Game Details:

I have fond memories of American McGee's Alice. I played it over and over when it first game out, learning every nook and cranium of the twisted world of Wonderland. The weapons were cool, the enemies were good, the graphics were amazing for it's time, the music was fantastic, and the story simple but unique. When I heard they were planning on making a movie for it, I followed everything that was announced about it. Unfortunately, the movie has yet to be made and has passed through more hands than a celebrity's dirty secret. I was about to give up hope when finally a sequel to the game was announced. I had a grin that Cheshire Cat would be proud of from the news. I pre-ordered the game for my computer and waited very impatiently for the game to be released. When the "BIG" game websites started smashing it about how bad of a game it was, it was like a piece of my soul being torn away. I couldn't believe what they were saying about it, but sadly, some of what they said was true.

It took me a lot longer to finish the game than I expected due to some crashes. I am used to games crashing as they happen frequently on PCs, and some games, like Morrowind, did it so often many called it a feature. Unfortunately, I got one of those crashes during an auto save when I was almost done the game, which corrupted my game profile, so I had to restart the entire game. It was annoying, but it will not happen to everyone, so I will not let that impact the review itself.

The story for this game was very well done. Unlike the first one, it was told inside wonderland via memories, the normal interaction with other characters, and through her real life in London. There are some that may find it confusing to have the story broken up in this way, but with what Alice is going through, it makes complete sense. The entire game is about her going through her shattered memories of the night that her family burned alive in her home. She escaped through her window, so she survived, but no one else did. Going through the realization that she was the only one left alive drove her insane, but she got past the worst of that in the first game. Now she is just mad with guilt that she may of been responsible for their deaths and finds the need to look through her past to find out what really happened. The game isn't just a cut scene followed by a random level like many other games. Each area, told through chapters, follows her journey through her mind in ways that make complete sense with what she is going through in her real life, as most of the areas are directly related to where she is in London. The story ends with a good sense of accomplishment and like the first one, makes you feel that she has beaten the evil that was corrupting her mind.

I loved the art style for the graphics in this game. Everything felt alive, even when it was dark and corrupted. The graphics aren't the best quality, but they worked for what they needed to be. Each chapter had its own unique environment and style which ranged from a beautiful forest with lush flora to an evil tortured and broken land that made it seem like everything wanted to rip Alice apart. There were only a few very small parts where the borders or meshes didn't seem quite right, but nothing to ruin the experience. Even Alice's dresses changed throughout the game as the chapters progressed to match the world she was in. There was still much of the game that was in her standard blue wonderland dress, but during the themed areas, she wore new dresses. In my opinion, her Queensland dress had to the best of them all. I just wish you could select from these dresses so that you can play the game in your favorite outfit.

Each area also has its own style of music that blends into the level very well. I can't recall any time where I found the music out of place, but none of them stood out as memorable. The sound effects were well done and the voices for each character fit in very well.

The game first and foremost is a platformer, not an action game like the first one. Unfortunately this makes the game much more boring and repetitive, especially towards the end. They tried to break it up with different platforms like 'invisible' ones and scales, but by the time you get past the first few chapters, nothing really changes. The platforms may look different, but that is all.

In the first game, a small gap could give you problems if you didn't time it right. In Madness Returns, Alice can jump large distances without a problem using her double and triple jumps, as well as floating across long distances. The ability to float on air vents has returned, but there are now so many of them that they lose any charm. In order to keep a challenge in the game, everything is spread so far apart it makes the levels seem larger than they really are. It was rare to find platforms that required just a normal single jump. This even applies to water levels where she still walks on the bottom and can't swim. It is odd that she knew how to swim perfectly fine when she was younger, but now just sinks like a stone and needs to make large jumps to reach the next platform.

Alice also has the ability to shrink at anytime. This allows her to get into small areas, using purple healing flowers, see hidden platforms, and view hints that are drawn on the walls and ground. This could of easily been improved if you could jump or dash, or attack, or anything else than walk. Most of the time was spent changing between shrunk mode and normal mode to navigate the levels. There is also a nasty bug of not being able to return to normal size if there is any debris or rocks anywhere near you, or sometimes you will just die instead. There were a few times when I had to spend several minutes just trying to find a place where I could return to normal again and even got stuck in a healing flower once due to a falling rock and had to reload.

I did encounter a few minor annoyances when I got stuck in the middle of path and needed to jump over the object that wasn't there, but it didn't happen often enough to be too big of a problem. Also when changing areas, there were times when she would continue running even if I wasn't pressing any button until I spammed the direction she was running to get her to stop. This normally normally meant she fell off the current platform before I could do anything. As you don't really die unless killed by an enemy, it wasn't really a problem, but just annoying. There are also times that Alice needs to shoot a switch or use a pressure plate to open the path to continue, in which the camera would often lock into place for a few seconds, then change suddenly to the camera angle last used.That would of been a minor inconvenience if most of them weren't timed, which made it was impossible to get past if you waited for the camera to readjust.

