I dig dark chicks.
Anyone can dream of dating a pretty specimen with a body that can start forest fires and a brain that's just above cooked oatmeal on the food chain, but where's the fun in trying to understand a creature as simple as that? Give me a girl with a fist full of restraining orders, a penchant for the macbre and "Pretend That We're Dead" as her ringtone, and you've got someone I can bring home to the goth Momma I never had.
I'm not saying or advocating that someone who is violent or unstable makes for a better relationship. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Girls who dig the darker side of life seem to have their existence more figured out than those who walk on sidewalks made of jelly beans and rainbows. Yes, the world can be a rotten place, and just like everything in it, it can have its moments of happiness and joy, but I think it's better to saddle up to someone who knows how to embrace or laugh at the darker shade of gray when things look their bleakest. Watching the Apocalypse is so much nicer when you're with someone who can appreciate the majesty and splendor of a mushroom cloud for the .4 seconds before it melts off your face.
Alice, the protagonist/anatagonist of Lewis Carroll’s timeless story is at the top of my list. Sure she looks as sweet and dainty as a British Lord's daughter, but it takes a pretty f****ed up mind to conjure up a place like Wonderland. She's either on some serious hallucinogenic narcotics or she's just naturally screwy--and if it's what's behind Door No. 2, give me some seconds.
It's nice to hear that after 10 years, she's making her big comeback with "Alice: Madness Returns" but it's the original knife-toting white chick that always made me lose my head at the neck, which brings me to this week's weird game:
Title: "American McGee’s Alice"
What's It About?: Remember the time in the sixth grade when Mrs. Zimmerman made you read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?" Imagine that all of the pages were printed on sheets of high-powered blotter acid that seeped into your skin every time you turn the page. Oh, and you're also one of those freaks who licks their finger before they turn each page. You do the literary drug math.
How Do You Play?: You take on the title role of the mad little girl who is lost in a world of either her diseased imagination or some alternate dimension where time, space and gravity mean little and sanity means even less.
The game rewrites Carroll's story without sacrificing the things that make it awesome in order to make it darker. It picks up where Alice left off in the original story. Then a fire kills her family and sends her into a sanity spiral that lands her in a sanitarium and eventually, back in Wonderland. Oh and this time, Wonderland seems to have been taken over, designed and decorated by the evil threesome love child of Tim Burton, Marilyn Manson and H.P. Lovecraft.
Why Would You Play?: It depends. If you're a reader and you fondly remember the classic Carroll tale of twisted irony and absurd imagery, you'll appreciate the game's unique ability to blend the timeless tale that has inspired countless writers and literary geniuses through the years with a macbre sense of humor and a touch of dapper wit. If you're a gamer, you get a big knife and you get to stab people with it.
What Other Games Is It Like?: "Great Gatsby 3D: Atomic Edition," "Wuthering Heights Dating Sim," "Don Quixote's Big Windmill Hunter," "Gulliver’s Lemmings”
Why Does It Feel Weird to Play?: It's "Alice in Wonderland”...made creepier, darker and even weirder than even the likes of Carroll could imagine it. And if you're having trouble wrapping your tiny little brain around that concept, then try this analogy: take the word "weird" and add "-er" to the end of it.
Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, reporter, humorist and rabbit hole surveyor living in Texas. He can be found on the web at www.dannygallagher.net and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/thisisdannyg.