[theme music]
[roar]
[sip]
Aahhh!
[typing]
Greetings and today I have a game that I've been waiting over ten years to be released,
the sequel to the 2000 cult classic game American McGee's Alice,
titled Alice: Madness Returns.
Alright, so the first game was friggin' awesome.
Let's just go ahead and get that out of the way.
I know some people thought it was kind of bland at its heart,
as far as the gameplay goes.
And to a degree, I would have to admit
that they were completely wrong.
I thought that game was incredibly varied
because there were just so many different wild things to do,
wild places to see,
wild wildness to wild over, I dunno.
It was one of those games that was awesome, yet flawed.
But, it was twisted, it was weird,
and it took Lewis Carrol's famous "Adventures in Wonderland"
and "Through the Looking Glass" stories
and just made them more twisted and cynical.
And now American McGee is at it again,
this time with the Spicy Horse Studio based in Shanghai, China.
While the first game made use of Windows and Macintosh computers
and a modified Quake III engine,
this one uses Unreal Engine III
and is out for not only Windows but the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
We're looking at the PC version here.
the game picks up immediately after the end of American McGee's Alice,
with Alice returning to madness.
Actually, I'm not sure that she ever left.
She just seems to be getting more and more crazy.
This involves Alice blacking out and going into Wonderland
and all that screwed up stuff that always happens with Alice
because she's a really messed up individual.
If you've played the first game, you will know what to expect.
It is a 3D action-platforming game.
And I mean that in the most traditional way possible.
This is a very old-school style of 3D action-platforming.
Well, as old school as that genre gets.
You know, back to the Nintendo 64 and even early PS2 days.
It very much reminds me a bit of the MDK games,
especially MDK 2,
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.², Banjo-Kazooie, even Jak & Daxter
and, uh, you know, it's got some elements of things like God of War
and Devil May Cry in here as well.
That is, the entire game pretty much consists
of you starting a level with not much information of the level's workings,
running across enemies that will need to be killed,
jumping and floating around all sorts of platforms,
breaking open random representations of goodie boxes
that will drop health and stuff like that,
and finding hidden secrets strewn about each level
to find collectibles that can be collected for
just no real reason, but that's what they're there for.
Yes, you've seen this before, you've probably played it before.
It's been done about a million times in the past fifteen years.
But there's one huge thing that sets Alice: Madness Returns apart,
and that is...
uh, it's Alice: Madness Returns!
It's a totally different game
in the sense that it takes place in this totally screwed up universe
based on Lewis Carrol's books.
One of the very first things you'll notice about the game,
and in fact one of its biggest draws for playing it,
is the art direction. It is friggin' awesome!
Much like the first game, half the reason you'll continue playing
is just to see what weird, crazy, over-the-top, insane,
trippy, LSD-looking place you'll go through next
and it's awesome oh my god can't breathe...
[deep breath] Ok, so maybe it's not THAT good, but it is really good,
and for whatever reason, the style just suits my tastes.
It's trippy and bizarre
and you just don't see this kind of weirdness in games very often
and I don't know why!
Games can do anything you friggin' imagine,
so imagine weird stuff and put it in a game and let me play it!
And really adding to this whole visual awesome atmosphere
is the awesome, almost visual music.
It's very much Soundscape-y this time around,
being composed by composer Jason Tai.
Setting itself apart from the first game,
it feels a little bit less like Tim Burton's hell spawn toy box soundtrack,
if that makes any sense,
and a little bit more ambient, a little bit more melodic and haunting.
Don't get me wrong, I really liked Chris Vrenna's compositions in the first game,
but Jason Tai did an awesome job on the soundtrack with this one as well,
and it doesn't get monotonous.
And the level designs themselves are actually very fun to play through.
There are a lot of secrets in this game,
and there's quite an original way of finding these, too.
You have a "Drink Me" potion that you drink early on in the game,
which is then mapped to your controller
and then you can press it at any time
to shrink down to about action figure size,
and any secret areas or hidden platforms
that were normally hidden from sight will come into view.
This is not only used for finding secrets,
but it's also used as sort of a subtle hint system
as for what kind of enemies will be coming up next,
to where a secret might be,
to how to progress through the level
because there are some levels later on
that you'll absolutely need this ability
just to find the way across a chasm.
