Back in the summer holidays, I was looking for a PS3 title to buy and I stumbled upon Alice: Madness Returns. Interested in the game, I decided to buy it and check it out. As of writing this review, I am currently finishing my 2nd playthrough of this game on Nightmare difficulty
Alice: Madness Returns takes place a year after the original Alice game, where she has been put in care by a Doctor by the name of Angus Bumby. Alice was running an errand one day when she began to have hallucinations of Wonderland. This causes Alice to set out on an adventure to find out what really happened on the day for the fire.
This journey is not gonna be an easy one for Alice, so you need to equip yourself with weapons. Thankfully, you get weapons as you go through the game. This includes melee weapons like the Vorpal Blade to ranged weapons like the Pepper Grinder. You can upgrade any of these by using an in-game currency called 'Teeth' that can be picked up via defeating enemies or breaking objects. The upgrades can be expensive as hell though, so you'd better save up your Teeth if you want to upgrade your stuff to the highest level. Thankfully, there are a lot of Teeth scattered around so you'll get the upgrades you need in no time. In the main menu, you are also able to change the weapons as well as Alice's dress to get bonus effects in-game too like enemies always drop Roses or double damage, which is a really cool feature.
There are 6 worlds set in familiar Alice in Wonderland locations for you to explore. All of these levels are filled with puzzles to solve and secrets to find. Don't worry about the puzzles though, as most of them are really straight-forward. However, this also serves as a disadvantage because the player can easily breeze through levels if they're not aiming to 100% the level like myself.. These worlds are also filled with enemies ranging from easy ones to more larger enemies that may take some time to figure out and cost you a lot of your health, but there is a Hysteria mode which makes you invincible to enemy attack for some time. As for bosses, there's only 1 boss in the game which is the final boss (which is a complete joke one you know how to beat it), but I digress.
Overall, Alice Madness Returns is a fun game! Fast paced combat, the well-written story as well as the gorgeous worlds make for an excellent game. American McGee and the developers did a mighty fine job on this game. Though it may have the odd glitch at times and it may be a very short game, it does well in making those few hours of gameplay a great experience. With the witty and humorous dialogue in certain places to the Plus those who have a download code can get extra costumes and the ability to play the original Alice game on their console/PC, so it does make up for it, right? This game is available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC if you are interested in taking a look at the game. It really is a fun game you can play when you want to kill time with a shorter game.