The first time I had heard of American McGee (as I’m sure many others) was when the delightful game American McGee’s Alice game for the PC came out. An incredible game that was pretty fun and gave a whole new look to the traditional Lewis Carrol tale. The game comes across as dark and creepy (and for what it’s worth it is) but the game is not dark just to attract what this generation seems to deem cool. Instead the game gave a deep look into the tormented psyche of a traumatized girl and used the characters from Alice in Wonderland to personify various obstacles within her own mind. And the end was delightfully sunny as Alice eventually overcomes her guilt and strife and leaves the asylum and better person. If you haven’t played this game I really do suggest you play it. It may be outdated graphics wise but I continue to have this game downloaded on any computer I get because the seamless use of art and story to weave the characters together is genius.
American McGee than went on later to create Scrapland (which I haven’t played and therefore will not go over) and Bad Day LA. Bad Day LA was a very fun idea in premise but ended being poorly executed. The latest 
product of McGee’s are the Grimm Fairytales through the GameTap website. They are very short episodic tales which first go through the warm politically correct version of the fairytale as we usually know it, and than as the character Grimm (a gross dwarf like guy) goes around making everything gross and wicked like the original fairytales used to be. Again in premise this game should be amazing. McGee has a real gift for taking stories that have been told before and putting a twist on them that is appealing but also gets out a message. Unfortunately for Grim the gameplay is so weak that it’s hard to endure through the story. The gameplay is too simple and doesn’t offer a very big variety at all. So it would be good for little kids…except for the severed heads, hanging corpses, etc. I may continue to play the episodic games if only for the story.
That being said, American McGee’s talents are being wasted. He is clearly a strong storyteller in a medium that is lacking good writers. But his gifts keeps getting dragged down by the game mechanics. Someone needs to smack this man up side the head, steal him from Spicy Horse (despite founding it) and hook him up with some game designers that know how to bring playability to his take on storytelling. Please don’t let this man’s enormous potential go to waste.
