Alice: Madness Returns Review

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 04:15pm 01/07/11 | 9 Comments

James Pinnell decided to get his nostalgia on and revisit an old friend who's been revisited, in Alice: Madness Returns.

From the creator of American McGee's Alice, Alice: Madness Returns once again turns Wonderland on its head with spectacular art-direction and plenty of high-end, mind-bending gory visuals. However, all of this sits alongside an otherwise safe gameplay journey where very little, it appears, has been done to both complement the game's stunning visuals and engage the player. It's a by-the-numbers action-platformer, much to our reviewer's chagrin.

Click here for James' full thoughts on the game.

alice: madness returns review ea american mcgee

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Dan
Posted 04:33pm 01/7/11

I've played through it now too and while I largely agree with the sentiment, I think my personal score would have been a little higher, maybe low 7s just because I was seriously wow'd by the imagery at each turn. It's definitely an artists game first with gameplay just an excuse to see everything they created. Like a moving walkway through an amazing art gallery.

At first I thought the mini-games would have broken it up a bit, but the side-scrolling parts ended up being too frequent and painfully sluggish to traverse through. Combat did get pretty monotonous, but at least the game would introduce a new set of enemies in each thematic area -- they did drag out too long though I found. Despite having a good variety of weapons I basically ended up just spamming teapot grenades as my primary because it was the fastest way to kill most enemies and keep progressing.

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eski
Posted 04:46pm 01/7/11

If they dropped the price on this and sold it on XBLA/PSN, it would've gotten amazing reviews and potentially more sales. By the time this drops to a price I'm willing to pay I probably won't care anymore.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 04:55pm 01/7/11

I don't think releasing it on XBLA/PSN would change the game's reviews - it's innards aren't dictated by platform, but by how it plays

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reload!
Posted 04:59pm 01/7/11

+Good Length
-Lots of filler

oic

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DM
Posted 05:14pm 01/7/11

I thought that this game was awesome. Took me around 11 hours on hard to beat and liked the story and how it picked up in real time after the original. Didn't mind that it was linear at all because most are.

last edited by DM at 17:14:35 01/Jul/11

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JamesPinnell
Posted 05:18pm 01/7/11

reload: I personally don't like length for length's sake, but a lot of people do, so I thought I'd mention it as a plus and a minus.

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Llian
Posted 06:13pm 01/7/11

SCore should be higher. It is awesome. Atleast a 7.5-8/10 in my books. Finding the bits and pieces of the story, the art, the funnies. It all comes together which for some games just does not seem to happen.

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Sc00bs
Posted 06:59pm 01/7/11

didnt enjoy this at all 5/10

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iJebus
Posted 08:21pm 01/7/11

Lol reload, I thought exactly the same thing.

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