[REVIEW] Alice: Madness Returns (Xbox 360)

Admittedly I have never played American McGee's Alice, the predecessor to this game, although I read Through The Looking Glass when I was a kid, and am vaguely aware that it's really a woeful tale of mental illness. Within the first minute or so of the gameplay, Alice comes across a small boy who has had his pants stolen by another boy in the institution. She tells him, "Wear bloomers" and my hopes are raised for some very dark humour indeed. The game starts with Alice having to pop to the chemist to pick up her prescription, and we see that the streets of London are paved with half-starved hookers and smelly street urchins, and an odd cat that wants to be chased.

As you might expect, this is where Alice's problems begin. Her first hallucinatory experience (or "cut-scene", as I shall call them) ran quite jerkily, although that doesn't seem to be the general rule which I'm glad about, because visually this game is very pretty. Unfortunately it does seem to suffer from the same problem as a lot of third person perspective games - a bit of a wanky camera. I find that I tend to get disorientated if the camera doesn't automatically centre itself when the character is running forwards, hence in Madness Returns I find myself running into the camera perspective quite a lot.

Another thing I find particularly frustrating is the combat system. Again, the camera causes most of the hindrance, although I think a lot of my problems are due to being relatively inexperienced in the hack 'n' slash genre - perfectly timed dodges are NOT my forte. A lot of the platforms have that "sudden death" feel to them, possibly because I keep falling off a lot - however, I work on a "third time lucky" basis, that is, if I don't do it the third time, I'll give up and play Fallout instead. One particular puzzle involving leaping onto moving invisible platforms (!) particularly got on my nerves!

Now onto the good bits. This game is exceptionally creepy for a BBFC 15 rated game in my opinion, even if The Husband does say I have the courage of a wussy child (I got freaked out by Unstoppable, which is a 12, embarrassingly enough.) The NPC's have an aura of griminess befitting of the era, and the whole story makes me feel uneasy. But that's what it's supposed to do, so I can't fault it there! The soundtrack is very atmospheric and certainly adds to the sense of wonder/terror.

Overall, I have to give Alice: Madness Returns 3 out of 5, due to wanting to launch the controller at the telly. If you are a more patient soul than me, consider it a 4 out of 5, but don't say I didn't warn you! :)