Her name is Alice.

Hello there.

Today I want to introduce a game to you I currently play and fell in love with. The game I want to write about is called "Alice: Madness Returns". I'm quite sure that everyone at least heard of the fairytale "Alice in Wonderland" once in their life. In this game, the story is a completely converse to the story everyone knows. It also is the sequal to the first game "American McGee’s Alice", although you cannot notice one bit of missing story.

General

The game was published on the 16th of June in 2011 and can be played on several plattforms, such as Windows, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It can be classed into the genres Jump 'n' Run and Action-Adventure and its theme is horror and of course Alice in Wonderland. It is fully dubbed and available in 5 languages; German, French, English, Spanish and Italian. 

Gameplay

Weapons

The game is played in a 3rd person view, which means that you see the character itself, jumping around and fighting. Alice can float with her unique and from chapter to chapter adjusted dresses to each platform. She has the ability to shrink and then find hidden paths which lead to additional puzzles and memories of her life. There are collectibles as well, for example, bottles with memories or pig snouts. They are not important for the actual storyline though.

A few dresses, each representing one unique chapter

She has 4 weapons available to fight with. The Vorpal Blade, Hobby Horse, Teapot Cannon and the Pepper Grinder. These also reflect her being a human being and her child like attitude. Additionally she has two more tools to defend herself with. The Clockwork Bomb, which is essential to some puzzles and the Umbrella, which can knock back an attack from enemies. Through her journey, she collects teeth to upgrade her weapons and has red roses as currency of her life. 

Story

You play Alice, a girl who lost her family by a fire in their house and who just left a mental institution. This made her traumatised and she now lives in an orphanage and is under therapy to handle the happenings in her past. One day when she left the orphanage, she comes back into contact with a nurse from the mental institution, causing visions and memories which makes her jump back into the world of wonders.

Mad Hatter

There she meets her old friend the Cheshire Cat, telling her how the current situtaion is and that the wonderland is changing and falling apart. In 6 chapters, with transitions and stories about her current real life causing her hallucinations, she finds out bit by bit what are causing these visions and in fact, they are just reproductions of her influented mind from her therapist (the Mad Hatter) who wants to just distort her mind so he can sell her as human doll, and many other girls before her, for prostitution. During her journey, prostitution and doll like appearance is always slightly influenced by abstract and naked statues in the game.

Enemies

She is facing and fighting a lot of bloody creatures during this journey, which reflect her real life situations. They mostly look like black slime with doll faces popping out but there are many other creatures such as Samurai Wasps, Eyepots, Snarks, Canon Crabs and several more. 

Each of them have their own way of fighting and attacking. Some of them just make use of ranged, magical attacks or physical attacks when others are using defence as their weapon such as being invicible, immortal or hiding for a specific time in the ground. In these situations you have to wait for your time to attack and take them out strategically by causing damage when they are vulnerable. 

Sometimes there are more than just one enemy at a time, causing a lot of damage. In these times you have to make Alice dodge and avoid attacks. When the life gaudge is down to one rose, she can fall into hysterie causing massive damage for a short time. In  this mode everything turns white except from the blood on her dress and her weapon equipped. Blood is also purposfully sprinkling from the enemies every time Alice hits them. After you killed enemies in the status of hysteria, you won't get the full reward for this fight though.

Eyepot

Colossal Ruin

 

 

Daimyo Wasp

Summary

This game is a very disturbing but yet interesting and thoughtful game which has a complete contrast to the original storyline. It is definitely worth playing and leave you in thought and addiction for a very long time. With 16 hours of gameplay time, it is indeed a very successfully made platform game. By the wonderfully illustrated and themed areas which appear in every chapter as different type, such as being underwater or in the oriental world, you can tell that the game was made entirely out of dedication and enjoyment.

If I have caught your interest in this game, I will link a video down below in which you make yourself a better picture of how this game actually looks like, it is a gameplay trailer. I will also add a song by Shinedown called "Her Name Is Alice" which I find very fitting, it tells the story of Alice in Wonderland and was originally made for the movie itself.

Have fun listening and watching!