American McGee's Grimm truly delves into the darker side of fairy tales with its latest episode, The Girl Without Hands. For those who haven't been keeping up with the previous reviews, players control the character of Grimm, who uses an aura of darkness to transform the fairy tale world around him from a bright and happy to miserable and wicked. Grimm's aura becomes more powerful as he transforms the landscape, which enables him to change over more objects, including NPC's that will impede his progress by cleaning up his mess. In the end, players are rewarded with a dark retelling of the story.

The Girl Without Hands is a tale about a miller who unwittingly trades his daughter to the devil. However, not even the devil anticipates what he'll find when he comes back to collect her. Instead of parting with his daughter or finding some way to negotiate a way out of the deal, the miller cuts the girl's hands off. Being maimed causes the girl to cry non-stop, causing the devil to reject her. Apparently, the devil has a little-known aversion to moisture. What follows is an incredibly unlikely tale where the handless girl marries the king after stealing from him. The king is also kind enough to equip her with a pair of silver hands before heading off to war. Then the devil tries to end the girl's life through roundabout means, which leads to a final reunion, where everything is suddenly all right.

Suffice it to say, it took society a lot more creativity and effort to turn this disjointed and nonsensical story into something bright and cheery than American McGee needed to paint it black. Grimm, in the usual way, transforms the bright puppet theater into a darkened one. Similar to the gameplay improvements found with Puss in Boots, the levels are more complex and wide in comparison to previous episodes. Stages are covered with more NPC's than ever before, making the game more challenging than in previous episodes. In an unexpected twist, there are also bigger results from changing the environment over. Windmills take on sharpened blades and destroy some of the smaller NPC's. Some of the fountains will change into turrets, zapping nearby NPC's with lightening and slowing them down. On different occasions, transformed characters and animals will attack each other. Although the gameplay is exactly the same as it was in episode one, these extra additions go a long way toward making Grimm seem newer, and less like rehashing the same gimmick over and over again. Although the loading screens suggested differently, we didn't spot any power-ups this time around, but we were never huge fans of how the worked begin with.

We were also very pleased to find Grimm taking stronger liberties with the story, changing it from a deranged story about fate into a revenge tale. Justifications are provided to help fill in some of the glaring plot holes and leaps of logic. In the end, the daughter gains retribution against her father. It's not a happy ending, but it's certainly a satisfying one. As an added bonus, Grimm's intervention transforms everything into a dark, bloody and truly wicked world. Characters are portrayed with boxy marionettes, but it's still great to see their heads on pikes while blood rains down.


American McGee's Grimm is headed in a good direction with its episode-by-episode gameplay adjustments. Even with the added difficulty, the entire game can still be completed in less than thirty minutes. There were also a few areas where Grimm got a little stuck in the scenery, but nothing too terrible. If you've wanted Grimm to tell a bloody tale of revenge, The Girl Without Hands covers it. GameTap subscribers can get the game and have their best scores uploaded to a leaderboard. Non-subscribers will have to check-in every Thursday, when new episodes are free to play for 24 hours. Otherwise, episodes can be purchased for four dollars each.