Day Late and a Dollar Short Game Review - Alice: Madness Returns

A sequel to the 2000 game “America McGee's Alice,” Alice: Madness Returns is a hack and slash platformer that continues the story one year from the original game. The game starts as you've been released from the sanitarium and have taken up residence in an orphanage run by a dentist/psychologist - mostly 19th century quackery.

While about town, Alice gets assaulted, knocked in the head, and transported back to Wonderland. While in Wonderland you must work through the trauma of losing your family to a fire years earlier. Pretty straight forward stuff, right? Not exactly. This is Wonderland after all.

As you progress through the story, more and more memories are unlocked. While the cut scenes cover the bare necessities of the story, the rest of the story is scattered throughout the game. Picking up one of the six different memory icons unlocks another memory. As you collect more icons, more of the past is unveiled to the player. Buried in those memories are the motivations of the secondary characters around you. The more you unlock, the more you know, and the more you want to know.

And that's the problem with this game. For all its awful mechanics, the game's story hooks you. I now have a voyeuristic need to unlock more memories and progress further down the rabbit hole. It's not enough to just play through the main story. I needed to experience all of the memories.

The button mashing back and slash is … ok. While using your knife is good, manually shooting your pepper mill can be a chore. Luckily the game has “lock on” targeting and it's essential for the use of any range weapons. The dodging is a treat - instead of rolling around on the ground, you're treated to an explosion of blue butterflies followed by the quick reassemble of yourself a few feet away. It's not a perfect system, but it's passable and can lead to some exciting fights.

Enemy AI is fairly generic, but there is just enough variation per level that it doesn't seem too

repetitive. Fighting is easy and doesn't require more than a few dodges and button mashing. As the game goes on they get progressively harder... Until they don't. Beware the 12-headed blob monster. It's a pain, and luck plays a large roll in defeating that baddie.

The platforming is standard but lacking many features you would find in games from the early 2000s. Why did they get rid of grasping ledges? Instead they implement a horrible double jump that sometimes lets you triple and quadruple jump as the game sees fit. Plenty of games have implemented climbing. Climbing mechanics were a staple way before 2011. The best example is the hit game of 1996 Tomb Raider. Why skip on something so simple?

Climbing isn't the only problem. Walking into walls is also a problem. Movement is so limited you're constantly running into invisible walls. Thinking there might be a hidden room around the corner? Nope. There is only an invisible wall. Think you can jump on that ledge? Nope, you're blocked. The worst ledge was in chapter 2 that you would just fall through without even a wall to stop you.

Now, the best mechanic about the game is the “shrink”. Intertwined throughout the game are small holes you need to shrink to enter. While this is a cool feature by itself, shrinking also allows you to see normally invisible pathways. If you've reached an area that seems to have no escape, shrink down and you'll see one. This is also helpful if you get lost as the drawings will appear along your path. I find myself constantly hitting the shrink button looking for hidden paths.

With all the problems, all the hair pulling, and frustration this game inflicts, it's amazing. I'm having such a great time with this game.

The visual design is wonderful. Each level is its own. The level design and the puzzles all come

together in a way that compliments your journey. From a broken workshop with the mad hatter, to Feudal Japan in search of the Caterpillar, to the Queen's gardens... Each is a visual delight. I might add that while they serve their visual purpose, the texture quality isn't good.

Did you know there is a level where you play as a doll head? Yeah, that section is really messed up.

Overall the game has it's moments. I don't think I've jumped, bounced, and glided this much in a long time. Chapter 5 has left me wiping the sweat off my brow more than a few times, including a rare case of trying to find a solution to one puzzle online (I had it half right at least). The design of the platforms are intuitive and well spaced. Only a few times did I think, “I'm not going to make that jump”. At least they got that part right.

Alice: Madness Returns is a game that's right up my alley. It's imaginative, crazy, and at times

emotionally involved. If some of the technical issues were addressed, I would return time and time again. I'll be happy to recommend this to anyone as long as they go in knowing some of the problems.

Recommend: Buy it. 10 bucks is a little high. Anything under that is gold.

Did you know I stream games on Twitch? Head on over Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 8pm

Arizona time. http://www.twitch.tv/brandocalrizia

I've been on a horror kick since loading up Dead Space.