Awesome Games in the 21st Century: Alice Madness Returns

After all these posts I have been making about one of my most awaited games, I have to say that is satisfies everything I dreamed it would be.

While other game reviewers gave this about a 70% rating, not too bad but not so great, a lot of fans were disappointed because of how much success the original American McGee's Alice was.  Since it's been around a 10 year gap between these two games, many of the fans also suspected them to be completely differently.  Way too much has gone on in programming between now and then so personally I think it's unfair to compare two completely different games.

So I'm just going to cut the bullshit about the negativity hype with Alice Madness Returns and hop right into it.  But because I haven't finished the game yet, it's going to be limited to what I have seen up to the 3rd chapter.

You play in chapters, and one of the oddest things that I haven't experienced in a game yet is that you can restart the chapter any time you want through the pause menu.  That's something that I have never seen before.  You'd think they would have a replay chapters mode, which I'm certain they will once you finish, but again referring to Tomb Raider Anniversary you can replay any level at any time as long as you beat it in a new game save.

As for the story Alice is at a mental hospital for young children and offers to help out around for her sessions with another doctor (another doctor meaning not the first one she's been to).  Because the game starts so abruptly in the story, you have to go through fragments of memories in order to understand how Alice got from the end of the last game to this.

It first starts out with an interesting cardboard cut out artsy cutscene (try saying that fast) of Alice in wonderland and what seems to be a doctor telling her to forget useless memories.  The character design of Alice when you see her at the hospital is not what she looks like in the cover of the game nor the trailers.  She looks sickly, pale, and has raggy unkept hair-what a person who is stuck in a crappy mental house in that time frame is supposed to look like.  The rest of the characters also look  pretty morbid.  You are then able to walk around the housing building and out into the streets for your first game play.  Nothing interesting except for hearing stupid children call Alice out and looking at objects happens.  When you chase around a white cat when you get out of the building, Alice is triggered into cutscenes with different characters, who you are not so familiar with, until she eventually goes into Wonderland. 

You immediately either notice how random the shift was from Alice's real world into Wonderland, but get used to it because it happens a lot this way.  The shifting between the two worlds also indicates when a new chapter starts, and thus you meet new characters.  Madness is a platforming and hack and slash game.  There are plenty of extra content to find and story to go through.  Most of the time you will platforming instead of using the battle system, which is a free form hack and slash with different weapons that can also help you look for other items.  The currency here is teeth, which upgrades your weapons.  Instead of having to manually equip weapons, you are able to use different commands that summons them during battle or just roaming around which comes in handy because you are forced to switch between weapons quite often.  I find this MUCH easier than having to deal with equipping weapons in the first game, which was in game play and using the function keys for PC.

While in the previous game you can summon the Chesire Cat whenever you want, here he comes up during selected times.  When you are prompted to let him show up, it flashes on top of the screen.  He also doesn't appear as much as he did in the original, too, but his advice are as confusing and useless as always.  Still his voice actor is pretty awesome so it's not a complete waste of time.

There is no "Sanity Meter" like there was in the original.  You do have a health meter; a vine of roses.  They are also cut into quarters so each rose is not a full hit point but you get different damage depending on what attack the enemy uses.  There are small roses or big roses laying around in objects that you can break with any of your weapons; same goes for teeth.  They replenish, but the only way to upgrade health is to Paint the Rose Red.  When you enter specific rooms, you are allowed to do some sort of mini game and if you get through it, you paint the rose red.  Once you have done so four times, you have another rose for your health upgrade.

Once you are low on health, you can go into Hysteria, which lets you pretty much be invincible until the timer runs out.  It is necessary to collect roses to replenish health during the time because it only is allowed to happen once you're on your last few hit points. 

As far as platforming, Alice can jump, double jump, and float.  It's a lot like Spyro's

You meet reoccurring characters, some more disturbing than when you met them in the previous game, all so enormously bigger than Alice is.  There is no particular order of meeting them that matches to when you do in the first game. 

One thing that is somewhat puzzling is why Alice looks so different in Wonderland than when she is in the real world.  She also has different outfits during each chapter, which when you finish that chapter you can equip on her any time throughout the game.  It's a lot like just dressing her up than these outfits having any purpose.  They're more like unlockable costumes.

The secrets aren't exactly hard to find in this game.  Shrinking does become very commonly used if you are obsessed with getting every item like I am.  Battling isn't exactly hard either once you have a particular pattern down for each enemy you see.  You have to get very familiar with using all of your weapons quickly, but there are also many ways to take down an enemy the more weapons you get. 

The game offers four difficulty levels, and if you are very good at hack and slash, like God of War 3 God Mode good, then this game won't be a big issue.  Although there are some tricky rooms, the patterns for these enemies are extremely predictable, plus the loading screens tell you what to do.  It's just like Bioshock 2.  So getting stuck is not an option.

Now we'll go into the bigger flaws of this game.  The auto saving is definitely the worst.  Yeah it's one of those games that don't let you manually save at all even when you exit to main screen.  You have to wait until a little icon of a pocket watch is set in the corner, and it sometimes causes the in game to glitch.  I do enjoy auto saving, but if it's a game where it does that not often with too far of checkpoints in between and doesn't let you save regardless, then you better not quit the game before you get to a checkpoints because you'll go back.  Far.  I absolutely hate it when this type of auto saving exists.  And it's also one of those games with only ONE file.  That's right.  You auto save over just one file.  You start a new game, you can't go back.  Unless there is a way to select that through just your saved files under the dashboard or PS main screen, then you're basically screwed.

The voice acting is not the best you'll hear in a game.  For one they are so quiet during the cutscenes compared to the music.  Most of time I have to read the subtitles to even get what they are saying; sometimes they just speak too fast.  As far as the aspect of the acting during the cutscenes, they are pretty rushed and deserve to be slowed down.  You can access the cutscenes in the main screen, which is a God send since I had to look through them a couple of times to "get it".

The game is actually pretty fun despite the mediocre scores it has received.  It's a good length so far, the levels aren't too short or too long, and there is a wide variety of things to do.  I do have to give props for some of the mini games and puzzles except those sliders, I fucking hate those things even when I was a kid.  It is somewhat challenging and the story does compel me to keep going.  One of the main things I was concerned about when this game was announced was how the story was going to resolve if it already did in the first game, but obviously, there is more to Alice than what was already revealed in the original.

Speaking of first game, I'm not sure if you only get this through a pre order, but if you did, the code for the original game is up for download, too!  I'm really excited to see how the engine comes out for the PS3 instead of PC.  And there's only one way to find out.