Alice carries on a year after the events of the first game. Our hero is now living the Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth under the care of Dr Angus Bumby, a man who attempts to treat his wards by hypnotising them into forgetting their past. This doesn’t work for Alice, so she falls into another psychotic episode, and goes back to Wonderland to discover what really happened the night of the fire that killed her family.
First things first: this game is SO. PRETTY. You explore larger than life dollhouses, steampunk factories, and a miniature oriental grove, complete with floating mah jong tiles acting as platforms. The whole time I was playing it I was gawping at the screen in wonder. Maybe it’s just being exposed to so many brown and grey games that are out there right now, playing in the Technicolor Wonderland is like feasting on a full roast dinner after living on bread and water. Awesome.
The gameplay itself is pretty much your basic 3D platformer. You jump to places, you collect things, you bounce off trampolines (mushrooms, of course, in this case). The jumping has improved from the last game, with the inclusion of the ‘twirl’ and ‘float’ manoeuvres (essentially a triple jump and a glide). However, Alice suffers for sticking so close to convention. After a while you’re wondering just how many more floating platforms can possibly be out there, and the inclusion of 2D levels set in Japanese scrolls or a game of hide and seek with a drunken octopus do break the tedium, but only barely.
The weaponry has much improved from the original game too. Wisely, the developers have scaled back the arsenal to six different items, including such items as a club like hobby horse, a teapot cannons that shoot boiling tea, and an umbrella that can be used to deflect attacks. This time around, it really does seem that your weaponry is actually causing your foes some damage, and the fights are frenetic and demented. However, whether you’re fighting homicidal dolls or playing card guards, the attacks always boil down to ‘keep shooting till the armour falls off, then shoot some more’. Shame really, as there was the potential there for some amazing combat. As it is, it’s just good.
And speaking of combat, where are the boss fights? There’s only one right at the end, and to be honest it’s kind of disappointing. Ok, this is kind of hypocritical when I was complaining about the game being too by the numbers a couple of paragraphs ago, but I can think of at least two that were very clearly set up and then abandoned at the last minute in cutscenes. You get the feeling they were chopped out at the last minute, and it’s a crying shame because they could have been amazing.
In the end, what kept me playing was the excellent storyline. Following Alice through Victorian London and contrasting her meagre existence to the beauty of Wonderland affected me more than I thought it would. Towards the end, the tale becomes incredibly grim and foreboding, and the ending, refreshingly, neither leaves the game blatantly open for a sequel, nor gives a straightforward answer to Alice’s fate. I think it might just be personal preference, but if I’m left wondering what has become of the characters after I’ve finished the game, I call that a success.
All in all, I really, really enjoyed Alice: Madness Returns. For all its samey gameplay there’s still tons of enjoyment to be had, and the storytelling is fantastic. It’s probably going cheap now as well, so you’ve got no excuse. Happy Friday!
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