A little repetition is not enough to mar the beauty and unsettling atmosphere of Alice's quest for sanity
The Good:
Stylish, elegant character and environment design – entertaining combat – Alice is a solid, well written character – great soundtrack and voice acting – lengthy story mode – plenty of secrets to discover – 2D platform section is a lot of fun, could easily be its own game – comes with free downloadable prequel
The Bad:
Combat and exploration get mildly repetitive – uneven texture quality – only a single boss fight in such a long game – occasional bugs and glitches
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(Note: Review originally written in 2012)
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Back in 2000, Electronic Arts released the critically acclaimed PC and Mac exclusive American McGee's Alice, a gothic, twisted follow-up to the Alice in Wonderland books by Lewis Carroll. Eleven years later, a sequel was finally made available to continue, perhaps conclude, Alice's story. Did it succeed in providing a worthy successor to the original game?
Much has been said and done concerning the interpretation of Carrol's work: ranging from film adaptations starting as early as 1903, moving on to Walt Disney's famous dreamy take on it in 1951, to Tim Burton's darker, but still fairy tale in nature 2010 film. Most if not all of these have favored the playful, mischievous aspect of Wonderland over the underlying theme that quietly runs through the books: that of madness, which some have interpreted as an allegorical commentary on delusion and schizophrenia. Nothing comes close to this aspect like American McGee's reimagining of Alice's journey, in which he not only accentuates what the novels only hinted at, but also goes one step beyond, tackling thematics that few in the gaming industry would dare touch even with oven mitts.
The first game told the tale of the little girl's descent into insanity ensuing the tragic death of her family in the fire which consumed their house. After drifting back to Wonderland, this time twisted into a dark version of itself, projection of her scarred mind, Alice finally confronted her nemesis the Red Queen, but ultimately concluded she herself was the cause of the fire which ended her family. After spending several of the following years in an insane asylum, Alice is entrusted to the care of Doctor Bundy, a shifty psychiatrist whose practice is to use hypnosis to treat troubled children by erasing negative memories from their minds. Despite making progress in forgetting the traumatic events of her past, Alice once again finds herself back to the ruined Wonderland, where she is warned that instead of forgetting, she needs to recover the memories of what really happened that fateful night of her family's death, so she can forgive herself and restore her sanity, with the help and counsel of her old friend and guide, the Cheshire Cat, a welcome return from the original game.
The story is told through simple but well rendered cutscenes featuring paper-cutout characters, or via quality in-game dialogue.
This interesting premise is the backdrop for a 3D platformer-action hybrid, which is a throwback to the original game, with a familiar sequence of narrow ledges and moving platforms, interspersed with quick and frantic arena battles, but with a few key innovations added to the mix. Alice has a new arsenal of imaginative weapons at her disposal aside from her returning blood-stained knife: a pepper grinder serving as a machine gun to quickly mow down weaker enemies at long range, a hobby horse to deliver slow but devastating melee attacks, a kettle firing explosive tea drops to bring down the stronger foes, and an umbrella which allows her to deflect enemy projectiles. All of her equipment is fun to use and the game balances the infinite ammo of ranged weapons with the need to let them cool down after a few seconds of sustained fire. The player can either click the right stick on the controller to enter aiming mode, which handles very much like your standard third person shooter, or hold down the left trigger to lock onto the enemy on the center of the screen, then tilt the right stick to switch targets. It's a solid mechanic ad it works really well when facing small groups of enemies, but can get clunky when trying to lock on to a particular target among a crowd of hostile creatures.
When she is not shooting her way through the levels, Alice can perform simple melee combos with her knife and hobby horse. The game encourages you to experiment in mixing the two weapons to create longer streaks of attacks, but don't expect anything Kratos-like: this is all pretty simple and immediate. All damage-dealing weapons can also be upgraded by spending then in-game currency represented by eerie floating teeth, which can be found everywhere in the levels and in great quantity in the many hidden areas. It is a good idea to collect as many as possible, as the upgrades will be very much needed later on in the game.
To avoid taking damage, Alice can dodge by turning into a swarm of butterflies, which is a nice variation on the "roll out of the way" mechanic in most action games, resulting both visually stylish and functional from a gameplay standpoint.
