American McGee is best known for his work on DOOM, Quake, and Alice. The latter, which I found to be a deliciously twisted romp through the wonderland of Lewis Carroll. McGee’s past games have earned him an automatic “I gotta check out what he’s doing next” pass. His latest project is entitled American McGee’s Grimm and is a 24-part episodic game available exclusively on Gametap. New episodes are released every Thursday and will be available free to play for a 24-hour period, much like a television show. Grimm is based on the idea of “f’d up fairy tales,” with each episode centering on the corruption of a particular fairy tale, like Little Red Riding Hood or Beauty and the Beast. Gameplay is very simple and casual friendly. It plays kind of like Katamari Damacy in that you are guiding a character in a world with the objective of covering the most surface area possible. There is some light platforming as well.
What I Liked:
- Art direction/Presentation – The Unreal Engine 3 isn’t pushed to its full potention in this game, but the blocky, simplistic character models do exude some personality. The changes between the “original” fairy tale world and the “Grimm-ified” fairy tale world (once you get your stinky paws on it) are quite apparent and is the biggest accomplishment of the game.
- Simple, relaxing gameplay – This game is almost built for casual gamers as you can use one hand to play it! Either the mouse or the WASD keys will work in controlling Grimm. The only other action he can do is jump and butt stomp, which is done by jumping twice.
- Short length – The first episode is divided into six “sections” that each take between 3-5 minutes to complete. After cut scenes, you can finish the entire episode in under 40 minutes, possibly less. This is good for those who can’t afford long periods to game
- Potty humor – If you stand still for a couple of seconds, Grimm starts peeing. ‘Nuff said.
What I didn’t like:
- Shallow gameplay – If it weren’t for the short play sections, you would get tired of the game very fast. The game is fairly linear and doesn’t involve much more than rudimentary platforming skills. Most of the time you are just running around an area trying to cover it in filth.
- “Meh” story – I’m not too familiar with the tale of “A Boy Learns What Fear Is.” It might have been better if Gametap led off the series with a more recognizable tale, such as “Little Red Riding Hood.”
- Simplistic graphics – You wouldn’t have guessed the game uses the Unreal 3.0 engine by just looking at it. While the great art-direction and atmosphere make up for it slightly, there’s no avoiding the fact that the game world looks dated.
What I Didn’t Care For:
- Leaderboards – I barely had enough motivation to finish the episode, much less replay it for time.
The first episode of American McGee’s Grimm is a mixed bag. While it’s basic premise and goal are intriguing and show signs of promise, the execution of the first episode falls a little flat. I’m curious to see whether later episodes have a noticeable improvement in story quality and deeper gameplay, but it’s definitely not at the top of my to do list.
If you’re looking for a relaxing and short gameplay experience on your PC, you could do a lot worse than episode 1 of Grimm. Since the first episode is downloadable for free here, you really have nothing to lose. For those of us with a backlogged games stack, though, there’s nothing here that will make you want to put it at the top of the queue.
