Alice: Madness Returns

aka: Alice 2, Alice: Retour au Pays de la Folie, Return of American McGee’s Alice
Moby ID: 51996
Windows Specs
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Description official description

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.

Spellings

  • アリス マッドネス リターンズ - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

497 People (435 developers, 62 thanks) · View all

Story
Original Concept
Senior Vice President, General Manager, EA Partners
Vice President, World Wide Business Development, EA Partners
Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, EA Partners
Vice President of Production, EA Partners
Executive Producer, EA Partners
Producers, EA Partners
Assistant Producer, EA Partners
Additional Production
Senior Development Directors, EA Partners
Creative Director, EA Partners
Director of Business Development
Senior Partner Manager, EA Partners
Senior Director of Business Development, EA Partners
Director of Finance, EA Partners
Senior Financial Analyst, EA Partners
President of EA Games
Group VP of Global Marketing
Director of Marketing
Product Manager
Assistant Product Manager
Vice President Public Relations
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 44 ratings with 2 reviews)

Very nice artificially prolonged collage.

The Good

  • Graphics looked good and I liked the style. Some graphic was funny. Card level was great.
  • It felt good to find secrets.
  • Game elements are made of story motives. For example: 2 weapons are teapots, some enemies are teapots and some teapots made air current which moved Alice up...
  • I liked mini-games where you had to survive waves of enemies and survive for some time.
  • There were many hints, so it was hard to get lost. Hints were visible when Alice was shrunk, so you get help when you needed. It was better than getting help after several seconds like in Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic
I liked how they were decently inspired by many games:

  • It had Devil May Cry-like fights.
  • Levels in Dollhouse reminded me of Silent Hill.
  • Mini-game inspired by Ballance, the ball was the doll's head.
  • Japan levels reminded me of Okami.
  • Platforming had many elements of Rayman 2 (air currents, hands moving platforms, ...)


The Bad
  • Dull story. I did not care about characters.
  • Physics sometimes sucked.
  • Once a trigger which opened path after You kill all enemies did not occur.
  • Some jumps were too hard and I did them almost by accident.
  • "Memories" I found were boring.
  • Repetition. There were too many mini-games and similar sections; It felt like they tried to make game much longer. On the other hand some mini-games were fun (side-scroller, Ballance-like mini-game).
  • Escape from card reaper played badly.
  • Catnip gun was too powerful. Once You get this gun, You don't need another; the exception is machine-gun which You need to solve some puzzles. I liked that I had powerful gun, but other guns were useless once I had this one.
  • Collecting of teeth. Too many.
  • I once entered hole covering vagina of plastic doll there. I was thinking what the level designer was thinking ...


  • **The Bottom Line**
    If You like Tim Burton's style, weird, emo or goth elements You may like the game. It felt like collage of good games (though some elements seemed original) so skilled players may found how their favourite games look in Wonderland. But the game is very artificially prolonged, story is dull and it is not for casual player, because it is very hard at several places.

Windows · by hribek (28) · 2011

One of my most favorite games I played.

The Good
Pretty much everything, to be honest. The story was amazing yet very dark, and was perfect for someone who likes a darker take on Wonderland. I think that the game in general is right in my alley of interest compared to most other games, considering I'm the type of person that likes games with twisted dream worlds and tons of blood and fighting. I don't regret getting the game at all as a christmas gift, and it was the first game I played out of the games I got.

The Bad
Unfortunately I can't think of anything I don't like about the game at all, but that is just me.

The Bottom Line
Basically, I'd describe the game as a dark and violent version of Alice in Wonderland with a twisted backstory and an interesting story. I'd recommend it to those who like games of such a type and i'd say it's one of my all-time favorite games. Even the downloadable content pack is amazing! Everything about the game is amazing and fun, and I could play through it many times without getting bored.

PlayStation 3 · by Mae Spencer (4) · 2012

Discussion

Subject By Date
Australian cover. Ethan W (169) Feb 22, 2020

Trivia

Original game

The original PC game American McGee's Alice can be played by selecting it from the menu in the Xbox 360 (and probably PS3) version of the game.

Storybook

A prequel of this game - a free app called Alice: Madness Returns Storybook for iTunes, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch - was released on May 20, 2011. It covers the main events of American McGee's Alice while telling the story of Alice in the asylum (which is largely based on American McGee's Alice: Casebook, a text supplement to the first game). It is an interactive storybook, which means viewers must interact with objects like in a point-and-click adventure game. You can also view the storybook online here without some functions appearing in iTunes, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

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Related Games

Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland
Released 2000 on Game Boy Color
Alice in Wonderland
Released 2010 on Windows, Wii
Alice in Wonderland
Released 2010 on Macintosh, Windows
Alice's Magical Mahjong
Released 2008 on Windows
The Rivers of Alice
Released 2013 on Android, iPad, iPhone
Alice: Madness Returns - Ultimate Edition
Released 2012 on Windows, PlayStation 3
Shall We Date?: Guilty Alice
Released 2014 on Android, iPad, iPhone
Through the Looking Glass
Released 1984 on Macintosh

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by GTramp.

Additional contributors: Macintrash, jaXen, Pseudo_Intellectual, Patrick Bregger, Tien Thuy Le Nguyen, Sopot, Kennyannydenny, Zhuzha.

Game added July 9, 2011. Last modified March 18, 2024.