A few issues get in the way, but Alice: Madness Returns is one rabbit hole you won't mind falling into.
The player will assume the role of Alice Liddell, a troubled young woman whose has endured what no human being her age should ever have to go through. Her entire family was killed in a suspicious house fire, and her mental instability resulting from that tragedy had lead her to be institutionalized in the Rutledge Asylum---a place neither sane or insane would be caught dead in. Her only solace is her beloved Wonderland and all its delightful little characters---a fantastical world of boundless imagination and endless beauty that has been besieged in recent years by malevolent dark forces which, given Alice's fragile emotional state, have done her no favors. In the years that followed American McGee's Alice, our heroine continues her adventures in the decaying, troubled Wonderland; which faces a new enemy in the form of a mysterious, unseen entity determined to destroy her memories. In order to rid herself of these impurities, Alice must confront her literal and figurative demons in both the morose dwellings of her reality and a Wonderland that finds itself slowly being torn apart. The story, in an emotional sense, can be difficult to follow because of the intense subject matter, but when you consider the game's dark nature, such unsettling themes fit nicely in the scheme of things and make for a fascinatingly disturbing account into a trouble young girl's life. By all accounts, the game's storytelling is effective and trite, followed up by strong voice acting and believable characters. There are times when you want to look away and shield your eyes, but you're somehow compelled to know more and push ever onward as Alice's journey grows more darker and sinister----inching like a caterpillar on an unstable leaf---ever closer to the truth.
The game is divided up into six chapters---each chronicling Alice's journey through both the streets and moorings of London and the vestiges of a dying Wonderland. You'll get to control Alice during her daily roundabout routine in the real world as the game does a good job in depicting her colorless, depressing surroundings. Although there's little to nothing that might be done in this portion of the game, there is plenty of action and platforming to be had in Wonderland itself. And for someone as fragile as Alice, she has a surprisingly athletic build-up that allows her to leap and float across wide chasms with relative ease. In fact, Alice has a variety of physical powers that will prove helpful in her journey---such as shrinking to the size of a field mouse to reveal hidden platforms and enter small holes, or tapping into a pure, unadulterated rage form for when she's fighting enemies. The player also has the opportunity to equip Alice with a variety of dresses that grant her specific character abilities, and they can earned through completing chapters or downloading exclusive wardrobes via DLC. Whatever the case may be, you'll have to rely on all of that as well as your instinctual platforming skills to navigate the traps and terrors that await you.
But, amidst these challenges, Madness Returns is not without some glaring issues. For one, the floaty controls can prove helpful in certain situations and fatal in others. Often, you'll have trouble with precise landing because of Alice's slippery movements, resulting in her falling into bottomless pits from time to time. She can't grab onto or climb ledges, which makes some of the simplest affairs seem like threatening death traps. The absence of this character maneuver comes as a bit of a shock especially given the fact that grabbing and climbing has become so essential in nearly every other game of its kind in existence, and the lack of either of these in Madness Returns makes things tougher than they need to be in a game devoted to platforming. However, in an effort to dollup the gameplay slightly, you can seek collectible items interspersed throughout the stages, including fragments of Alice's scattered memories and their relative connections. In addition to hunting down and shooting pig snouts cleverly hidden from plain sight in every level, you're given a real reason for revisiting these worlds if you so happen to be one of the collectionist nature, and your efforts will pay off in the form of an achievement.
As delicate as Alice is, she's one girl you don't want to mess with in a fight. Wonderland plays host to a variety of bizarre enemies big and small---all designed to impede her progress. Fortunately, YOU have a variety of interesting weapons that make fighting these creatures a lot of devilish fun. The legendary Vorpal Blade from the original game----a slightly glorified kitchen knife---makes its much maligned return, delivering quick, successive strikes that do a great deal to damage. In addition, the Hobby Horse is a heavy-set melee device that smashes as many weak walls to dust as it does thickly-defensed armored enemies like the deranged Teapots. Finally, both the Pepper Grinder and the Kettle Cannon are long-range receptacles that let you take down enemies in a third-person shooter manifesto. All of these delightful little toys make the game's combat interesting indeed, but the combat itself, while at times challenging, is shamelessly repetitive. Every enemy can be slain with any weapon of your choosing---some taking more effort than others, but victory is still possible through guile and perseverance. The combat has its moments, but it severely lacks in depth and comes across as formulaic.
The stages and chapters themselves are constructed in a linear fashion amongst a world that is begging to be fully explored. The environments are gorgeous in their visual execution, replicating as much of Lewis Carroll's original vision of Wonderland as it does the twisted imagination that could come only from a guy named American McGee. But the game's pacing is stretched thin, peppered by a few interesting visual tricks, some eye candy, an occasional encounter with an executioner; littered with few branching paths and even fewer brain-teasing puzzles, making exploration of this beautiful setting a bland exercise of getting from point A to point B. Yet, you can't help but be taken by the splendor and the beauty of it all. Nearly every character from the Wonderland lore makes an appearance in the game, though not always as you remember them. The Mad Hatter is a mechanical imp-like monstrosity, and the Cheshire Cat appears a lot more demonic (if not anorexic) than the innocuous cat you've come to recognize in the Disney cartoons. Though they're barely recognizable, there's a hint of familiarity that will instantly click with fans of the Alice in Wonderland series. As mentioned earlier, the voice acting is top notch and the characters are genuine---some genuinely wicked, others even more so. And Alice herself has an incorrigible (yet understandable) cynicism of nearly everything; friend, foe and those inbetween. Her standoffish personality and very core of her character are in a constant state of warfare, leaving the player struggling to show sincere sympathy or irritable disdain. In the interest of avoiding potential spoilers, I only wish she could have developed further than she did during the entire length of the game because I truly felt empathy for her.
And if confronting Wonderland's newest enemy wasn't enough for you, the game includes a near-perfect port of the original American McGee's Alice---(accessible via a packaged code found in new retail copies or purchased through EA's store.) But all in all, Alice: Madness Returns is a delightful romp through a twisted, corrupted Wonderland, marred only by some problematic platforming, dull linear pacing, and bland, by-the-numbers combat even with its incredibly fun weapons. To its credit, the world of Wonderland will prove to be a glorious place to visit, and you'll definitely want to press onward and follow Alice all the way through to its erstwhile conclusion even it it gets more and more emotionally and physically difficult along the way. This is one rabbit hole worth jumping into and, in the end, the experience will become a lingering memory that just might stay with you for a very long time; whether you're familiar with Alice in Wonderland or not.