American Mcgee's Alice Madness Returns

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I finally got to play the game a while back and I really did love it. Even if you didn't play the first game you know what's going on and McGee did a outstanding job on the creatives of wonderland. However all games do have their flaws and I'd say my main problem for this game was the camera controls. There is a petition to start a third and McGee even said he'd make it but has no money for it. So supposedly with the petition if you get enough signatures the company that produces the Alice games will fund it and we can have a third.

What were your thoughts?

Being a fan of FPS, I didn't play the game till I modded it. (Same thing for Max Payne and Tomb Raider - no first person mod, no play). I did like the atmospherics and vibrant of Alice, though. Yeah, it was buggy, but it was cool for a while.

I own Madness Returns, but I haven't played it yet. I've only played the first game. I find it to be extremely difficult, even on Easy mode. But maybe it's because I'm not good at videogames. I do love the characters, story and atmosphere of the games, though.

Eh...I played a little of this game. I actually played through the original American McGee's Alice first, and liked it a lot. Story wise, it's everything a dark sequel to the classic Alice story should be, IMHO. It's dark, it's psychological, it has some good twists and turns, and yet it's also simple and straightforward. Gameplay wise, there's a decent variety of platforming, exploration, action and puzzles. It's fairly challenging. It would probably make most modern gamers cry, but for someone like me, it was actually a breath of fresh air. It's definitely a product of its time, and there are certain ways in which a game like that hasn't really aged particularly well, and the platforming is a prime example. However, I don't mind games from that particular era. It's a 2000 pc game, which feels like an early 6th gen game. Since I'm quite fond of the 5th and 6th gens, its mechanics and flaws were acceptable to me, but it's worth noting that a game like that is not for everyone.

I'm not sure where to start with The Madness Returns. I only got to the second chapter before I had to set the game aside and play something else, and I have yet to come back to it. To me, it's a game that didn't need to happen, and I hate using that term, because it's a videogame, not a movie. In the case of videogames, sequels can, and often do improve upon their predecessors. Sequels can even be welcome from a story perspective, even in a case like The Madness Returns, where the ending of the original game tied things up completely, and made the story feel complete. However, the story of American McGee's Alice really did feel complete before this latest entry in the series came along. Alice conquered her madness, and she was let out of the asylum she was in, yet now she's back in Wonderland, dealing with the same trauma again.

I wouldn't mind as much, if The Madness Returns appeared to explore things from more different angles. Sure, it kind of got into stuff like Alice's childhood, but it still seemed to be mostly about the fire, and how Alice feels guilty about what happened. I think that in some ways the game is trying too hard, and in others, it's not trying hard enough. Sure, there are the memories that come up, that dive into Alice's past, but none of that feels necessary. The original game didn't need to spell things out, or go into very much detail. It accomplished what it set out to do with a lot less. The atmosphere this time around is not nearly as dark. For example, the Vale of Tears is bright and colourful. It didn't feel like the Vale of Tears at all. The Vale of Tears in the first game, is exactly what I would expect a place with such a depressing name to be like. This Vale of Tears is just inadequate, IMHO. Having characters who were previously hostile to Alice be friendly towards her this time, and having Alice be equally friendly towards them, is kind of strange. Ok, maybe the Duchess was a little rude, but she didn't try to eat Alice. I guess The Madness Returns isn't horrible, from a story perspective, but I can't help but compare its story to that of American McGee's Alice.

From a gameplay perspective, something about The Madness Returns is off. The normal difficulty might as well be called "pansy", and there's an easy difficulty setting too. However, I can't say I was expecting it to be nearly as difficult as the first game. I could do without the embarrassing tutorials though. "Hint: You can block attacks". Seriously? I switched the difficulty to very hard, just to get a slight challenge from the enemies, yet that didn't help make the game any more enjoyable to me. The Madness Returns is a linear platformer, but there is a bit of exploration, with some puzzles, secrets and collectibles. It goes through all the motions of a run of the mill platformer, and it doesn't go about it in a way that I can say is wrong. It's just missing something. It's hard to describe, but I switched over to Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy in the Jak and Daxter Collection, and found that it has what Alice: The Madness Returns is missing. I can't say what it is, but maybe the second Alice game suffers from what a lot of modern games do, where it feels like a lot of the soul that games used to have, has been sucked out. It's an indescribable phenomenon, but it leaves games feeling shallow, empty and soulless, even if they contain all the elements of a comparable game from the 6th gen. Perhaps that's my issue with The Madness Returns.

I have it, it's cool looking but it's just too platformy and the camera just bothers me. I don't regret buying it, I just don't see myself playing more of it.

I consider it to be a decent game. Those Mad Caps piss me off, but it's okay.