The enemies you'll fight are quite varied: aside from gunky monstrosities with doll faces you'll face samurai wasps, robot teapots, ghost sailors, creepy killer dolls and many more, which will definitely keep you interested alive to see what foes the next level might conceal. Something that results more than a little disappointing is the lack of bosses: aside from the mandatory final boss and the occasional bigger enemy, there aren't any to speak of, which feels a little like a missed opportunity in a game with such an imaginative style, which would have surely allowed for some memorable boss encounters. At one point the game even pokes fun at the player by introducing a huge boss-like robot at end of a level, only to have it fall apart on its own a few seconds later. It's a funny moment and a clever meta-wink at consolidated video game tropes, but a boss fight might have admittedly been more interesting at that point.
The level are quite beautifully designed and really show the care that was put into the art direction: lush forests, dark factories, doll graveyards, underwater caves and a stunning card castle building itself in the sky all convey the sense of a once beautiful land fallen into a spiral of madness and decay, but still retaining part of its innocence in many areas, much like our conflicted protagonist. Alice is a strong, well written young woman, drifting back and forth between the action levels of her imaginary Wonderland to more narrative focused sections set in the real world, a bleak and dirty Victorian London full of gritty, grim characters and prostitutes. It is impossible not to grow attached to Alice as she goes from the fiercely beautiful warrior girl she is in her mind to the sickly, almost washed-out real self. These sections are a nice change of pace and often reward the player with significant details of a story which is a pleasure to piece together. This is where the game dares to delve into thematics generally left unexplored in the overwhelming majority of video games: namely the thorny concepts of rape and child abuse. Both of those are only hinted at in this game, and presented in such a way that leaves much to personal interpretation, but still constitute a powerful statement from a game designer who clearly wants the gaming medium to move past the mere basics of narrative and sail maturely into the uncharted, perhaps even controversial waters of uncomfortable subjects.
When you eventually go back inside Alice's mind, your task will be to navigate the insane architecture of her world. The level design is often convoluted, once again reflecting the thematic of madness, with spiraling stairs and twisted geometry, but you'll rarely find yourself stumped or severely hindered, the path to the next area being generally not too difficult to locate. Alice can triple jump and glide for long distances, ascend on steam flows and shrink at any time to fit through narrow passages, usually leading to secrets. Shrinking also activates a "Shrink Sense", which displays hints drawn on walls, along with invisible platforms floating in the air. It's a clever way to hide secrets in plain sight and keep the player snooping around for Alice's missing memories, represented by objects belonging to the people the memories themselves are about, and bottles containing artworks and extras which can be viewed from the main menu. There are even some hilarious flying pig snouts you need to make sneeze with your pepper grinder to reveal hidden goodies.
Technically speaking, the game results fairly inconsistent: on one hand we have beautifully rendered characters models and mostly nice-looking environments, on the other we often see extremely low-res or slow-loading textures in plain sight and occasional pop-up issues. It's an overall pleasant game to look at and Alice has a nice variety of great-looking outfits changing from level to level, but the developers could have done a much better job during the optimization phase. The sound is excellent all the way through the game, both in the musical, effects and acting compartments, the only minor flaw being some caricatural british accents which can sometimes be a little too thick to be properly deciphered by everyone, especially for people unfamiliar with the cockney inflection.
There are a few glitches here and there: an enemy may get stuck in the scenery causing a door to remain closed, forcing a restart from a checkpoint, but while irritating in the short term, these issues are rare enough not to impact the gameplay in any significant manner.
Alice: Madness Returns is a long game too: it will take you somewhere between 15 and 20 hours to beat the story mode on normal, depending on how much exploring you'll be willing to do. The length of the campaign is both a good and bad aspect, however: it sometimes feels as though we are playing a 10 hours game stretched out to be twice as long. Combat gets repetitive relatively quickly and the alternance of jumping areas, levers and enemy encounters just feels spread too thin, especially near the end. There are some arcade sections and puzzles thrown in to add variety, like an absolutely fantastic 2D platformer stage in a stunning representation of paper-made mountains of China which is so good it would deserve its own separate game. Some of the others include a shoot'em up-like section with a galleon, a Marble Madness-inspired level with a doll head, a minigame with chess pieces and a sliding blocks puzzle which is unfortunately repeated way too many times. You won't be able to shake the feeling of deja-vu, but the game manages to never be boring nonetheless thanks to these clever additions.
This is is a solid, charming game which will certainly appeal to fans of the original but is also a good action platformer in its own right, it also comes with a code to download the original American McGee's Alice free of charge, and since Electronic Arts made all activation codes and season passes free, you will be able to access that content even if you buy the game second hand.
Alice: Madness Returns may not be perfect, but it's encouraging evidence that revivals of old series are a good thing and can be done well. Alice's tale may be rooted in insanity, but it would be even more insane not to give this game a chance.
