Alice in 3 Parts: Part 2

II. Alice: Madness Returns

I may not dress like a goth girl, wear dark makeup like a goth girl, or write depressing poetry like a goth girl, but I've always been more into the darker side of things, which is why a dark, grown-up version of Alice in Wonderland appeals to me.

When this game was first released, we weren't sure whether we wanted to get it. D. probably wanted it more than I did, because I had originally attempted to play the first game on the good ol' PC and was less than impressed by it (see previous post). There would have to be a mountainload of changes for me to think highly of Madness. The review I read in Game Informer didn't help. They gave it a 6.75 out of 10, and claimed that the original Alice game was far better, but I just don't get it. They, along with other reviewers, had a lot of nasty comments to say about Madness Returns, but I absolutely loved the game. I didn't run into any level glitches, and I guess I was so busy enjoying Wonderland to notice grainy textures. True, I don't play games just to review them, so maybe I'm not so jaded. When I pick up a game I'm looking to enjoy myself, not pick it apart piece by piece. So the frustrations reviewers experience, I simply didn't notice.

Alice herself is well-designed, a truly beautiful character. Each level in Wonderland has Alice in a matching dress. The art style is just wonderful. In a nod to its predecessor, there are familiarities in this game that people who played the original might recognize and enjoy, but there is enough new ground here that it doesn't feel stale or overused. My favorite part of the game was the level design. Alice can shrink at will, locating hidden pathways and traversing keyholes to obtain collectibles. She also has a triple jump ability, letting her glide through the air. This doesn't make the game overly easy by any means, but it helps ease frustration, especially if you die--usually you'll respawn right on the ledge you jumped off of.

The game makes use of minigames, breaks in the regular routine of things that annoyed some people. I honestly didn't mind them, and they aren't so overwhelming that they take precedence. I think too many people expect too much out of games these days. Alice: Madness Returns is simply a fun experience, and a breath of fresh air after attempting the original game. If I had to give it a score: 8.5 out of 10.

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Alice in 3 Parts: Part I

I. American McGee's Alice

This game was originally released for the PC in 2000, and features a darker take on Alice in Wonderland. Set sometime after the events of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the game takes place after a horrible fire killed Alice's family. Alice begins to lose touch with reality, and is institutionalized in Rutledge Asylum. Ten years later, Wonderland draws her back in, to a place that's been damaged by her own twisted mind. This is a far cry from Disney's Wonderland creations. This place is dark, oftentimes reflecting Alice's own insanity.

At one point I owned an original copy of the game for the PC, but I'll admit I installed it, tried playing a few minutes of it, and gave up in frustration over the horrible control scheme. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of a PC gamer, so if the controls are too hard to use, forget it. Cheap deaths do not make a game more challenging. At the time, I couldn't understand how anyone could expect a person to play a platforming game on the PC. I'm a casual PC gamer...I didn't even own a PC compatible controller at the time, and playing with a keyboard and mouse is generally not my idea of fun. So my earliest exploits into American McGee's Wonderland were unsuccessful.

Fast forward, eleven years later. A sequel (Alice: Madness Returns) is released. As an added bonus, EA offered a code to download the original game for free. Pretty sweet deal, right? Well, you'd think so. It took me about three hours to download Alice, and probably another half an hour to install it, plus the files for Alice: Madness Returns. So sitting down to give Alice another quick go was another exercise in frustration, but since it was released for my favorite system, and I got it for free I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe using a controller I was comfortable with would help me get over my previous dislike of the game.

I was wrong.

This game is terrible. Sure I like the character designs, but using a controller doesn't improve the control scheme at all. Jumping is difficult at best, and cheap deaths still abounded. To add to my mounting frustrations, I found myself having to save after every single jump since there isn't an autosave feature. I guess I'd expected the game to be updated a little, but it was a straight port of the old PC game, clunky features and all. The later levels were difficult to navigate, especially the mazes in Queensland, but the kicker is that I finally gave up at the Jabberwocky boss battle: Part 2. No matter what I tried, I died in one hit. I couldn't get any momentum going against this guy, and I must have died and reloaded at least fifty times. Talk about frustrating. Especially once I discovered that I was really close to the end of the game.

The battle system is completely terrible, as is the camera and the jumping. I liked the crazy weapons Alice collected, but after acquiring quite a few, I became overwhelmed. Why are there so many? And since there aren't any number keys on a PS3 controller, I had to scroll through the list with the D-pad.

The only reason I really sat down to play this game is because I thought Madness Returns might not make much sense without playing through the game the first time. However, that's not the case. I didn't really see much of a story in the original Alice game--Madness does a much better job at weaving a story into the gameplay.

My suggestion? Skip American McGee's Alice altogether. You're not missing much.

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