using ten new themed decks. Team up online with a friend in the new Archenemy mode to take down monstrous bosses. Download it for 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80 / $$10). Also available is The Adventures of Shuggy for 800 Ms Points (£6.80 / $$10). Downloadable Content Alice: Madness Returns: American Mcgee's Alice: Play the original Alice and learn the events leading up to the newly released sequel. American Mcgee's Alice is included as part of the Online Pass in new copies of Alice: Madness Returns or as Dlc for 800 Ms Points (£6.80 / $$10). Also available is the (more)...

This week's Xbox Live update deals a powerful hand with Magic the Gathering, The Adventures of Shuggy and discounts on Dance Central tracks. Games Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012: Challenge the AI or online opponents using ten new themed decks. Team up online with a friend in the new Archenemy mode to take down monstrous bosses. Download it for 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80 / $$10). Also available is The Adventures of Shuggy for 800 Ms Points (£6.80 / $$10). Downloadable Content Alice: Madness Returns: American Mcgee's Alice: Play the original Alice and learn the events leading up to the newly released sequel. American Mcgee's Alice is included as part of the Online Pass in new copies of Alice: Madness Returns or as Dlc for 800 Ms Points (£6.80 / $$10). Also available is the (more)...

2000's American McGee's Alice was a novel idea: the eponymous Alice (of Alice in Wonderland, natch) suffers a psychotic breakdown after her family's tragic death in a house fire, leaving her catatonic and retreating to the Wonderland of her mind, which has become a corrupted shell of its former self.  The grotesque, Tim Burton flavored spectacle won over many fans (myself included), making the game a cult hit. Fast forward 10 years, and American McGee is once again taking us down the rabbit hole of Alice Liddell's broken mind in Alice: Madness Returns.  Of course, a lot has changed in 10 years.  Tim Burton released his own tweaked, albeit toothless take on the Alice story which diluted the novel...

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the year 2000, American McGee’s Alice took the story of Alice in Wonderland and turned it on it’s already twisted head. As a sequel of sorts to the books, the game opens with an accidental fire destroying Alice’s home in Victorian London, in which her parents and sister die. Alice then attempts to commit suicide (due to survivor’s guilt) and is committed to Rutledge Asylum. While there, her shattered psyche has her (and players) revisiting the Wonderland of her childhood, now decayed under the rule of the Queen of Hearts. By the game’s end, she destroys the Queen (who some believe to be a manifestation of her own insanity) and restores Wonderland to its original charm and glory, and is declared stable (or stable enough) to leave the asylum.

Perhaps that wasn’t for the best, however. In...

As always, I'm on top of anything American McGee's Alice, and with exactly ten days until the launch of Alice: Madness Returns it would be hard to find anyone more excited than I am right now! Especially after watching this launch trailer EA and Spicy Horse gave us among all the pre-E3 craziness!

I have no words other than "Want it Now!". Zomg can't wait, guys!

Here’s the launch trailer for “Alice Madness returns” coming soon to Xbox 360, and PS3. Game Description: The Wonderland that you knew from childhood has gone horribly wrong … again. This is the follow-up to designer American McGee’s twisted take on the classic Lewis Carroll tale. Designed with the same dark style of the original, but now featuring entirely new visuals, story and game design, Alice: Madness Returns follows Alice on a journey through a wildly corrupted and shattered Wonderland to uncover the truth behind her haunted past and tortured psyche. Alice: Madness Returns takes place 10 years after the conclusion of the original game, with Alice struggling to recover...

Here’s the combat trailer for “Alice Madness Returns” coming soon to Xbox 360, PS3, PC. Game Description: The Wonderland that you knew from childhood has gone horribly wrong … again. This is the follow-up to designer American McGee’s twisted take on the classic Lewis Carroll tale. Designed with the same dark style of the original, but now featuring entirely new visuals, story and game design, Alice: Madness Returns follows Alice on a journey through a wildly corrupted and shattered Wonderland to uncover the truth behind her haunted past and tortured psyche. Alice: Madness Returns takes place 10 years after the conclusion of the original game, with Alice struggling to recover...

Don't ask me how I missed it! I honestly don't know because all the art I posted yesterday got me in an Alice mood. I only wish I had the first game for my PC so I could play it again, but unfortunately, I have a Mac format game...and my poor Powerbook G4 is...well...it's seen Much better days.

Anyway, I did some meandering around YouTube and found IGN has put up two videos of the gameplay of Alice: Maddness Returns.