The Good:
Stylish, elegant character and environment design – entertaining combat – Alice is a solid, well written character – great soundtrack and voice acting – lengthy story mode – plenty of secrets to discover – 2D platform section is a lot of fun, could easily be its own game – comes with free downloadable prequel
The Bad:
Combat and exploration get mildly repetitive – uneven texture quality – only a single boss fight in such a long game – occasional bugs and glitches
---
(Note: Review originally written in 2012)
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Back in 2000, Electronic Arts released the critically acclaimed PC and Mac exclusive American McGee's Alice, a gothic, twisted follow-up to the Alice in Wonderland books by Lewis Carroll. Eleven years later, a sequel was finally made available to continue, perhaps conclude, Alice's story. Did it succeed in providing a worthy successor to the original game?
Much has been said and done concerning the interpretation of Carrol's work: ranging from film adaptations starting as early as 1903, moving on to Walt Disney's famous dreamy take on it in 1951, to Tim Burton's darker, but still fairy tale in nature 2010 film. Most if not all of these have favored the playful, mischievous aspect of Wonderland over the underlying theme that quietly runs through the books: that of madness, which some have interpreted as an allegorical commentary on delusion and schizophrenia. Nothing comes close to this aspect like American McGee's reimagining of Alice's journey, in which he not only accentuates what the novels only hinted at, but also goes one step beyond, tackling thematics that few in the gaming industry would dare touch even with oven mitts.
The first game told the tale of the little girl's descent into insanity ensuing the tragic death of her family in the fire which consumed their house. After drifting back to Wonderland, this time twisted into a dark version of itself, projection of her scarred mind, Alice finally confronted her nemesis the Red Queen, but ultimately concluded she herself was the cause of the fire which ended her family. After spending several of the following years in an insane asylum, Alice is entrusted to the care of Doctor Bundy, a shifty psychiatrist whose practice is to use hypnosis to treat troubled children by erasing negative memories from their minds. Despite making progress in forgetting the traumatic events of her past, Alice once again finds herself back to the ruined Wonderland, where she is warned that instead of forgetting, she needs to recover the memories of what really happened that fateful night of her family's death, so she can forgive herself and restore her sanity, with the help and counsel of her old friend and guide, the Cheshire Cat, a welcome return from the original game.
The story is told through simple but well rendered cutscenes featuring paper-cutout characters, or via quality in-game dialogue.
This interesting premise is the backdrop for a 3D platformer-action hybrid, which is a throwback to the original game, with a familiar sequence of narrow ledges and moving platforms, interspersed with quick and frantic arena battles, but with a few key innovations added to the mix. Alice has a new arsenal of imaginative weapons at her disposal aside from her returning blood-stained knife: a pepper grinder serving as a machine gun to quickly mow down weaker enemies at long range, a hobby horse to deliver slow but devastating melee attacks, a kettle firing explosive tea drops to bring down the stronger foes, and an umbrella which allows her to deflect enemy projectiles. All of her equipment is fun to use and the game balances the infinite ammo of ranged weapons with the need to let them cool down after a few seconds of sustained fire. The player can either click the right stick on the controller to enter aiming mode, which handles very much like your standard third person shooter, or hold down the left trigger to lock onto the enemy on the center of the screen, then tilt the right stick to switch targets. It's a solid mechanic ad it works really well when facing small groups of enemies, but can get clunky when trying to lock on to a particular target among a crowd of hostile creatures.
When she is not shooting her way through the levels, Alice can perform simple melee combos with her knife and hobby horse. The game encourages you to experiment in mixing the two weapons to create longer streaks of attacks, but don't expect anything Kratos-like: this is all pretty simple and immediate. All damage-dealing weapons can also be upgraded by spending then in-game currency represented by eerie floating teeth, which can be found everywhere in the levels and in great quantity in the many hidden areas. It is a good idea to collect as many as possible, as the upgrades will be very much needed later on in the game.
To avoid taking damage, Alice can dodge by turning into a swarm of butterflies, which is a nice variation on the "roll out of the way" mechanic in most action games, resulting both visually stylish and functional from a gameplay standpoint.
