Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
UK Certification 15 | UK RRP £49.99 | Region PAL | Developer Spicy Horse | Publisher Electronic Arts
In the wake of Duke Nukem Forever's release after being stuck within the confines of development hell for over a decade, Alice: Madness Returns finally sees the light of day 10 years after its predecessor, American McGee's Alice, made waves in the world of video games thanks to its quirky art style and nightmarish interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Taking place immediately after the events of the first game, Alice Liddell, still haunted by the mystery of her parents' deaths, finds herself in the care of her psychiatrist at an orphanage after being released from Rutledge Insane Asylum. After chasing a white cat down an alleyway in the dank depths of Victorian London, Alice re-emerges in the macabre Wonderland where her twisted memories of the night when a fire killed her mother and father begin to unravel. But as she ventures deeper into the strange and dangerous world, she happens upon a plot to completely destroy Wonderland.
With an assortment of creepy and inspired enemies standing – and flying – in Alice's way, players must take control of the troubled young woman as she slices, dices and blows the bizarre hostiles apart with a variety of weapons, from her trusty vorpal blade to a pepper grinder machine gun and a teapot that doubles as a kind of grenade launcher. As you can see, Wonderland's latest inhabitants – the ruin – are far from the friendliest folks around and they need to be destroyed.
Combat isn't the main focus of the game, however, as it's much more centred around leaping from platform to platform, pulling a couple of levers, and jumping across to yet more platforms. This is where Alice: Madness Returns becomes repetitive. Thankfully the process of jumping, which includes double-jumps and floating for safe landings, is fluid and has been handled well. What isn't so pleasing, though, is the amount of times over the course of the game that you will have to press the X button to jump. When the platforming aspect of the game is not only overused but also feels so archaic, despite the inclusion of floating blocks that move and others that can only be seen when Alice has been shrunk to just a few inches off the ground, the whole product begins to feel outdated. And that's not the only part of the game that has an aura about it of being stuck in the year 2000.
As imaginative and creative as Wonderland looks, even if the graphics don't quite live up to what you'd expect from such a visually stylish game, the entire world more often than not feels completely the opposite and almost wooden. Take the Uncharted games for example: the vast jungles felt like you were walking through living and breathing locations. The experience conveyed by Wonderland on the other hand is one of inauthenticity. The game is overly linear to the point where it's stagnant. If a huge rock or cliff face is not part of the route you should be going, you can't jump on it, even if it looks like you should you be able to. This dark and zany world is still impressive to look at most of the time, but it does suffer from blandness all the same.
Eviscerating enemies is a fun distraction from all the graceful leaps and spins, especially since doing so usually requires you to strategise and switch up your weapons accordingly. But battling your way through the warped realm isn't quite enough to keep things fresh. And so that's why there are a number of mini-games to keep the game moving along interestingly. These involve 2D side-scrollers, chess matches and picture puzzles, which do a good job of mixing things up.
Ultimately, Alice: Madness Returns is a solid sequel. The environment is oxymoronic, the pop-up book-style cut-scenes look great, and it's of a good length for a modern video game. Not as dazzling as a decade ago, however, the adventure is still a dark, gothic and inspired work of art.