Alice: Madness Returns

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.