(Skip to about 2:36 in this video for some action footage)

And GameTrailers.com posted this one yesterday: 

I don't know what console either is playing on. If I had to take a guess, the IGN is likely playing on either PC or Xbox 360, and the GameTrailers is on a Playstation 3 (I'm guessing this by way of the way the person plays; The hesitation between moves in...

Driving a player into the heart of madness is a difficult task for any video game, especially when you’re dealing with the twisted remains of an imaginative place as Wonderland. If anyone can do it however, it’s American Mcgee.

American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns is the upcoming sequel to 2000’s cult PC game American McGee’s Alice that follows our heroine back into her twisted alternate reality of Wonderland. Due out next month for the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360, it’s, without doubt, one of the most anticipated games this year.

With the release of the art book from Dark Horse Publications (available at Amazon for $23.09-regular price $34.99- here, or you can get the digital version for $9.99 in Apple’s app store, with rumors of an Android version coming soon), some of the awesome concept art has been made available online… and it is amazing.

In addition to owning these,...

As news of David O Russell’s departure from the director’s chair of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune sends shockwaves through the internet, now seems like as good a time as any to look back on a few of the epic video game adaptations that never were… or at least haven’t been yet. In the background, behind all the Uwe Boll adaptations and the notorious Bob Hoskins Super Mario Brothers movie, there have actually been a few projects which, at one time or another, threatened to be quite good.

Warning! One of the below has been completely made up for the sake of my own geekish amusement.

Halo: Combat Evolved

The game: X-box first person shooter (Fps) Halo: Combat Evolved has, since it’s release a decade ago, spawned a multi-billion dollar industry – at one time being described as the biggest “entertainment property” in the history of the world ever.

Oh, I get hysterical, hysteria. Oh, can you feel it, do you believe it? It's such a magical mysteria. What? We're not talking Def Leppard type "Hysteria"? Nope. What we have here is Alice: Madness Returns type "Hysteria", similar to the feeling of super power players felt when using the "Rage Box" item in American McGee’s Alice. Check out some screenshots!

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Alice: Madness Returns, EA and Spicy Horse Games have released four all new screenshots demonstrating one of Alice’s more chaotic combat abilities – "Hysteria", which acts as a conduit for Alice's intense rage and desire to win against her psychological demons. The new mode offers players a powerful and bloody way to pull Alice back from the brink of death and lay waste to her enemies.

Synopsis:

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to the 2000 PC hit American McGee’s Alice.

If you know the Doom or Quake series, you know American McGee. Eleven years after American McGee's Alice was unleashed on PCs and Macs across the world, McGee's company, Spicy Horse, and EA have teamed up once again (with Unreal Engine 3 this time) for the long awaited sequel, Alice: Madness Returns.

Also set eleven years later, Alice finds herself questioning her repressed memories of her parents' death and wondering if it really Was an accident. As time goes on, frequent and severe hallucinations force her to return to Wonderland; but it's not the same place she remembered.

Meet American McGee - Tester, Level Designer, Sound Designer, Tools Programmer, Co-Producer, Co-Writer, Producer, Creative Director, Developer, Founder/Owner ... coolest motherfucker on the planet.

CrixLee: Is it harder to build a game around well-known source material as opposed to starting a game's storyline from scratch, so to speak?

American McGee: The...

American McGee is a man who needs little introduction, as his name has become synonymous with his most famous creation: the traumatized Alice, star of the dark and surreal American McGee's Alice and the upcoming Alice: Madness Returns.  I recently had the chance to talk to McGee about a everything from his early days at id Software to the upcoming revival of the infamous Alice.  Check it out after the break. FEARnet: Your first job in the industry was working for id Software, probably the first "rock star" developer, on milestone titles like Doom and Quake.  How did working for such a major player influence your later work? American McGee: It influenced my movement in the industry - made...

We're less than one month from the launch of the Alice: Madness Returns video game, but starting today you can fall into Wonderland right on your mobile device as EA Games brings you "Alice: Madness Returns", an interactive storybook application for the iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Android devices! Best of all? It's Free!

This interactive storybook bridges the gap between American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, telling the story of Alice’s institution at Rutledge Asylum, where barbaric psychological treatments summon visions of Wonderland. Penned and illustrated by the talented teams at Spicy Horse, this free application also showcases some of the latest features of devices like the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 to bring the story to life in new and wondrous ways. This app is your opportunity to discover a brand new chapter in Alice’s story through a truly unique interactive experience.

The "Alice: Madness Returns...