Alice: Madness Returns

At the turn of the millennium, former id Software designer American McGee and Rogue Entertainment released American McGee's Alice, a dark interpretation of the classic tale Alice in Wonderland. Since then, American has moved to Shanghai, started a new company and been completely quiet about Alice. Until now, that is. Eleven years after the original's release, it's time for a sequel.

Bitter voices might claim that the timing has something to do with Tim Burton's Alice-movie that was released last year, but that would be a shame - the game is a lot more interesting than the Burton-movie, and feels a lot more honest as well.

At its core, Alice: Madness Returns is an action platformer that combines fighting with platform jumping. It's a formula that it does pretty well. The mechanics are few, but they work: Alice can double jump, her dress allow her to glide through the air by using it like a parachute and she can use air streams to gain some extra height. She can also shrink to half her size so she can crawl through small holes and she can also see invisible platforms - the latter doesn't make much sense, but it fits with the rest of the universe.

The controls and the camera work well most of the time. There are a few situations where it will suddenly make an odd turn in the middle of a jump and make it hard to see where you will end up and at times it it hard to see how far you'll need to jump to reach the next platform. Luckily the game makes up for it by being quite forgiving when you make a mistake.

If you fall down a chasm, you're instantly teleported to the beginning of the section or the jumping puzzle you were busy solving and you're never sent back very far. It's only when you're killed in combat that Alice: Madness Returns will send you all the way back to the latest checkpoint, but usually you're back into the action before long. When the controls manage to mess up (which happens from time to time) your patience isn't tested too much.

The amount of different enemies you'll encounter grows throughout the game - some of them are based on the current chapter's visual theme, others will stick with you for the duration. Some enemies can be defeated by simple button mashing, while others demand timing and you'll need to dodge their attacks, hit them when they do a certain movement, etc.

Alice has several weapons to choose from - a quick knife, a heavy hobby horse that doubles as a club, a pepper mill that works as a machine gun and a tea pot that acts like a grenade thrower. They can all be upgraded and will all come in handy during the many fights.

If you're close to dying - when you got a single rose left on your life meter - you can activate your Hysteria. The world is then instantly turned black and white, Alice becomes invulnerable and the enemies take extra damage. This might save your life, and in general the difficulty level is pretty good - not too hard, nor too easy.

American McGee's version of Wonderland is certainly different, but still not as dark and macabre as the game's trailers might make it seem. Every chapter has a distinct visual theme, from steampunk robotics to the bottom of the ocean to Asian porcelain, and both the style and the fact that Wonderland doesn't follow the laws of physics have allowed for the designers to let their imaginations run free. The levels all use the same basic mechanics, but the game manages to make the best of them through the many changes in style.

The experience is spiced up by a couple of minigames inserted here and there, for example the game will suddenly turn into a 2D platformer, an old school shoot'em up or a rhythm game. Some of these work better than others, but most of them do actually add something to the game.

Despite all of this, Alice: Madness Returns does have its weaknesses. First of all the story is rather messy and hard to follow. As noted earlier, it is a sequel to American McGee's Alice which was released 11 years ago - to be honest I have forgotten most of the finer points of the story in that game by now. If you're in the same situation as me, or if you've never actually played that game, you're a bit on your own at the start.

In short, Wonderland is a place that exists only in Alice's head; a place she escapes to, or is sucked into, now and again. He is deeply traumatized since her family died in a fire, and a central point in the story is the question if Alice actually was the cause of the fire or not. You will be able to find lost "memories" throughout Wonderland, as collectibles, that will give you a bit more background. It's still pretty confusing, though. You'll need to pay close attention to keep track of where you're going, what you're looking for, and why.

Parts of the game is also set in London, where Alice meets old friends and doctors and tries to get a grasp of what's actually going on. She is prone to hallucinations, so it's not always easy to tell what is reality and what isn't. It's a cool experiment, but the story is still a bit too confusing for its own good.

Another weakness is the length of the chapters. There are six of them, and they take between 30 minutes and two hours to complete. There's nothing bad about that as such, but the game could have used some more variation. As noted above, every chapter has its own visual style, and I often find myself wishing they would end just to see something new. If the game had been the same length, but been broken up in more chapters, it would have been completely different. As it stands, Alice: Madness Returns is a game that is better to enjoy in short bursts than in longer marathon sessions.

Alice: Madness Returns is a nice platform game. It's not without its problems, but the mechanics are good enough that fans of the genre should give it a try. It has a lot to offer, despite its confused storytelling and that it feels like it's treading water from time to time.