You'll never look at Alice in Wonderland the same way again.
The game starts showing how Alice's home and parents are lost in a great fire. Afterwards, Alice is wracked with survivor's-guilt and trauma and is confined into an insane asylum. For the most part, she is in a comatose, with random outbursts that tend to have something to do with Wonderland, albeit a corrupted one.
It is shown that the White Rabbit, (which speaks through Alice's toy rabbit) calls Alice back into Wonderland (though whether she is there physically or simply psychologically is debatable). Alice learns that the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts is now in control of Wonderland, turning it into a place of sorrow and torture. Later on, she learns that it is Alice's own insanity that allowed the Queen to corrupt the land in such a way, and it is her quest to defeat her to save Wonderland and her own sanity.
The gameplay of Alice is a basic first-person shooter. Alice can wield ten different weapons, such as a knife, some killer cards, jacks, and magic staffs, to use against the creatures and characters that are out to stop Alice from reaching the Queen. Alice has a certain amount of health which can be restored upon defeating enemies and a magic bar which is used up by certain weapons and will refill overtime or by collecting restoration items.
The combat of Alice is not overly difficult. Honestly, the difficulty is keeping a good guard up so as to not be ambushed, and by conserving your magic when battling weaker foes so as to use more powerful attacks against stronger or multiple foes. Overall, the difficulty is tolerable for almost any gamer.
The traveling is very straightforward. It's not easy to get lost in Wonderland, as the path is usually quite linear. When it isn't linear, it still only takes a little walking around to find the way in short time. The most challenging part of the journeying is usually staying on the path and not falling off into the bottomless pit or lava surrounding it.
So all in all, the difficulty of Alice is about medium. It's straightforward and linear, but becoming confused, overwhelmed, or too hasty can make things quite deadly for the heroine.
Now for the visuals of the game, which can be summed up into two words. Absolutely amazing! Wonderland, which by common knowledge is a twisted maze of upside-downs and backwardness has been made even more so due to its corruption. The scenery is astoundingly disturbing and includes many freakish places. Alice must travel through a demented school full of tortured children, a black-and-white chess town, a forest filled with giant and hostile plants, a deranged laboratory, a dangerous hedge-maze, volcanic plains, and more. Keeping true to Wonderland's reputation, every other screen will feature something that's a little too upside-down or not sideways enough and other such fascinations as cannot be described in words. It's just so amazing to travel through these scenes, looking at the screen in awe of the fascinatingly warped land and wishing to travel there in reality.
The characters all have a new look as well. Almost all the characters from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass can be found here, including the White Hare, Mad Hatter, Caterpillar, the Tweedles, and the Gryphon. They all have new looks to suit the corruption of Wonderland, and not all of them are allies any longer, and WILL attempt to viciously murder Alice in the most cruel of ways. Seeing the characters is almost as awing as seeing the scenery.
On to the audio, this game hit it out of the park. The music consists of a number of tracks specifically made to give the player an increasingly creepy feeling to match the lands that they are braving through. Furthermore, the dialogue is also excellent, with the voices of the characters matching their appearances and personalities perfectly.
So to end, American McGee's Alice is just an amazing game to experience. The story is thrilling and as deep as you want it to be, the combat is entertaining, the scenery and music are outstanding, and the characters are fascinating. I'd wholly recommend that anyone who is a fan of the story try out this game if they can find a copy.