Best Of

Alice: Madness Returns(12.0 hours): I have wanted to play this game for about a year but still refrained from buying, this winter sale I bought several games I had waited on. You can have multiple games going within Alice so that means you have a fairly annoying selection screen despite having only one user which in turn means you can't just click back/back/exit since it exits you back to game/user selection. WHY??!?!?!?! WWWWHHHHYYYYY?!?!?!?! Make it harder to switch the user that is active and easier to quit. who plays and then says you know what John wants to play for 2 hours after me......no one does that they quit the freaking game you lame wads.

Playing this after Brothers is pretty great since this is another visually polished game. Everything has its place, models are solid, the environment has great depth, and the jumping is solid despite spending a lot of time floating over open space. Bro, come bro listen.....you fart butterflies when you jump. Dude I ain't pulling your let, butterflies. :awesome: Now Alice as a character is great because she gives a strong contrast to all the others in the game. Most people are "off" or they are wonderland creatures but Alice has features that seem normal except her eyes and she feels like the only balanced and sane person. Helping her out is the fact she is pale and raven haired which I am a massive sucker for. But you go through the game and collect teeth, bottles, and memories. No idea why teeth, what the bottles do, or if getting all the memories does something for you. There is little explanation on what the side items in the game do or even how you access the weapon upgrade screen(esc>weapon upgrade). Seems as though they relied on people having played the original game since there are references from the start to it.

The first two stages are rather straight forward with jump, fight, errands. Then when you get to the third stage, you think crap this is going to take me 3 hours because now the go fetch will be X amount longer but no they diverge. This stage just doesn't seem to fit because the colur pallet changes, contrast is poor, steps forward for the level don't give you a sense on the distance left to the end, and just ok??. One of the more important things is they introduce new segments to the level that will get used later, it is fun and interesting. But what happens with this introduction is a flaw that just grinds on you in later levels and that is camera angle. The cool new stuff they bring into levels to make them fun and have variance have horrible camera control. Points happen where the camera is locked in tight and then without warning you are given camera control. They do this and hide things behind so you are suppose to walk backwards off screen. Just a plain dick move; here I dropped you into this room and took camera control but if you walk back to this corner you can't see and press C you get something. 4th and 5th stage fall back in line but enemies have an increasing ability to stun lock you or their attacks are interrupts despite you hitting them. Also some nice scenes where you run away but they don't let you see where you are running because that isn't important, you watching what is chasing you is. Some times you will get hit and the camera jumps which causes you to look behind you. No idea on some of the later glitches but during stage 3 things feel different until the end.

This game is awesome. This game is dark. This game is fun. Play this game. Next time it is on sale buy it if you don't own it. I finished with 87% complete on this game because the extras make sense to get and it feels right to get them which is fantastic. I watch a lot of dark dramas that have unhappy endings and to play a game that tries to give you a mad experience with ever present despair is right up my ally. The art work throughout the game pulls everything together. Chapter 4 its creepy. Walking around towards the end and just saying "wow they put that in the game, madness returns for sure". Some elements feel kind of rushed. There were fights that I thought a reasonable player would have to take damage to win because the enemy just has these cheap shots but I always came through and built my health back quickly. Countering cheap attacks gets easy when you figure out the AI gets caught on edges all the time so you have something to level harder fights. Jumping puzzles so you can see up your skirt kekekekekekekeke. A game with a lot of element variation, strong cohesive art work, and a compelling protagonist arc make this fantastic. When I found out the screen gets cracks as you are close to death I knew the experience would be great.

Games Completed: 68
Time: 3 weeks 83.07 hours

PS. I know a bunch of the reviews have gotten rather negative with small blurbs at the end talking about the positives in the game but that is directed more so the reader knows the big suck points. Letting you know some of the good bits but making you discover what made the game enjoyable on your own.