Alice: The Madness Returns PS3 Review

I never got around to playing the original Alice back in 2000, even though it received a lot of praise for its macabre story and stunning visuals for the time. When I heard of the Alice series coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, I had to jump in and check out what I was missing all of these years. Sadly, Alice: The Madness Returns, does not live up to the reputation of its predecessor except in the story.

The story takes place shortly after the events of the original game, with Alice starting off within an orphanage still having her hallucinations. After a few minutes of wandering through the town, Alice ends up in Wonderland with a new threat called the Infernal Train wreaking havoc throughout Wonderland. Alice traverses through Wonderland defeating enemies and unlocking memories that are best kept secret considering how twisted the story is. Alice ends up discovering how the fire was started and why her family was killed.

Alice: The Madness Returns has repetitive gameplay to the point that some puzzles are actually identical within different levels to the point of the solution to the puzzles is even the same. I have seen some lazy level design in my time, but this game takes the cake. The game is broken up into 6 long agonizing chapters that are just a mishmash of repetitive platforming and puzzles. One can only take so much jumping, collecting crap, and button mashing fights the madness takes over the player as well. There is only one weapon combo, and it isn’t even necessary for combat. Weapons consist of two close range and two range weapons that can be upgraded thrice each. Levels are nice to look at until the player bumps into invisible walls that shouldn’t exist in a next-gen console. The level design consists of jump on a bunch of platforms, fight a few enemies, perform a musical Rockband like puzzle game, jump some more through a side scrolling mini-game, solve a sliding image puzzle, rinse and repeat in the next chapter. Other issues include constant loading even for small areas, wonky camera controls at inopportune moments, and inaccurate hitboxes.

I would say that including the original Alice for free for players who buy the game new would be a redeeming quality, but why buy a crappy game for $60 to have a 10 year old game to play for free? It makes it seem that EA is charging players $60 to play the original masterpiece and piling on the sequel as an afterthought. Between the schizophrenic camera and the poorly designed levels, I think I was going mad by the end of the game. I have to admit, the story was great, but the gameplay was so horrible that I can’t justify anyone paying more than $10 for this game and I would have to say the player would need to be a glutton for punishment to endure the hours of boredom this game will pile on. Buy the original for $10 online, but skip playing the sequel and just watch the cinematics and ending on YouTube instead.