Written by: Ian

 

 

 

After 10 years, American McGee’s twisted version of Alice in Wonderland has returned to consoles. Does this new title still shock and awe in equal measure?

 

The original game, and many of American McGee’s, have, frankly been steeped in graphical awesomeness, amazing style, crazed visions, but fairly dire gameplay that you have to fight through in order to see all the good stuff. Here’s hoping that gameplay and art style can be combined to finally create an outstanding game from Spicy Horse.

 

 

It’s been some years since the first Alice game. She’s returned to London, and been stuck seeing a crazy psychotherapist, trying to drill out the horrific memories from the first game.

 

Soon, however, she’s sucked back into the twisted version of Wonderland, where again, things have changed in the period that Alice has been away. Interestingly, after the chapters, Alice returns to London to explore before heading back. It’s a dark, twisted, but totally cool tale that has completely warped the original fairy stories.

 

 

 

"Alice: Madness Returns" is a crazy mix of platforming and combat in the 3rd person, taking quite a few cues from Zelda games, with some RPG-lite elements thrown into the mix. The game starts off quite poorly, with you wandering almost aimlessly around London, and the controls feel quite loose. However, once you have your platforming abilities in Wonderland, the controls get much tighter, although there can be some pretty frustrating insta-deaths.

 

Thankfully, the game has a tight checkpointing system that means you never lose too much progress. There are also a few puzzles, although these are normally both very simple and intuitive, requiring little thought to progress. You can also shrink Alice; sometimes this is used for progression, but it also opens a ‘shrink sight’, and many walls will contain clues to help you solve the puzzles and help you progress whilst in this mode. It’s a good way of having a breadcrumb trail without ruining the sense of immersion that the game gives you.

 

Combat is also tough, especially when confronted by groups of enemies, all of which have unique weak points that need to be exploited. You’ll need to use all of your weaponry to progress, from a short-ranged knife to a pepper grinder machine gun. You can also upgrade these as your progress, and although each individual upgrade doesn’t have a huge effect, it’s a decent enough system. Targeting is through a single lock system, like Zelda, and combat is fairly simple. The problem is mainly the fact you normally get assaulted by large numbers, and even on normal difficulty, Alice is quite weak. If your health is reduced to the last bar, then you do get access to a rage attack that makes you temporarily invulnerable and more powerful, which is a nice touch.

 

 

The game is almost too long, however. With six chapters that run to about 3 hours each, and the original game thrown in to the core product, rather than as an XBLA title, there is at least 25 hours to plough through. As such, it actually feels a little bloated and repetitive, and I think the game could have easily got away with slicing some of the content away; by the end of each chapter you have definitely seen every part of the visual style of that level to death.