Alice: Madness Returns Review

A Nightmare in Vegas

Throughout the game, Alice can shrink down to a size of a bird dropping and go through keyholes that lead to a “treasure room” or other side task. In order to see the keyhole, she has to use this alternate vision that changes things to a neon blue, and that’s where invisible platforms show themselves, as crudely drawn outlines that Alice can only see when she’s in this mode. Traversing these platforms requires Alice to go back to her original view mode, which allows her to jump onto said platforms (she cannot jump in the alternate vision). That makes things challenging and quite fun. Floating Pig Snouts can be seen in the alternate vision while stationary snouts are seen in normal vision. Alice knows when a snout is nearby when she hears the “oink”.  Shoot the snouts full of pepper and they usually disclose a new hidden set of platforms for Alice to follow and eventually find a similar treasure room or “memory shard”.

Memory shards are the voice snippets that play back audio recordings from Alice’s mother and father, as well as psychiatrist, talking to her and telling her stories of when she was young. The psychiatrist pushes in his recordings for her to forget the accident, and how doing so will help her current situation.

It’s a cool way of providing a history of Alice, and the relationships she’s developed between each individual. I wish though that what was said was actually unique, or interesting. I wish the psychiatrist spoke differently as the game progressed, and not in the same level headed, dead pan sort of way, that in certain memories he would sound not just urgent, but desperate for Alice to listen to him, possibly annoyed or angry at her, and have revelations in his own thinking while talking. Yet again, this is where Madness Returns fails to capitalize on it’s own inventiveness, it’s own creative spirit that can be cast on everything it introduces. I would like to hear people say things inane and bothersome that Alice is forced to understand the banter of the speaker through fear. Maybe she was wrong to ignore him, or that by listening she could better understand her current situation in a more meaningful way.

she's not in a "talking mood".

None of that was in the game.

Beyond world and enemy design, the game uses two different kinds of cut scenes. One is a real time rendering of a scene, using stiff animations and mouths that move very little or not at all. This form of a cut scene is executed rather poorly, and is used as a bridge between the first kind of cut scene and actual in game design. When you start Madness Returns, you are greeted with a cutout type of animation that uses quick cuts, motion blur and some bad ass depth of field effects to great use. This is the preferred presentation of the game, as the quirky changes in animation are done with a shake of the character image, making the experience quite unnerving, and beautiful to watch. The images themselves are scratchy pen and ink depictions of the characters, and the direction of each cut scene is quite impeccable. Lights flicker and cast shadows off the paper thin shapes that move about in a frenzy. Alice sinking in layered water that bobs up and down in a comical fashion. It gives everything personality and it works with the game’s dark and gritty art style. Its unfortunate that the unique method of storytelling transitions into lifeless rendered character “conversation movements” that ruin the sense of awe that precedes it.

Though the art direction is deftly original, the actual graphics in the game can range between good and awful. Alice’s 3d model looks fine enough, the Hatter also exists a high polish and is well animated. The environments are quite shocking, however. In open spaces, certain platforms have textures stretched over them like taught animal skin over a bongo. It got so bad in certain areas that I could count the pixels in each poorly repeated texture. The “bricks” texture on the buildings in London are so low quality they look almost like one solid color.

Of course, that’s normal for games trying to use less resources on less important areas of interest. In Crysis 2, buildings two miles away look quite pitiful, which is perfectly fine because they are two miles away. But if I am walking past a building, if my eyes are going to fall directly on the face or the sides of the building, I expect something a bit better looking.

While the soundtrack to the game is nothing extraordinary, it fits it well. The music that plays during battles uses a marching band sort of cadence and a tinkering toy bell that marks the down beat makes the whole experience much more interesting, and exhibits the same creative flair shown through the visuals. The Pepper Grinder sounds like a muffled AK-47, the Teapot Cannon gives off an expected loud pop followed by the spilling of hot tea on the enemy. The swipe of the Vorpal Blade has the typical “swish” and “slash” sound effects of a blade cutting through air. The Hobby Horse exerts a nice meaty blow, with a nice bass effect to give the weapon more weight. All the subtle effects aid in the way combat is presented and makes the weapons feel that much more different from each other.

That is such a Guitar Hero pose.

In summary, Alice: Madness Returns is an odd game. It’s premise is interesting, and the traditional platform conventions that come with the game are to be expected. It’s old school in it’s approach to the 3^rd person action platformer, with switches, blocks, moving platforms. I was in the mood for a game that was different. A single player story driven platformer that is simple in premise with eye catching art direction, fitting musical score, and fluid combat. Things get repetitive early on in the 10 to 12 hour play time. The story falls flat near the ending, which is unusual due to how interesting it became over the course of the game. If you ignore some of Alice’s technical shortcomings of the game, you’ll find a lot to like in the title. American McGee is a designer who is ambitious in his designs and ideas, and I am happy he is around in the game industry, because a game like this needs to exist for those of us who are sick of First Person Shooters.

7.5/10

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