my rating fluctuated multiple times throughout my play-through because this game simply never wanted to end. truly could have been around 13 hours. i don’t have a problem with a bit of filler in games but the amount of times you have to backtrack and find new routes is comical. this would be fine but after the 10 hour mark the game hardly introduced any new gameplay elements, making it feel insanely repetitive.

the xenomorph’s ai really is the saving grace here. every time it did something unexpected or new to me was a worthwhile memory.

overall: walking simulator. repetitive. stops being scary very quickly. my 3 stars remain because it does have some really cool set pieces and moments scattered throughout that i feel are worth seeing. the only time i truly HATED it was the final hour.

(and for fun here's my alien movie ranking: alien > alien resurrection > aliens > alien 3.)

holyy shit. whistleblower pretty much improves on any faults of the base game. perfectly horrifying while building so much tension it gave me a migraine. (good). as well as a great new set of characters thrown at you including our protagonist. the story here is also an incredibly interesting addition parallel to the original and serves an arguably much more fulfilling ending.

overall red barrels closed this game with an absolute bang. i personally found the last quarter of outlast to be a little bland, as it sort of throws random shorter chases in quicker succession but with no real merit. whistleblower completely corrects this part of the game. it's often fast-paced and highly tense, as you quickly understand that anything could happen at any moment. they really went all out on this one. play it.

lollipop chainsaw is a perfect example of style over substance and i absolutely adored it. bonkers story-line with tongue-in-cheek comedy and charming dialogue. very much a product of its time which is crazy to say considering this was only 2012, but everything here just makes sense.

the hack-and-slash game-play is obviously derivative of others such as bayonetta, but not nearly as fine-tuned. combat often felt pretty clunky. aside from this, the sheer variety in ways to play really carried it. lots of fun to be had with unlockable combos and some gun play.

the more i think about american mcgee's alice, the more fond of it i become. its linear path is simple yet enchanting, perhaps addicting. i really enjoyed the "brutalist" nature of it. platforming is slow, and the atmosphere of each level feels oppressive. you will run into lots of sudden enemy and environmental encounters that leave you dead. combat is janky and unsatisfying at times, and can feel like a guessing game. the game isn't particularly hard as you can save at any point, but you can expect to die a lot.

the world itself is a gothic and more blatantly twisted tale of the original wonderland. you follow alice's narrative journey inside her own head, visiting old acquaintances and locations of the mind. it's a narrative journey of mental health, showing alice at her most miserable moments but also her endurance to keep going, which is reflected in the game-play itself.

despite any flaws it may have, "american mcgee's alice" is an incredibly solid experience that i stepped into blind and greatly loved. its gothic and 2000's emo aesthetics are what initially attracted me to it, (per usual) and are unmatched.

was completely hooked until the game decided to show the monster and put us through an extra hour of ambiguous and non-sequential game-play segments.

sucks cause you can see lots of talent in the way tension builds within the first half of the game, great sound design and some genuine scares. but after a certain point it just didn't seem like the devs knew what to do with the story, or how to portray it. all tension was lost as i wandered through a bloated ending that never ended. kind of lost me.