There is some action parts in the game, but they are too few to break up the tedious double jumping from platform to platform. On top of that, the fights were also very repetitive themselves. The battle areas are always larger areas of the level, often round, with the same enemies, over and over. There are so few different types of enemies in the game that best you can hope for is different combinations of them to fight. Once you figure out the trick to kill each enemy quickly, the battles become far to easy, even on harder difficulties. Each chapter does have its own unique enemies, but there is so few of those types too, that they even quickly become repetitive. There were also no bosses in the game, except for the last onem which was very simple and wasn't difficult to beat; I only got hit once before I figured out how to kill it.

The combat might have been better if there weren't so few weapons in the game compared to the first one. We are stuck with the Vorpal Blade (knife), Hobby Horse (large hammer), Pepper Grinder (gatling gun), Teapot Cannon (grenade launcher) and the Clockwork Bomb. The first four weapons can be upgrade by collecting teeth in the game, which makes them stronger, faster or last longer. The ranged weapons can easily target enemies by locking on to them, but I found it was just as easy to use the free control aiming with the mouse. All the weapons only have one type of attack, instead of the two different attacks in the first game, which gave even less of a change in the combat. I was very disappointed when I found that I couldn't at least throw the vorpal blade, which was so useful in the first one. The good thing is that they don't all share the same energy meter like they did in Alice 1. I also hated that I couldn't use any of the weapons when jumping.

The Clockwork Bomb, as well as it's expected boom effect, can act as a decoy in battle. It is a bit odd that the enemies are dumb enough to gather around a ticking rabbit. It did help avoiding enemies when locking on to another was required, especially since locking on took away the camera control, making it difficult to see where the other enemies were. It was helpful when she first got it, but once I found the trick to defeating the enemies quickly, I didn't need to use in battle again. It didn't help that it didn't do much damage to the enemies, thus making it useless as an actual weapon. It still had to be used to hold down those pressure plates, so it wasn't completely useless.

Alice also has an umbrella that she can use for defense or reflect back ranged attacks. This would have been more useful if the developers didn't make it so you had to be locked on to an enemy to use it due to previously mentions camera issue.

Dodging is what made most of the battles easy. While dodging, she turns into butterflies, and is invulnerable until retaking her normal form. Unfortunately dodging when locked on to an enemy had the bad habit of only dodging in the direction you were moving when the enemy was locked on to, which was normally directly towards the enemy.

The game does give you the option of changing your keys, as most PC games do, but some of them didn't work. The worst ones seemed to be the Lock button and the Umbrella. It didn't seem to matter what other key I tried to assign them to, they didn't work at all until I put them back to default, then closed and reloaded the game again. Others were still a bit fussy, but were at least changeable.

The platforming and combat is broken up by small mini games like slides and side-scrolling sections. These were interesting when you first get to them but are overused and are far too simple. The game is also littered with small puzzle games where you fix the picture, which almost always had the same solution, and silly press the key at the right time to make music games. These little additions wouldn't of been so boring if they weren't so easy or had a lot more variety.

As I always strive to get 100% of the items when playing, the largest annoyance for me came from the checkpoint system. When done right, checkpoint systems are a good idea, but this game uses it in a very annoying way. While progressing through the game, it has a nasty tendency to suddenly slam a door behind you and save the game without any notice. This means if you are wanting to explore the world, you can't if you go into the wrong place. This makes secret hunting very annoying as once you get to the checkpoint, you can't go back again. There were several areas where an item was in plain sight, but as I was trying to get to it I encountered a checkpoint, which sealed away any hope of getting to it. Since the game uses a single save system, I couldn't even just reload a save game to try again. The game does give you the ability to go back to past chapters, and even break those chapters down to the smaller areas, but it doesn't let you go back in the chapter you are playing for the first time. This means having to beat the chapter completely before you can go back to pick up lost items and hope you don't make the same mistake. This is also partially to blame for corrupted profile during my play through.

I also found that nothing in the game was scary, or even creepy. The first game gave a messed up world with terrifying enemies, but this one gave us pollution with doll faces. I don't think anyone will find any of the enemies scary, unless you suffer from Pediophobia (fear of dolls).

The only reason I found to Replay the game was to collect the hidden memories and bottles, which unlock extra art and such. Not really great, but as it is almost impossible to get everything from one play though due to the checkpoint system, it gives you a reason to plunge back into wonderland. Although I'm not too sure you want to as there isn't much else.

 

I really had high hopes for this game, and if it wasn't due to the game play, I think I would have really enjoyed more. Sadly, with all the issues I had to fight through in order to complete the game, I found that I didn't enjoy it very much. I really liked the story and the world that was created, but everything else removed the fun out of the game. It is sad to say the best part of Alice: Madness Returns was that it came with the original Alice game, updated with better resolutions. Replaying that was much more fun than this game. Too bad it was only a limited offer for the PC and current purchases don't include it, unlike the console versions which all have it included.