Hand me that teapot cannon

Hey kids, it’s time for another edition of Voni Reviews Games You’ve All Already Played! This week, carrying on from my take on American McGee’s Alice, I will tell you all about Alice: Madness Returns.

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!

If Tim Burton made video games...

For my first post of 2012, I thought I would introduce a new section to my usually unorganised ramblings. I call this section ‘Voni Reviews Games You’ve All Already Played’, and today I’m kicking it off with American McGee’s Alice, a game so old that in gaming terms this review will be more of an archaeological dig.

Having never been a PC gamer, the original release of Alice passed me by. The concept of the game interested me, but only now having received a copy of Alice: Madness Returns for Christmas, and its bundled downloadable copy of the original, have I been able to sink my teeth into it.

McGee’s version of Alice (yes, he is a real person, he’s on Wikipedia and everything) finds her locked up in an asylum after losing her entire family in a tragic house fire. In her delirium she finds herself back in a twisted version of Wonderland that’s under the control of the Queen of Hearts. Alice must find and destroy her to save Wonderland and her own sanity.

The presentation is fantastic; especially considering it’s an 11 year old game at this point. The visuals are eerie and the music is menacing. I’ve read that samples of women’s choirs and children’s musical boxes were used in creating the soundtrack, which lends it that suitably creepy air. All the main characters from the Alice universe are represented as warped versions of their former selves, for example the Mad Hatter is a crazed scientist, attempting to create automatons of his former friends, and the Jabberwock is a semi mechanized incarnation of Alice’s guilt over the loss of her family.

Alice herself is pretty well presented too, as an initially rather hard on her former friends (She asks the crying Mock Turtle ‘What’s all this then? Has someone died? Have you lost your family?’ and when finding out he has lost his shell, snaps, ‘Oh, stop that wailing’). Further into the story, her defences lower as she is attacked by the forces of the Queen of Hearts. Shame the graphic limitations make her look like a robot attempting to cry, though. It was a good attempt.

But what of the gameplay? Disappointingly, it’s really just a basic 3D platformer with some lacklustre combat added in. It’s a shame really, because there is the potential in there to be great.

The weaponry itself is very imaginative. In Wonderland, toys have become deadly weapons, so throwing jacks will cut your enemies, and you can fire electrified croquet balls with a croquet mallet. The problem is out of a selection of ten different weapons, only four are actually any good. When you use them, you can’t see the effect they’re having until your target keels over. It feels a bit like firing foam pellets at them, and it’s not at all satisfying.

The platforming is ok but not great. I’ve seen it described elsewhere on the web as a severely cut down Tomb Raider, and it’s hard to disagree. There are some good sections, such as the Machinations level, but otherwise it just feels a bit... meh. Plus, Alice can jump like an electrified rabbit, making gauging distances a bloody nightmare.

Having said all this, I still really enjoyed Alice (apart from the fight with the Jabberwock that saw me hurl my PS3 controller for the first time ever. So, you can never outrun its fire breath, which knocks half your health out in one go? Yup, sounds fair). What it got wrong in gameplay it more than made up for in atmosphere, so I’m hoping Madness Returns will make up for the imbalance.

So, it’s a thumbs up over here! Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got a ridiculous amount of games to play through...