Alice Madness Returns Review - Alice Returns To Wonderland To Do More Jumping About

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to American McGee's Alice which was released way back in 2000. It was somewhat something of a cult hit that was only released on the PC. Combining American Mcgee's weird and crazy art with 3D platforming. Alice: Madness Returns, 11 years after the release of the first game, is pretty much very similar to it's predecessor.


Alice is a little insane and she's got some mental issues. The game starts out with Alice in the psychologist clinic and from then on goes completely bonkers with Alice traveling to Wonderland and the real world(and at some point her imaginary Wonderland merges with the real world). She's still figuring things out regarding what happened to her family(they all died in a fire). People accuse her of setting up the fire herself, but Alice knows that the fire was not her doing(or is it?).

Alice makes her grand entrance back into Wonderland

In Wonderland, something is going very wrong. Wonderland is getting corrupted and there seems to be a new evil that is determined to destroy wonderland and Alice's memories in the process. Alice has to stop this before is goes completely mad and try to make sense of things and perhaps bury the ghost from her past.

Jumping On Platforms... Lots of It

Alice: Madness Returns is clearly a platformer with some decent combat thrown in. Most of the levels involve figuring out how to traverse through moving platforms, vent that blows air that you can use to launch yourself higher, and bouncy pads. There are eve invisible platforms that you'll have to use Alice's shrink sense(basically she can shrink herself to a tiny Alice) to  discover it. You can even use shrink sense to discover tiny mouse holes that you can go into to find some extra hidden items.

"Alice suffers from a serious case of 'boringitis' or as some would say, it often becomes a grind(not in the RPG sense) to just play out levels"

Speaking of items, you can find pieces of Alice's memories laying about which can give you little hints at what actually happened to her and the motives of the different characters(in the real world) in her life. But that aside, the platforming is pretty much the same platforming you might have experienced with the first Alice. There's nothing ground breaking here. There's variety in the terms of the different platforming challenges such as platforms that pop up when you shoot a target, platforms that pop up when you place a weight(you use your timed bomb as a weight) on a pressure pad for a short period of time, to even platforms that move like weighing scales and you'll need to place a weight on one to jump on the other raised platform to get to places.

Lots of pretty sceneries

Which also sort of leads to one of the issues with Alice: Madness Returns, the repetitiveness. While Spicy Horse(the developers) tried their best by injecting level variety and different type of mini games(which over time become repetitive themselves), Alice suffers from a serious case of 'boringitis' or as some would say, it often becomes a grind(not in the RPG sense) to just play out levels. I can't help but feel the devs had unnecessarily padded out the game to make it longer to the detriment of the overall pacing of the game.

The 2D platforming is perhaps the best of the mini games

Mini games


To pad out the game and give it a little bit of variety, the developers have included a bunch of mini games. There's quite a bit of them from a Alice 2D platformer(which is think is the best of the mini games, but has it's own share of problems), a combat arena challenge, a riddle, a physics based mini game and even a guitar hero like music mini game to name a few.

I found that even these mini games get tiring after a while and become incredibly repetitive. The novelty of discovering a new type of mini game quickly diminishes as you are thrust into the same mini game for the 5th time. The most offending mini game in this case is the one where you are forced to find piece of a sliding puzzle to even begin the mini game. It's just unnecessary busy work finding pieces of it strewn about in the level. It is just not fun.

Yes... there's even a Guitar Hero styled mini game. It's atrocious.

It's a good thing that you can skip nearly all the mini games, except for the 2D Alice platformer(which for some odd reason, you are forced to play through them). The mini games serve as a short diversion from the main platforming game which you might find a nice little diversion.. until you get tired of playing through the same one over and over again.


Alice Is A Fighter


Combat in Alice: Madness Returns is solid and fun. You need to learn the routines of the enemies and use the right attack and weapon to defeat them more effectively. However, the camera is a little wonky, and when you lock on to an enemy(you can block only when you're locked onto an enemy) the camera locks to show you Alice and the enemy locked on. This makes it infuriating when you find your view is blocked by a giant column or another enemy that is in the way.

There's a fast melee attack using a vorpal blade, the pepper grinder is a ranged weapon, and the horse head is a heavy melee attack that you can use to break an enemies defence. You collect tooth that you find around the level in crates and such and with enemy drops that you can use to upgrade your weapons to a more powerful version of each.

Combat is pretty fun. Trouble starts when you face a large group of enemies.

Perfectly serviceable combat but marred by a bad camera. If only they made the lock on camera to not zoom in so dramatically on the enemy. I had fun with the combat in Alice: Madness Returns though, it's not God of War style combat that I initially thought it would be. Be warned that it can get pretty challenging especially if you play on Normal. It can be frustrating when you are faced with a group of different type of enemies and you lock on to a single enemy while needing to doge the attack of another enemy.




Conclusion


Alice: Madness Returns isn't changing the formula with its platforming and mixes things up with a tonne of different type of mini games. But it falls apart since the pacing for the game is out of whack and the developers have padded the game to be a 10+ hour game making it feel like a grind(could have been a lot better had it been a shorter game). The repetitiveness gets to you and it's a shame since there's some really cool levels in the game. Unfortunately many that play this game will get tired of the gameplay and will never see these cool bits.



Pros:

• Terrific art style and graphics
• Some excellent levels and shows some glimmer of brilliance.
• Large variety of mini games but even these get repetitive over time

Cons:

• Terribly paced and artificially padded to increase the total hours. Gets too grindy and repetitive.
• Control scheme bug. You can loose the ability to use your melee weapon when you use your ranged weapons. You'll have to hit 1 or 3 to reselect the melee weapon to be able to use it again.
• The lock on system and bad camera angles will cause some issues with combat with multiple enemies.
• Level progression don't make much sense. The game doesn't really make it clear what you're after in the first place.

Verdict: Bad Pacing & Repetition Ruins A Perfectly Fine Game With Some Dashes Of  Brilliance

Note: The review copy for this review was sponsored by Gamers.com.my. The official distributer for EA products in Malaysia and Singapore. You can win prizes by buying original EA games. Go here and fill up the form to be entered into the draw. You'll need to keep this sticker(shown below) that is found on the plastic cover of the game you bought.