Alice Madness Returns Review

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequal to American McGee's Alice released back in 2000. Contained with the game is a code to download the origonal game as DLC for Madness Returns and so anyone who never got to play the origonal and play it and see how Wonderland has changed.

The combat is pretty fluid and easy to get the hang of, my only problem was the small number of weapons gained during the game. Alice's primary weapon is the Vorpal blade which takes the form of a large butcher knife. There is also a pepper grinder machine gun, hobby horse, and teapot cannon as offencive weapons, and 2 more defencive weapons. Through out the game you will find many teeth scattered around and dropped by enemies and containers these are used for upgrading your weapons to maximum level of 4 per weapon.

As you traverse Wonderland Alice will change dresses each level to 1 that is fitting to the area she is in. The first level being the steam dress, which draws inspiration from steam punk style cloathing. Aside from this and her standard dress there are 4 others gained throughout the story mode. If you choose you can equip Alice from the main menu with any dress you have previously unlocked, or with 1 of the 5 DLC dresses. Each dress has its own benefits to being used, and several have drawbacks.

As you traverse each level there are many colectibles spread throughout them. Rangind from several types of memory, messages in bottles, pig snouts, and radula rooms. Memorys are used to provide background into Alice's past. Bottles unlock various pieces of concept art but only when you get all of them in a level. Pig snouts open up paths to memories, bottles, and radula rooms. As well as picnic baskets filled with gold teeth (worth 5 normal teeth). Finally radula rooms are found throughout levels 2-5 and there are 4 per level. Once all 4 have been found a new piece of your health bar is added. The radula rooms very in how difficult they are, some are riddles, some are combat challenges and some are more exotic.

The plot of the game revolves around Alice's journey to restore Wonderland and her own mind as both are consumed by ruin and madness. The story is well done all in all and the levels are decently long even if there are only 6. After completion you can then play new game + keeping all your weapons and upgrades while playing through the game again. In my opinion the game has some definate replay value and you will end up playing levels more than once if you want to collect everything.

In the end i definatly recomend getting this game as it is a great play. Tune in next time for whatever the hell I feel like reviewing.