The Official American McGee Site

"Alice in the Sea" by Zeng Shou, screenprint

Forgive me, my lovely minions, for not updating earlier today.  I’m sure you can understand – or perhaps directly relate – to the impulse to oversleep after over-indulging in the joy of “Alice: Madness Returns” (and then rolling right back into playing again…)

I hear of many, many people rushing through the game to get to the story and swearing on all that’s holy that they’re going to be going back through it more slowly to see all the little details.  I’m the more patient sort and am taking my time now, which means that I’m only barely at the half-way point of the first chapter, I think.  (Maybe that’s a sign of age, or maybe I’m just an odd duck.)

Anyway, there are a few delightful little tidbits of news I thought I’d share with you today:

First, there’s a lithograph set over at our Treehouse store that contains eight different full-sized lithographs.  Considering that most lithos go for around $40 each, the price tag you see there grants you a free print.  (We know we posted about it yesterday, but there seemed to be some confusion about it.)

Second, we’ve been waiting patiently for entries into the display photos contest, and it seems like there’s either no displays to speak of, or no one has stayed in the store long enough to snap a picture.  At any rate, if we don’t see something in by tomorrow evening, we’ll probably just sweep that one under the rug quietly.

Third, we know that the first few days of a game’s release come with a lot of “OMGWTFBBQ!!!1!” moments as people try to figure out the technical side of it (such as having to go through the “Equip” page to change her costumes from the DLC).  We strongly encourage you to hang out on the forums and share you questions as well as your fixes with other fans in the “Technicalities” section.  Not sure how to get past a particular enemy or boss?  There’s a whole “A:MR” board to talk about that.  Want to share some fan-art you did?  We have a place for that, too.

(And forumites sometimes get some really good community-only goodies… #justsayin…)

In the meantime, you are also invited to send me your user reviews, and the very best ones will be posted here as guest entries.  And by “best”, we mean thoughtful, honest, well-written, persuasive and compelling to read.  Feel free to cite other sources (“I agree with this guy at Movie Mike’s on this point” or “I don’t understand what these other guys see”) and link to them, and don’t forget to include a picture.  The picture can be of yourself (please, keep it clean, the platypi are still a little traumatized) or of your favorite screenshot from the game.  Don’t forget to include on which console you’re playing and whether or not you’re using the DLC.

(And as a heads-up, we’ll be starting another similar thing next week for the original game, so keep that in mind.)

Whooo… that’s a lot of stuff, but we’re sure you understand.  We’ll have more for you tomorrow, but in the meantime… viva la noise-filtering headphones.