From the legendary American McGee, creator of such deliciously sinister games as Alice, comes another PC exclusive called Grimm. It has a cool premise, as you're able to trounce about classic candy-coated fairly tales and muck them up. After playing through the first free episode via GameTap, we're left to wonder if McGee lost his edge.

Grimm, Episode One is much too easy and we beat it in less than an hour.

Grimm's first episode is insanely short. Our run through clocked in at about 40 minutes, and we were taking our time. Some folks already have speed run records in the early teens. Why so short? Because, frankly, Grimm offers very little to do. Excluding a highly entertaining cinematic opening and conclusion, the game boils down to six quick scenes. Each one has you running, jumping and butt stomping across brightly lit, charming landscapes. The more you touch, the smellier, fouler and nastier the environments become. As your meter increases, the things you encounter become more disgusting.

The goal is the same every time; go to point X once you fill your meter to a certain level, butt stomp, repeat at a different location and watch a movie sequence. That's it. What's worse, you can't pick up any of the interesting looking and dangerous weapons that litter the ground. In fact, all you can do is pee on things, which automatically occurs when you stand still. The enemies aren't really enemies (they just clean up the mess you make), and the biggest challenge is mastering precise platform maneuvers with the mouse and keyboard.

Visually the game looks good, but not as good as we expected. In the beginning, environments appear sparse, but in the later scenes, as you are able to really max out your meter, the screen fills with tons of disgusting, animated sights. The sound, however, is really lacking; we encountered a number of repeatable audio glitches. For instance, some voices turned almost aurally imperceptible and at other times sound effects were simply missing.

Despite these problems, Grimm still has promise. The first episode should have set out to impress us, but it feels more like a glorified tutorial, and we won't get into any familiar fairytales until the next episode. The visual style is not terribly original, but fits the setting nicely. There just needs to be more to do. Should successive episodes provide a more engaging experience, Grimm could be worthwhile in the long run, but its opening act leaves little to be desired.