Alice: Madness Returns does a great job of giving what the fans of the first game want...a great sequel. I greatly enjoyed the first Alice game 11 years ago and played it countless times, the second is a great addition and a great game but does have its flaws. Starting with the positives the story this time around was very well done, I enjoyed the fact that they explained the past and the times leading up to the beginning of the game. A great way to get new players right into it who never had the chance to play the first.
The game doesn't have a demented atmosphere as much as the first (psychotic school children of the first game *shivers*). Bit it does a great job of trying to have a constant creepy vibe while playing, the music adds a dreary atmosphere at moments but you get by. The combat is much improved from the first game. The first games combat went stale at around 3 hours in, the fact that the different weapons Alice gets in the games have different strengths against certain characters adds a nice touch. So with that you each enemy needs a strategy to beat them with. The platforming is pretty similar to the first one with some improvements like double jumping and gliding. Probably the biggest improvement over the first game is the difficulty scaling, the first game was pure punishment after the first couple of levels.
On to the negatives...I know I talked the game up a bit there in the positives but here are the reasons why this is a 3 our of 5 star game. The graphics had its high moments but sometimes (it occurred often) textures were bland, i felt there was a weird layer of gray over everything I understand they were going for demented and dreary but that was pushing it. The A.I. was not as good as it should have been for me there was kind of a cut-off point, in the game where enemy's kind of lost there sense of awareness. Sometimes I would go to fight card guards and would hit them a couple of times and then its like I was invisible. Now that might be a glitch but it did happen about 4 times and that's not good at all. The weapons were kind of lackluster actually I felt that the weapons I had were recreations of some modern day guns (i.e. the teapot is a grenade launcher) it just didn't feel right to me. The game had a new feature which was a "world specific ability" i.e. when in the queens domain you can eat a bit of cake and be come giant and kill enemies with ease. It was a nice touch just not enough to satisfy me.
With that aside i did enjoy Alice: Madness returns I really loved the first one and second was good enough to get my buy. Some of the negatives might turn off some fans but for the main story and back story I took it like a champ. If you really enjoy twisted recreations of childhood stories then by all means pick this game up, and if you just like a different kind a game this will fill that void to.
