I was pretty excited going into my review for Alice VR. I’m a big fan of the Alice in Wonderland mythos including the games by American McGee, so having a sci-fi game inspired by such fantastic source material piqued my curiosity; especially being in VR. Now available on Steam I tried this game on both the Vive and the Oculus Rift with various degrees of success, both eventually ending in utter failure.
The premise of the game has you playing Alice, woken from your cryo slumber when you ship malfunctions by the shipboard AI in order to repair and refuel the ship in order to continue your journey. Other than your character being named Alice and a few seemingly forced references to Alice in Wonderland, there is little connection to the namesake source material. You get to shrink and enlarge yourself to solve environmental puzzles. This concept makes some sense onboard the ship, but when the same pair of size-changing buttons appear later on the planet with Eat Me and Drink Me signs it makes absolutely no sense. The Cheshire Cat is now a robot companion and I did see a crude drawing of a white rabbit. The Mad Hatter is supposed to appear but the game broke before I got to him.
I’m not sure that VR really helps the game either in immersion of controls. The graphics are just downright horrible. Even with settings maxed out textures were ugly, levels were void of detail and there was a noticeable shimmering effect like I was playing the game through a wall of water. Things got a little better once I got out of the confines of the ship passages and made it down to the planet. The voice work, music and sound were okay – actually the best part of the presentation.
The game claims 60 puzzles, but since mine broke at the same place every time I only experience about an hour of the game. Exploration and puzzle solving were quite linear. There is usually only one way to go and if there is a choice like an elevator leading to different floors, you are only allowed to press the button to the floor that matters. Even the anti-grav sections inspired by Prey lacked any challenge or originality. Alice VR is yet another adventure game that is dumbed down into a “walking sim”.
The Vive offers support for motion control but no room-scale so you could play standing up but the only advantage would be to turn around to face different directions – something you can easily do with the side buttons on the Vive wands. You can choose between smooth movement or a teleport scheme for those prone to motion sickness. The Rift plays with a controller and the devs have no plans to support the Oculus Touch. Considering the limitations of the game I found the Rift the more comfortable experience being able to sit down and just use the gamepad to move around and drive the buggy.
If this game was in Early Access I’d be a bit more forgiving, but when the devs boast about how this game was “Tailor-made for VR from the ground up – no compromises!” then delivery subpar graphics and awkward Vive controls then slap a $25 price tag on it, I have to be overly critical.
Playing on both the Vive and the Rift I was able to get off the main ship, land on the planet, drive a buggy through some canyons with sharks swimming overhead (coolest part of the game) then enter this obelisk and walk across some self-constructing bridge to eat an apple. What loaded after that basically a level that had me spawning outside the world confines into white space with a splotch of blue on the horizon. I couldn’t move or do anything but end the game at this point. Assuming this glitch is ever addressed with a future patch (I was playing on Patch #4) and I am able to finish the game I will revisit the game and rescore the review as necessary, but until then I strongly recommend you avoid this travesty.
