EU release played on a PlayStation 3 Super Slim.
This is a 90s PC game through and through, so far that it was built on the Quake III Arena engine and it really shows in a lot of places. I can forgive the aging of visuals and game design for the most part but you can tell this game was made before the age of PC-compatible gamepads. Aiming the camera, while useful in it's precision for dispatching enemies, can be clunky at times, and the fact that 90s PC games thought they could do platforming even remotely well is beyond me now. Enemies range from shockingly easy to "you died in seconds" in a heartbeat and level design can be infuriatingly back-tracky and complex at times, often forcing you adopt a method of defeating some enemies, saving, and moving onto the next lot before saving again just to make sure you don't waste a whole load of time repeating yourself.
But this game has a really solid art direction, and as much as I'm tired of the "subvert the Wonderland theme in media to make stuff creepy" shtick, this and it's sequel Madness Returns does a wonderful job of capturing an unpleasantness of certain characters if you're familiar with the source material. The music is great too - while a lot of the tracks are recycled throughout some levels, Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails fame composes a really competent sound track with a wide variety of emotion and energy to the scores.
Overall this a beautifully frustrating game which I would probably prefer to play on PC and one that while still payable today, is clearly of the time before a lot of modern gaming conventions. I'd easily recommend it to anyone interested the concept but it's sequel can be played on its own if you're not for wrestling with older and stiffer gameplay.
This is a 90s PC game through and through, so far that it was built on the Quake III Arena engine and it really shows in a lot of places. I can forgive the aging of visuals and game design for the most part but you can tell this game was made before the age of PC-compatible gamepads. Aiming the camera, while useful in it's precision for dispatching enemies, can be clunky at times, and the fact that 90s PC games thought they could do platforming even remotely well is beyond me now. Enemies range from shockingly easy to "you died in seconds" in a heartbeat and level design can be infuriatingly back-tracky and complex at times, often forcing you adopt a method of defeating some enemies, saving, and moving onto the next lot before saving again just to make sure you don't waste a whole load of time repeating yourself.
But this game has a really solid art direction, and as much as I'm tired of the "subvert the Wonderland theme in media to make stuff creepy" shtick, this and it's sequel Madness Returns does a wonderful job of capturing an unpleasantness of certain characters if you're familiar with the source material. The music is great too - while a lot of the tracks are recycled throughout some levels, Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails fame composes a really competent sound track with a wide variety of emotion and energy to the scores.
Overall this a beautifully frustrating game which I would probably prefer to play on PC and one that while still payable today, is clearly of the time before a lot of modern gaming conventions. I'd easily recommend it to anyone interested the concept but it's sequel can be played on its own if you're not for wrestling with older and stiffer gameplay.