A third-person shooter - go from A to B - kill a lot along the way. Memorable opponents, great visuals, twisted story.
It is a third-person shooter and you will be able to see Alice kill while dressed like a proper, young woman. The third-person view will help a lot when climbing and swinging on ropes and vines, or when having to bounce and float to reach ledges. You have a life bar and a strength of will bar (mana that is used for certain projectile weapons). Part of the uniqueness to the game is in the weapons you will use (aka Toys). You begin with the Vorpal Blade (primarily used for melee attacks but also has a throwing attack option), and will later acquire the Deck of Cards (almost like energy bolts that can be thrown in singles or in burst mode), a Croquet Mallet (a club used for in-fighting and has a long-range option that smacks a ball into enemies that takes some aiming and timing to do this effectively), the Jack-bomb (a good explosive to clear rooms or to set as a timed trap in a narrow hallway), the Ice Wand (a nice, close-range device that can freeze opponents), the Ball and Jacks (creates a large radius or can be focused into a cluster of energized shrapnel), Demon Dice (a summoning device that attacks nearby enemies but can backfire on you if you don't give the demon enough souls to eat), Jabberwock's Eye Staff (an energy-consuming weapon that fires a powerful laser-beam or alternately a firestorm that envelops enemies around you) and a Blunderbuss (a very powerful, ranged weapon that delivers a huge punch on an enemy but also knocks you down when fired).
The enemies you will cross are the Card Guards (that come in the Club, Spade, Diamond and Heart variety), Boojum (ghosts), Army Ants, Beetles, varieties of Plant, Fish, Chess Pieces, Fire Imps, Phantasmagoria (bigger, badder ghosts), Clockwork Automaton (robots that fire grenades), Spiders and Jabberspawn (dragon-like monsters). You will also come across certain characters in the books where a few will act as a friend, but most will be a Boss that you must destroy.
While this is a high-action game, there are moments where you can enjoy the bizarre and somewhat beautiful landscape. As Alice who has descended into insanity, so has Wonderland become twisted and dangerous. You will begin in the Village of the Doomed, where you meet the Cheshire Cat who acts as your guide throughout the remainder of the game, who tells you to once-again follow the White Rabbit, and in doing so must help free the slaves of a mine ruled by the Card Guards. You will continue to the Fortress of Doors, an Escher-like level of stairs, libraries and rooms of stacked books where you must gather ingredients to make a shrinking potion. This will lead to the Vale of Tears where you climb a mountain, avoiding falling boulders being pushed by Army Ants and later will ride a leaf on a river where you gain help from the Mock Turtle who helps lead you to an upside-down house and fight-to-the-death with the Duchess. Afterwards you follow the Mock Turtle underwater (one of the more difficult levels as you must avoid giant fish, rather normal-sized fish as you had taken a potion that shrunk you to miniature-size, and at the same time keep up with Turtle to breathe the air bubbles he provides) until you reach Wonderland Woods. Wonderlands Woods is a collection of very large levels where you must travel by trees, avoiding flying beetles that drop acorn-bombs and fight more Army Ants, and then explore ice caverns and through an underground mushroom forest to finally fight the Centipede. You will continue further to the lava pools and battle Fire Imps until you reach the portal to Looking Glass Land. For those who are familiar with the books, will appreciate the level design to a land of chess boards and castles. Sometimes you will take on the appearance of a chess-piece, and can only move in the same way the chess-piece moves. After fighting a multitude of pawns, knights, bishops and rooks you will fight the Red King. You continue into a maze full of gears and will be attacked by Clockwork Automatons that can be sometimes difficult to fight as they can surprise you by smashing through glass walls and constantly throw grenades. Near the end of Looking Glass Land, you will fight Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. As you move to Behind the Looking Glass, you will really enjoy the more bizarre visuals and sounds to the game. You will travel through an interesting laboratory where you will have to fight a very large Mad Hatter. You will then enter the Land of Fire and Brimstone where you must traverse pools and rivers of lava where you fight the first battle with the Jabberwock. You will then enter the Queen of Hearts Land that consists of very imaginative mazes, one is a labyrinth of hedges, another where you must ascend a tall tower by steam vents, the next by finding your way through water tunnels, and then ending with a climb of gears and levers inside a clock tower. Finally you enter Queensland where you fight the Jabberwock a second time (one of the hardest bosses in the game), a dragon-like machine that can kill you quickly with a burst of fire. You then fight your way to the castle walls and into the castle itself. Along the way you can see that the scenery appears more organic where the walls look like intestines and the floor has the appearance of arteries that lead you to the heart. Finally you reach a Keep where you fight the final battle with the Red Queen and discover another monster that must be destroyed.
Though the game doesn't offer anything special in fighting compared to other FPS or third-person combat (no crouching or real hiding capabilities, no sniper-type weapons, no real tactics to in-fighting or defense other than to slash then retreat), the imagination to the level design, graphics and keeping true to a dark and morbid story is enough to make it a great shooter. The sounds and music cast a haunting mood that help make a stronger impact that Alice is truly descending into madness. The weapons are designed well, the strange enemies seem to belong to the universe of a dark Wonderland and the way they fight seems to fit in place. Because the action can get redundant (often retreating from a Boss to find a power-up or healing that will spawn again after a given amount of time) and most of the levels are linear (so not a lot of exploration or random encounters is possible), I wouldn't rate the game a ten. Nevertheless, it still a great game.
If you are a fan of the sci-fi / fantasy shooters prior to 2000 then this game is worth playing. Though the game is ten years old, it shows great talent to the programmers who draw you into the insanity of a dark Wonderland level by level.