Awesome Games in the 21st Century: Alice Madness Returns

New screenshots, a new trailer, and some footage on some gameplay courtesy of IGN have been recently released for one of the most anticipated games Alice Madness Returns, available this summer.  Reservations have been available for a while, and fans are replaying the original American McGee's Alice while praying for the long awaited sequel will be just as good or even better.

If you read this blog regularly, then you'll for sure notice that I already covered how much I knew about the game.  But that was a while ago.  What I can talk about is what I have seen in the gameplay that was released.

So the toy weapons will be coming back, and they look like they have a better variety than they did in the original game.  But keeping in mind that this game was made so long ago, a lot of the themes probably won't be recycled.  Alice also has different costumes... apparently.  I'm not exactly sure if it is due to what weapon she uses or if she just changes into different outfits according to story, but in the gameplay she is wearing something red and black opposed to her original blue maidish outfit.

The Cheshire Cat comes back, and from what I believe also has the same voice actor.  In the original game, as well as this one, Cheshire Cat really just shows up to give advise whenever it's not a cutscene.  You can let him appear whenever you want to in the game to hear him talk, and actually I did that about a million times because I thought his voice actor was so smooth and worth the time to listen to.  This time he appears when you need a hint, and it seems that you have to wait a certain amount of time to summon him again.

Going back to the weapons just quickly, the only weapon that was seen in the original game that came back is her trademark knife.  All the other weapons seem to take forms of chess pieces like the knight in this picture and other toys.  A few of them are melee and a few are projectiles, they seem to be selected via menu or by D-pad.  Now if you have played the previous game, you will remember a few toys such as the Demonic Dice or the Ice Wand (that's probably not what it's called) used like a third person shooter.  A lot of the weapons in that game, too, were based on the 3rd person, but now there is a wider range of melee weapons, which I feel is more appropriate for today's platformer.

 I'm going to be expecting a lot of puzzles and more platforming versus the other game.  I have a feeling that this game might be short because it might have to do with how long it has been since the previous game was released.  I have been seeing that theme with a lot of games such as Spyro or Prince of Persia.  So far it doesn't look too hard from the known gameplay, but there could also be different levels of difficulty to select. 

I'm really looking forward to getting this and will hopefully do a more in depth review, but again, we have to wait until the summer to see.  I'm hardcopy, and I will see you May 22.