Alice: Madness Returns – Playstation 3 Reviews

This is one bizarre action-platformer. “Madness Returns” takes the “Alice in Wonderland” setting we all grew up with and stabs it in the heart with a big, bloody knife. You play as Alice, a young girl with some truly nightmarish dreams, who enters Wonderland every time she dozes off (which is often), but the Wonderland she returns to is not quite how she remembers it. The world she knew has grown twisted, and its inhabitants deformed. At your disposal is a trusty blood-soaked kitchen knife (mentioned earlier), a pepper shaker acting as a machine gun, and a few other tools I won’t spoil to help dispatch foes. Combat is generally pretty solid except for a somewhat awkward lock-on camera. Platforming is the other piece of the “Madness” pie. You won’t just be jumping, but double and triple jumping, with the ability to glide in between each jump. Levels are scattered with secrets and collectables. The game does lack a bit of polish and feels rough around the edges. Some of the areas (snow, underwater) aren’t as interesting as others. What I like are the little touches, like when Alice dodges and her entire body becomes a swarm of beautiful blue butterflies. I like that teeth are what you collect and use to level up weapons. I like the twisted look and feel of the world. I quite like “Alice: Madness Returns.”

— 4 STARTS —

**Warning** do not buy this game if you have an aversion to the following: jumping, puzzle-solving, creepy dolls.

Okay, so the main character bears a striking resemblance to Winona Rider in Beetlejuice and the overall style looks like it came from the mind of Tim Burton. Game-play made me immediately think of my beloved Kingdom Hearts except…in a nightmarish sort of way. Battle is fairly straightforward in that there is no reliance on combos but you’ll need to become skilled at switching between weps during battles which is simply a matter of pushing X or O for close-combat and R1 for long-range attacks. Additionally, the move that you should definitely practice at the outset (absolutely essential if you wanna get very far) is the float and double-jump in order to gain height. Fortunately, camera rotation of 360 degrees is almost always an option and rarely ever a problem with the occasional locking into one view and extreme pan but usually never during critical moments.

NOT A SPOILER… but a few general hints for anyone like myself (i.e. always overcomplicates everything and consistently overlooks the obvious): secret keyhole passages sometimes have side passages, different weps work more efficiently on different foes so experiment, it’s possible to drop mad-hatter bombs from a ledge onto something beneath you and finally; if you encounter a level that has TONS of invisible platforms and ledges then equip the caterpillar dress which makes your “shrink sense” always on.

PARENTS: if you thought this looked like a good game for kids (in spite of the fact that the cover has a creepy looking Goth chick holding a bloody butcher’s knife) be aware that the Mature rating is well deserved as the death of pretty much every foe is accompanied with a decent amount of gore, every trip back to London is peppered with R-rated language (not sure why it’s necessary but apparently a lot of gamers get off on this), there’s mild nudity (not sure if that’s a legitimate descriptive or not) in the Oriental Grove stage and, as I’ve already alluded to, the overall feel can be nightmare-evoking eerie at times.

Ok, I get it. Wonderland is meant to be a metaphor, except that the land itself isn’t very wondrous while the sub-text can be downright depressing and if the violence was meant to be cathartic…somebody shoulda told Alice. I would easily give this game 5 stars for intuitive gameplay, gorgeous visuals, being consistently challenging while not overwhelmingly hard and I absolutely LUV all the mini-games as they add diversity which precludes tediousness. Unfortunately, I just didn’t want to play anymore after I beat it and I really didn’t have much of a sense of achievement like I do on so many video games and I know that this is owing entirely to it being so-verrry… daaark thematically.

Hey American McGee! Dude, you seriously need to send Alice a cookie bouquet or just give her a hug or something for crying out loud! :o)

I always had wanted to play this game because of the beautiful visuals but had hesitated to buy it when it first was released because of the price. A friend of mine reminded me of it recently and recommended it and so I finally gave in. And I am very happy I did.

ART DIRECTION:I absolutely loved the game’s visuals and art direction. The worlds were dark and very entertaining. I also found it fun that Alice’s dress changed with each different world. Overall, it is a very beautiful game and I was not disappointed by the beauty and/or creepiness of the levels. It was also fun to see how your weapons’ appearances would change each time you upgraded them.

GAMEPLAY: The gameplay was also very fun. I loved collecting teeth (which are spent like money to upgrade your weapons) and searching for hidden paths. Whenever I discovered a secret area, I felt rewarded and excited. However, I found this game to be glitchier than the average game and very seldomly in my favor. The game often paused and almost froze my system once, which has not happened to me very often with other games. It would also pause whenever I found a memory in the game, though only for a second. The glitchiness/poor programming was most often brought out during the platforming aspect of the game and often I felt like I died because the game “didn’t like” how I jumped or some other such nonsense and would cause me to randomly die. Because I love old games, and have put up with much worse, I was able to deal with such irritations but the less patient gamer may not be able to handle it. What makes it worse it that the game is also fairly difficult. Glitchy + Difficult tends to not be a good combo.

ENEMIES/FIGHTING: The upgrading of weapons was fun and each weapon was very useful, enjoyable, and grew on me the more I used it. There were no junk weapons in this game. Some of the enemies (ie colossal ruin) were quite difficult but most of the time enjoyable. There were some unfair moments but it was fun to discover each enemies unique weakness and experiment. If you have trouble, there is an easy difficulty available.

STORY: I liked the story. It takes awhile to understand what is going on, but overall it was interesting.

LEVEL DESIGN: Each world/level was fun. I especially loved the Queens Palace and the Asian themed one. The game helps you know where you were supposed to go. However, the last world was deeply creepy, perverted, and disturbing. Because of that world alone, I would definitely not recommend this game for kids and frankly that was the only level that I strongly disliked, mainly because how creepy it was.

I saw both PS3 and XBOX versions played. (My friend and I played side by side on two screens, her on her xbox and me on my PS3) I saw no significant difference between the two.

OVERALL CONSENSUS: Excellent game. Poor programming but one of the of the most fun gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. (I stayed up till 3am playing it, which is unusual for me) I beat this game rather quickly not because it was easy but because I couldn’t stop playing it. If you love older games, I most definitely recommend you give it a try. It has an “older game” charm to it even though it’s fairly new.

Buy it new if you can. It has a free download code for the first Alice game. (though I haven’t checked mine to see if it works yet because I have not been able to connect my PS3 to the internet at my college)