While this mechanic started to wear out its welcome after a while,
it really didn't get so bad that it made me wanna rage quit or anything.
It was just like, "oh, here we go again."
Thankfully, the controls in the way Alice handles
made everything go so fluidly that I really didn't care.
I can't think of any other way to describe this other than grace and finesse.
I absolutely felt connected to each and every one of Alice's moves.
Whether she was jumping or double-jumping or gliding
or dodging or whatever, it all felt like I was actually doing it,
at least when played with a controller.
I used an Xbox 360 controller to play this on the PC
The keyboard and mouse controls are just awful.
They're clunky, they're counterintuitive,
and they just don't make any sense and have no effectiveness.
It made the game like ten times harder.
But yeah, controls with a controller,
smooth as silk.
This also leaked into the combat,
which is much, much improved over the first game.
The combat in the original game was just awkward to say the least
and I never really felt connected to what was going on.
This time it's elected for much more of a God of War-style approach
where you can sort of lock on to enemies,
and perform moves and combos and dodges and stuff
to take different styles of enemies out
as they come at you in waves.
But don't worry, you're not memorizing like Street Fighter-style move combinations or anything like that.
It's very fluid and it's very simple.
In fact, it's almost a little too simple.
I've got to say, the combat started to get a little bit annoying,
and least when some of the sections there was nothing really going on.
It was just like puny enemies and it's like, oh, great,
I have to press Y again to bash these guys into the ground.
But just when I started to think that, a tougher enemy would come along
or it would throw multiple types of enemies at me at once,
or I'd be off to a new area and there would be completely NEW types of enemies.
Not only that, but sometimes the gameplay will completely change genres on you out of nowhere.
And it's a little jarring at first, but it's a nice change of pace.
This often comes in the form of puzzles,
where you're going to have to solve... a puzzle
that's very puzzling.
Or sections where you feel like you're playing some kind of indie side-scroller
or a game of Scrambler.
And of course, to get through all this, you're gonna have a selection of weapons to choose from.
And unlike the first game, they seem to be more like traditional weapons this time around.
And that's a little disappointing because the first game had a large variety
of very unique weapons that were just weird.
And the weapons this time are more standard style of weapons
and they also don't have any alternate attack.
Not to mention there are only six weapons
and that would be kind of annoying
if there weren't a weapons upgrade system in place now.
Again, this is very God of War-like
where your same weapon will keep powering up the longer you play the game
and keep upgrading it.
They'll also gain new looks, be a little bit faster and be more powerful.
The only other thing that I have to touch on are the story and the characters.
The story is pretty much what you would expect if you played the first game.
It's kind of a continuation of the whole "why Alice is mad,"
"what really happened to her burned up family" and all that good stuff.
And of course, you have side characters like the Cheshire Cat,
who is still played by Roger L. Jackson, thankfully.
His voice is just awesome.
Although, he reminds me a bit more of Alan Rickman's portrayal of Severus Snape this time around,
but whatever, that's cool.
The cat, and pretty much every other character you come across,
is just kind of neutral. They're just kind of there.
They give you something to do and you have no choice but to do it.
I never really knew if anybody was on my side,
and never really knew if it mattered anyways.
Many of them are gonna give some sort of insight into Alice's past or trigger a memory
that triggers another memory that triggers something else,
that may have something to do with the overall story arc of the game.
It was kind of hard to tell; although while I think I got the main points,
I just ignored most of it and instead focused on the awesome platforming.
So is Alice: Madness Returns worth your purchase?
Well it was for me.
It's a pretty lengthy game, too, at about 16 hours
for me to complete it on a normal difficulty.
So you get quite a bit of content and not only that,
you also get access to the entire original game
if you buy the game new.
And if you happen to buy it used or as a rental, it costs $10.
But setting that aside and judging Madness Returns on its own merits,
the environments are awesome, the controls are awesome,
the combat is pretty decent.
To me, it spiced things up when it needed it
and kept things calm, serene and bizarre when it needed that.
It's got its flaws but so did the first game,
and, to be honest, these kind of 3D action-platforming games
can get a little monotonous and repetitive, no matter what they are.
This one just happened to go an extra step further
with awesome environments and stuff that I really cared about playing.
So if you're up for something a little different and thinks this looks interesting,
I'd say it's worth a shot.