Alice: Madness Returns
Sony Playstation 3 - Released - June 14, 2011
The events of Alice: Madness Returns begin where the previous game American McGee's Alice left off: desperately struggling with her own mind, Alice is now in an establishment for children with psychological problems, and memories of her whole family dying in the fire haunt her. Now another threat - which appears as a giant train - seeks to destroy her Wonderland. Alice will battle through stages to stop the train and find out its true meaning. There are five large chapters in Wonderland, each with different themes and different types of enemies.
The gameplay can be described as 50% platform-jumping and 50% hack-and-slash combat. Unlike the previous game, the emphasis is on fighting with melee weapons, although there are also means (and necessity) to shoot enemies. Melee attacks are strung together with a vorpal blade (quick attacks) or a toy horse (slower, but more powerful and able to break through enemy defenses), and a pepper grinder or tea cannon is used for ranged attacks. The grinder has a cooldown time and can also be used to activate switches from a distance. Alice has a timed bomb as well and can dodge incoming attacks by briefly turning into a cloud of butterflies. A focus mode can be triggered to keep a specific enemy in view and in this mode Alice can deploy an umbrella to reflect incoming projectiles. When she is low on health, a monochrome hysteria mode can be triggered where much more damage is dealt and Alice can harvest enemies for health instead of teeth, the main currency left behind by enemies. For the many platform sections, she can triple jump in the air and glide down. During her travels, Alice will visit both XIXth century London and imaginary worlds. One of the novelties of the game is Alice's ability to shrink herself anytime, allowing her to enter small pathways and detect otherwise virtually invisible platforms and objects. It is also used to receive clues about the next goal. From time to time, players need to complete various mini-games, such as a 2D side-scrolling platformer, a rolling ball game in both 2D and 3D, and side-scrolling levels with a submarine. Some characters from the previous game make their appearance here, and the game also introduces several new creatures from Lewis Carroll's novels.
It is a single-player game only. Alice's weapons are upgradable three times with new abilities and stronger attacks, by using teeth that she collects on her journey. A total number of roses that stand for Alice's health bar can also be increased by finding and completing special challenges called 'radula rooms' and by solving Cheshire Cat's riddles. There are a lot of hidden objects to find, such as various memories and bottles; collecting them will unlock certain galleries in the game's menu. A New Game+ option with increased difficulty is available once the game is completed.
