When Alice arrives in Wonderland, she serenely and matter-of-factly notes this, as if this disturbingly twisted Wonderland is merely a scientific phenomenon. Something has evidently happened at the outset of the game (which opens with one of her therapy sessions) to draw her back into Wonderland, which is now completely changed. So when Schumann’s Carnaval – with its ‘regression’ to the dream-like universe in which intercourse between ‘real people’ is replaced by a kind of masked ball where one never knows what or who is hidden beneath the mask which laughs crazily at us: a machine, a slimy life-substance, or (undoubtedly the most horrifying case) simply the real double of the mask itself – sets Hoffmann’s Unheimliche to music, what we obtain is not the ‘universe of pure fantasy’ but, rather, the unique artistic rendering of the decomposition of the fantasy-frame. Here we can see clearly how fantasy is on the side of reality, how it sustains the subject’s ‘sense of reality’: when the phantasmic frame disintegrates, the subject undergoes a ‘loss of reality’and starts to perceive reality as an ‘irreal nightmarish universe with no firm ontological foundation this nightmarish universe is not ‘pure fantasy’ but, on the contrary, that which remains of reality after reality is deprived of its support in fantasy. This task gives her a way to touch-base with reality instead, fomenting a trajectory of travel out of these sewing marks as she stitches the Real and the unconscious together. She is trying to embrace the Real through a journey to the deepest recesses of her mind it involves death, but does not culminate in it. In this way she continually embraces death, and through this death, the death of memories (that moment of the past where she forgot them). She opens the door and walks into the flames of her past. That being said, the game is quite glitchy but it seems to work well with the content given that we jump back and forth from the interior (imaginary) space of Wonderland to (the real space of) London quite often.Īfter one has collected enough memories, Alice will come across a waiting wooden door behind which flames flicker. Not only that, but the artistry of the game is phenomenal much of the character design is visually stunning (the character of Alice, particularly), with a lot of focus on little details. Whether they’re bad voice actors or they just don’t fit the graphics doesn’t really matter what matters is that the new voice actors of Alice and her compatriots do work, with British accents that actually fit the characters (visually) they voice. For example, the voice actors of American McGee’s Alice have American accents – and, let’s face it, it doesn’t work at all. It is essentially a re-make of this game, but with a few twists added and a few tweaks made. Sherman “The Other Side of the Valley Or, Between Freud and Videogames – Kent Aardse “Love Thy Neighbor? No Thanks!” (chapter in The Plague of Fantasies) – Slavoj Zizek.Īlice: Madness Returns is a new take on Alice, Through the Looking Glass, taking the Burton-esque of interpretation of Alice’s Adventures (both of Lewis’ novels) to another level completely. Developed by Chinese game company Spicy Horse and released by EA Games, the game draws from American McGee’s Alice.

Reading Materials for the Week: “Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games.” – Sharon R.

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