Okay Geek Farm
Xbox 360 - Alice: Madness Returns review
Alex Tretrop
Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to the eleven year old game by American McGee and his company Spicy Horse. With its darker take on Lewis Caroll’s famous book, we’re finally seeing a sequel to game that stuck out in gamer’s minds for its wonderfully fantastical and bleak outlook on a fractured Wonderland. Madness Returns takes the visuals up a notch, while providing an entertaining, if repetitive combat system and a story that never quite reaches its potential.
Story
Returning to London after the events of the first game, Madness Returns follows Alice Liddel, who is now a teenager and in the care of a shrink, who seems just as crazy as the asylum she was in during the first game. Much of the game, however, takes place in the warped and mystical wonderland from the famous story.
Throughout your adventure, you’ll encounter many of the characters and strange creatures that inhabit Wonderland, generally with a much darker and moodier twist on their character designs and dialogue from the novel. What the game does extremely well is being stylistic in almost everything it does and it’s complimented by suitably wierd dialogue and a much more sureal story.
The problem, when you get down to it, is that the story lacks any type of real drive. There isn’t really an overall goal and some of the larger story beats feel a little underdeveloped, making your primary interest exploring this warped Wonderland. It doesn’t help that the game tries to artificially lengthen it’s playtime and your uninterested when the meat of the story comes along to try and get your interest.
Gameplay
Alice: Madness Returnsis a mix of two key things: platforming and combat. Throughout your long adventure, the combat feels really fun at first, with a small handfull of weapons and strange gadgetry introduced to you over the course of the game. But, of all of them, you’ll be using your Vorpal Knife and the Pepper Grinder the most, allowing you to hit enemies near and far with ease. Each of them feel satisfying to use, although even more variety wouldn’t have hurt the game at all. However, what absolutely could have been improved was some of the lock on targeting, which feels hard to use when there is a large clump of enemies and you want to hit a specific one. This game isn’t always a walk in the park, which is fine, but when it feels like it’s is cheating you out of your health, it can be a little more than just discouraging.
The platforming on the other hand feels a little bit too simple for my tastes. It presesnts some excellent puzzles up front and some fun platform jumping but begins to repeat itself much too often. The quality almost seems to degrade overtime and the puzzles become less and less creative, which feels like a huge letdown after some of the game’s earlier ideas. Couple this with a camera that occasionally makes some terrible angles for platforms and you’ll die a few more frustrating deaths then you would probably like.
This is all brought together by the fact that the game lingers too long in all of the areas in each level. As I said before, you get to the point where the puzzles and combat repeat all too often and just get downright boring, discouraging you to see the new weapons or puzzles the game likes to show you at the begininning of a new area.
Visuals/Audio
It goes without saying that, aesthetically, Madness Returns looks phenominal. The warped design of Wonderland always looks bright and colourful yet always succeeds in bringing a sense of wierdness or forbodding from the excellent style that American McGee’s team is known for. The environments in this crazy world are extremely varied and stylised with excellent character design and interesting visual setpieces. What’s perhaps even more intersting is the design of the characters in the real world of London, with the inhabitants looking even more sinister and evil then some of the design in Alice’s Wonderland, providing your eyes with plenty to look at, throughout the entire experience.
Where it does become a problem however, is the graphics themselves. The Unreal Engine is in full effect here and with it comes all of the usual problems on consoles: a frame rate that tends to jump around a lot and horrible texture pop in. It’s especially noticeable in Madness Returns, with such a rich design ruined by large technical flaws. Luckily, none of these are real game breaker but if your a graphics stickler, you may want to pick it up on the PC instead.
Audio is also top notch, with a ton of things going on thoughout the game. Characters like the Mad Hatter sound just as crazy as they were in the books and Alice’s voice actress does a great job in conveying her creepy attitude. As for the weapons, they all sound great, from the swing of your knife to the boom of your rabbit bombs. The soundtrack does a good job at setting the mood when you hear it, even if it’s frequently quiet and more atmospheric in nature.
Final Thoughts
The first thing you’ll notice about Madness Returns is the sense of atmosphere and visual design it brings to the table. And for some people, this, along with fun, if repetitive, gameplay systems will be enough to justify their purchase. But, the game never really hits its stide: it always presents you with new, creative ideas for the combat, puzzles or visuals and repeats them too many times, resulting in boredom before you can see the next interesting thing the game wants to show you. Couple that with some annoying graphical issues, an occasionally frustrating camera and a story that never really becomes interesting and many other players will lose interest much earlier then they intend to.
Pro’s
- Fantastic Aesthetic and Artistic Vision
- Competent Combat and Platforming
- Interesting Take on a darker Wonderland
Con’s
- Irritating Graphical Issues
- Story never really develops into something interesting
- Gameplay becomes extremely repetitive
Madness Returns seems like something for a very specific audience. Fans of stranger concepts similar to the likes of Tim Burton can absolutely look past Alice’s flaws and have an enjoyable few hours. But whereas the game has a great opening, I can’t forsee many people finishing this title, as the repetitiveness begins to become a little too jarring after the opening hours. If Spicy Horse had cut out a few of the longer winded sections, we probably would have had something special on our hands!