The enemies you'll fight are quite varied: aside from gunky monstrosities with doll faces you'll face samurai wasps, robot teapots, ghost sailors, creepy killer dolls and many more, which will definitely keep you interested alive to see what foes the next level might conceal. Something that results more than a little disappointing is the lack of bosses: aside from the mandatory final boss and the occasional bigger enemy, there aren't any to speak of, which feels a little like a missed opportunity in a game with such an imaginative style, which would have surely allowed for some memorable boss encounters. At one point the game even pokes fun at the player by introducing a huge boss-like robot at end of a level, only to have it fall apart on its own a few seconds later. It's a funny moment and a clever meta-wink at consolidated video game tropes, but a boss fight might have admittedly been more interesting at that point.
The level are quite beautifully designed and really show the care that was put into the art direction: lush forests, dark factories, doll graveyards, underwater caves and a stunning card castle building itself in the sky all convey the sense of a once beautiful land fallen into a spiral of madness and decay, but still retaining part of its innocence in many areas, much like our conflicted protagonist. Alice is a strong, well written young woman, drifting back and forth between the action levels of her imaginary Wonderland to more narrative focused sections set in the real world, a bleak and dirty Victorian London full of gritty, grim characters and prostitutes. It is impossible not to grow attached to Alice as she goes from the fiercely beautiful warrior girl she is in her mind to the sickly, almost washed-out real self. These sections are a nice change of pace and often reward the player with significant details of a story which is a pleasure to piece together. This is where the game dares to delve into thematics generally left unexplored in the overwhelming majority of video games: namely the thorny concepts of rape and child abuse. Both of those are only hinted at in this game, and presented in such a way that leaves much to personal interpretation, but still constitute a powerful statement from a game designer who clearly wants the gaming medium to move past the mere basics of narrative and sail maturely into the uncharted, perhaps even controversial waters of uncomfortable subjects.
When you eventually go back inside Alice's mind, your task will be to navigate the insane architecture of her world. The level design is often convoluted, once again reflecting the thematic of madness, with spiraling stairs and twisted geometry, but you'll rarely find yourself stumped or severely hindered, the path to the next area being generally not too difficult to locate. Alice can triple jump and glide for long distances, ascend on steam flows and shrink at any time to fit through narrow passages, usually leading to secrets. Shrinking also activates a "Shrink Sense", which displays hints drawn on walls, along with invisible platforms floating in the air. It's a clever way to hide secrets in plain sight and keep the player snooping around for Alice's missing memories, represented by objects belonging to the people the memories themselves are about, and bottles containing artworks and extras which can be viewed from the main menu. There are even some hilarious flying pig snouts you need to make sneeze with your pepper grinder to reveal hidden goodies.
Technically speaking, the game results fairly inconsistent: on one hand we have beautifully rendered characters models and mostly nice-looking environments, on the other we often see extremely low-res or slow-loading textures in plain sight and occasional pop-up issues. It's an overall pleasant game to look at and Alice has a nice variety of great-looking outfits changing from level to level, but the developers could have done a much better job during the optimization phase. The sound is excellent all the way through the game, both in the musical, effects and acting compartments, the only minor flaw being some caricatural british accents which can sometimes be a little too thick to be properly deciphered by everyone, especially for people unfamiliar with the cockney inflection.
There are a few glitches here and there: an enemy may get stuck in the scenery causing a door to remain closed, forcing a restart from a checkpoint, but while irritating in the short term, these issues are rare enough not to impact the gameplay in any significant manner.
Alice: Madness Returns is a long game too: it will take you somewhere between 15 and 20 hours to beat the story mode on normal, depending on how much exploring you'll be willing to do. The length of the campaign is both a good and bad aspect, however: it sometimes feels as though we are playing a 10 hours game stretched out to be twice as long. Combat gets repetitive relatively quickly and the alternance of jumping areas, levers and enemy encounters just feels spread too thin, especially near the end. There are some arcade sections and puzzles thrown in to add variety, like an absolutely fantastic 2D platformer stage in a stunning representation of paper-made mountains of China which is so good it would deserve its own separate game. Some of the others include a shoot'em up-like section with a galleon, a Marble Madness-inspired level with a doll head, a minigame with chess pieces and a sliding blocks puzzle which is unfortunately repeated way too many times. You won't be able to shake the feeling of deja-vu, but the game manages to never be boring nonetheless thanks to these clever additions.
This is is a solid, charming game which will certainly appeal to fans of the original but is also a good action platformer in its own right, it also comes with a code to download the original American McGee's Alice free of charge, and since Electronic Arts made all activation codes and season passes free, you will be able to access that content even if you buy the game second hand.
Alice: Madness Returns may not be perfect, but it's encouraging evidence that revivals of old series are a good thing and can be done well. Alice's tale may be rooted in insanity, but it would be even more insane not to give this game a chance.