Alice: Madness Returns, Billy Joel isn’t here to do it, so I’d like to remind Alice that we didn’t start the fire.
The first time I saw this game, I’d watched some of it on Gab Smolders YouTube channel. I didn’t watch a whole lot of it, but it was enough to get me interested. I often like playing games that revolve around a specific fairy tale and make them a bit more grittier than the children’s movies we all might’ve watched. Such as with the case of this game: Alice in Wonderland.
I’ve also played a couple games related to Little Red Riding Hood that had been fun.
This one has been fun…with a bit of turbulence.
- Developed by Spicy Horse Games
- Published by Electronic Arts
[content-egg-block template=price_comparison groups=”main”]
FAQ
Is there a Patreon playthrough of this game?
No, the only videos showcased on my Patreon are those labeled as NSFW.
Who is this game for?
When did my interest get piqued?
When the Cheshire Cat started talking to me.
Does Alice: Madness Returns’ ending explain everything?
It does explain why the good doctor wants Alice to forget her past, and the reasoning for the fire–how Alice can’t exactly remembering being the one to start it.
Do you have guides for the game?
Not as of yet
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Camera has a mind of its own
You could be focusing on the platforming that’s going on in front of you, and suddenly the camera’s mind will wander and go of course, making you possibly miss the jump you were just going for.
Lock-on target is janky
There’s nothing I love more than having a huge enemy right in front of me, and when I go to lock on, the camera swings to something to the right and for the life of me, will not switch to the target I want. That’s when you have to switch to manual and pray your attacks won’t go wide.
Tutorials aren’t specific
What I mean is, if I’m playing this game on a controller and the game prompts me to press “enter” in order to deflect with the umbrella weapon…well, why would I press “enter” on the keyboard when I’m playing with a freaking controller? So instead of giving the correct button to use, the game just keeps the text “use the umbrella to deflect attacks” like a derp without bothering to tell me how.
Don’t get me wrong, I obviously figured it out, but put in the correct commands regarding what the gamer is using–controller or keyboard.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Environmental detail
When you’re forced to look at the environment you’re in–at the portions you’ll be platforming on–it really made me nostalgic for some Psychonauts 2 gameplay. Not that everything in these two games are the same in looks or maneuvers, but I can just picture myself using the different abilities both have to offer in order to get to the end of the stage.
I love the fact that it’s not all centered around one area.
We get the reality of her being in an asylum, then we get the corrupt reality of her spiraling mind in regards to the trauma of her past.
Fascinating characters
I was going to add in voices for characters as a plus as well, but decided to lasso that into this section.
Obviously, you’ll recognize a lot of these characters, and even if you haven’t seen Alice in Wonderland in a long time and have forgotten most of it, some of these characters will again shine through. I forgot all about those oysters and the walrus, but hey, they’ve made a comeback and the walrus is…well, he’s really hungry and those oysters never stood a chance.
We get to put the Mad Hatter back together again as if he were Pinocchio. The March Hare is all about speed. And the mouse…man I forgot about the mouse. Am I imagining that there was a mouse in the original Alice in Wonderland? Because if there was, it’s become a pyromaniac of sorts.
Links Worth Checking Out
- SuperHorrorBro explains Alice: Madness Returns wonderfully, incorporating elements from the first game.
- Gab Smolders has done a live playthrough of the game, the first chapter starting here.
Gameplay
Achievements
None available.
Plot
Eleven years ago a horrific fire took Alice’s family from her and left her mind horrifically scarred. Afterwards she was confined to Rutledge Asylum, where she struggled to confront her demons by slipping further into her fantasy world of Wonderland. Now, after ten years, she has finally secured her release—yet she still bears the heavy psychological burden of that tragic event.
With her mind in tatters, she is unable to resolve the fear prompted by her strange memories, dreams, and visions. Perhaps she’ll do better in Wonderland. She always has. She travels there, seeking what the “real” world can’t provide: security, knowledge, and the truth about the past. But in her absence, Wonderland too has suffered. Something has gone horribly wrong, and now a great evil is descending upon what once was her beautiful refuge. Can Alice save Wonderland—and herself—from the madness that consumes them both?
Game Length
Around 15 hours if you’re sort of half-assing looking around for collectibles. But if you’re a fan of picking up all the shinies and such, over 20 hours.
Replay Value
You can come back in order to find all the collectibles you might’ve missed before, and that aside, there are other difficulty levels to try out in order to test your skill against Wonderland.
Genre(s)
Not a whole lot of action, but enough that the game doesn’t go too slow as you progress through an area. Of course, we’re going on an adventure to get down to the bottom of Wonderland’s disastrous look and Alice’s memory.
You’ll definitely need to time your jumps accordingly to different platforms. Sometimes these platform appearances are on a timer, or only seen via a specific sight after shrinking.
Alice: Madness Returns Review
Sometimes it’s harder to continue a game when at some point during the first several hours of playing, you say to yourself, “God I hate this combat.”
And I honestly did. At the time of saying that sentence, I was surrounded by enemies and every time I’d try to dodge, another enemy would hit me, or I would just fail to dodge at the appropriate moment. I must’ve died three times in that combat before finally getting past them. After a while, the combat slowly started to grow on me, but the dodge is still garbage at times and being surrounded really sucks.
The game almost wants you to search out a lot of the areas for teeth to collect in order to upgrade your weapons as needed. I really didn’t go above and beyond with that nudge, however.
Even though I had difficulty mastering the combat with some enemies, I definitely spent some of my platforming downtime admiring the environment I was in. Nothing was ever boring to look at, and nothing was ever just put to the back of my mind as I focused on a single task. I was always looking around.
Which is good because this is freaking Wonderland.
Another plus was throughout the gameplay, I was constantly reminded that this was all in Alice’s broken mind, basically.
We’ll get swept into Wonderland, and then pulled out back into reality until the next trigger that led us back into Wonderland. The back-and-forth isn’t jarring at all. It’s more like water briefly coming in to touch the sandy beach, and then sliding away.
I guess my biggest takeaway with the game would be the overall battle with the monsters and the camera.
Basically, I was yelling cuss words at the game like Arin from Game Grumps yelled at the unavoidable chin move.
Oh, I forgot to mention, there are a few different puzzles you’ll encounter. One being slider puzzles, which are fairly easy to complete once you collect all the pieces, and the other is a musical puzzle, where you’ll need to finish two instances of hitting the correct note as the bar passes over them. It kind of made me mad, because I would hit the button accordingly, and the game wouldn’t recognize it.
So I had to do that puzzle game repeatedly and unhappily.
You can choose to skip it if you want.
