I expected Alice: Madness Returns to be a copy of its predecessor. My expectations were a little too high.
I got everything I wanted, the game is beautiful and the art design is better than before. The combat mechanics are far more interesting and the enemies are more varied. In terms of combat, Alice can now lock on and strafe. Combat is more focused on timing and finesse and not so much on aimless hacking and slashing.
The first gripe I have about Alice: Madness Returns is the lack of weapons that Alice gets. Instead of ten weapons like in the original game, she gets a mere four this time around. And instead of getting unique sinister weapons, Alice gets generic unimaginable ones. Gone are the jacks, slicing cards, ice wand, blunderbuss, and jack-in-the-box bomb. In place of these are a teapot that fires acid tea, the crochet mallet, the Vorpal blade (a.k.a. the kitchen knife), and a pepper grinder gun (the only imaginative weapon). Each weapon can be upgraded four times to do more damage. Big deal. I'd rather have more weapons that are actually cool and forget about upgrading. Spicy Horse did away with what made Alice old school for what makes it like every other third person shooter on the market today. Yeah it may be unrealistic for Alice to hold more than four weapons, but so is wonderland.
The graphics are quite good, with the exception of some bland textures. Unfortunately there are many objects in the game that don't even have textures. So don't expect much detail up close, the beauty of the game is presented at a distance. Everything other than the environmental objects is intricately detailed and looks wonderful. Shame on you Spicy Horse for not putting in that little extra effort.
And that's just it, with a little extra effort Alice: Madness Returns could have been so much more and so much better than it is. This could have been EA's fault, or it could have been Spicy Horse rushing the final product. Who knows?
The game is long for it's genre, easily spanning fifteen or more hours if you're like me and want to find and upgrade everything. A straight play through might span eight to ten hours. Unfortunately the further you progress, the blander and less detailed and lazy the game becomes. This is ever apparent in the many mini-games. The game seems to fall asleep on itself slowly until the final boss.
Speaking of the final boss, it basically is the only boss. There are times when the game gives you a cut scene that makes you think you're going to fight a boss, and then the "boss" dies in the cut scene. Lame.
Oh yeah, you spend about a fourth of the game in modern day London. It's boring, there's no fighting, and you can't jump.
The music is the best thing about the game. It's composed by Chris Vrenna again, and a few others contribute.
So there's no bosses except one at the end, only four unimaginable weapons, a lazy second half of a game, and a noticeable lack of developer effort. I enjoyed the atmosphere, the art style, and the graphics (for the most part). The story was forgettable, but Alice never had a creative story anyway so the story doesn't bring the game down.
If you're like me, and you want this game because of your love for the first game and Lewis Carroll's books, you'll probably be pleased and enjoy yourself while it lasts. If you're looking for a third-person Alice themed shooter, forget about it. These games have never been about action and combat, and the fact that Alice: Madness Returns attempts to be combat oriented is embarrassing.