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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
Another fan of the original
By Jeremee Wetherby
Before I start, I'd like to make a few things clear. I am a big fan of the original game and was looking forward to the sequel so I already have a positive attachment to this game. Secondly, I'm running this on an Alienware computer with dual graphic cards so I cannot comment on lag issues that have been highlighted by other reviewers.The Review-This game is visually stunning. The more I play, the more time I'm taking to explore the environments and really enjoy the detail the designers have put into the game. It's this very point I think that's causing other to dislike the game. Recently, I've seen a trend in gaming to identify a challenge and work to complete that challenge as quickly as possible. My son is a prime example, he works to get through a game as quickly as possible and doesn't try to enjoy the game, the challenges, and the puzzles. Alice:Madness Returns reminds me of many of the early computer games that were released. Various jumping, lever, platform challenges to move onto the next level. The enjoyment from Alice comes from the amazing visuals and how Alice actually moves. Her hair, her outfits, and the butterflys that appear when she dies, sprints, or floats down to a platform. An additional perk is her heightened senses when she's small. This sense allows Alice to see hidden platforms and messages throughout the game. Most of these messages are informative, however, a few I found very amusing.The combat system has been upgraded and it is very satisfying. There are a few issues which I will highlight below, but overall, it's tolerable and it's not anything that I don't think a future patch can't resolve.The NegativesThis was clearly ported to PC. A game controller is clearly the way this game was meant to be played, however, I had to give it up since it became very frustrating to constantly readjust the camera angle to follow Alice with the controller vs use the mouse. Additionally, As highlighted in some of the negative reviews, is the "targeting" combat mode. I believe this was meant as a simple way to use ranged attacks in the game, however, it becomes very frustrating when you have to switch between ranged and melee. While in targeting mode, you can use the umbrella to deflect attacks but you can't when your not in this mode. This can be very frustrating especially when I don't typically use the auto-target feature. This is where a game controller would make it very simple to switch modes on the fly and a keyboard makes that difficult. Also, I've found the only way to get out of this mode quickly is to shrink.Overall, I'm really enjoying this game despite the control issues. The story is clearly pulling me in and continues to pull me deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. For those reviews that highlighted the frustration of not being able to save, welcome back to the old days of gaming which in an ironic sense I'm enjoying. It's forcing me to learn how to play the game better and make Alice more agile. I wouldn't recommend this game to someone who just enjoys getting through a game as quickly as possible, but to someone who is willing to take the time and enjoy it for what it is. If your the type of person that enjoyed Psychonauts, you will definitely enjoy Alice:Madness Returns.
40 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
Make sure you have a good graphics/video card!
By o.o
******************************************************************************************************************I bought this game the first day it came out, anxious to play it. While it did not work on my computer because I had crummy a graphics card, my brother allowed me to use his because his computer has the recommended graphics card, and was more suited for gaming. On the highest setting it ran good,but not perfectly, so I turned the resolution and dynamic shadows off (on will really kill your cpu) and it worked much better :)Now, as for the game itself, it wasn't bad but it was lacking in many areas, which I will explain in a minute.(NOTE: REVIEW FOR THE GAME PLAYED ON NORMAL MODE, OTHER MODES LIKE HARD, OR NIGHTMARE, MAY HAVE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT THINGS o.o)******************************************************************************************************************THE PROSStory: Like the first game, due to a fire that happened is Alice's past, she is still scared and trying to pick up the memories of what really happened with that fire. Since she is troubled, her wonderland is troubled as well. Now a train is part of the reason why wonderland is so corrupted and Alice must try and get to this train before it corrupts even more of it. It is rather interesting, in my opinion, to see a macabre version of Alice in wonderland.Graphics: if your computer can support it, the game actually looks very pretty,not final fantasy 13 pretty, but still clear, with many shades of colors.Change of Costumes: During the different stages you have to go through Alice will have some costume changes, so I guess you don't get bored of looking at the same Alice dress :PNew Items to Collect: In the first Alice, even though I can't remember it that well, I remember only collecting new weapons to keep. In this game, there are new things to look for such as pig snouts that lead to hidden areas, new weapons that can get upgraded up to 3x with shark teeth, and bottles and memories holding clues to the real past.New Health: You now have roses that display as your health. I can't remember what displayed your health in the last game xD but now you can also gain roses buy going into these huge shells hidden around in the various stages that, if you complete the test, give you red paint to "paint the rose red", where, if you get 4 paints, you get another rose added to your life.Hysteria Mode: The all new Hysteria Mode! In the previous Alice, if you drank a red potion you went into crazy mode and got a lot stronger. Now, the potions are no longer and if you are low on health you can hit a key to go into hysteria mode. Alice turns all white and the only other colors are black and red. Enemies cannot hurt you and you can do a lot more damage, it only lasts for a limited time though.(side note: Also if you kill an enemy in hysteria mode, you will not get shark teeth from it.)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NEUTRALCan't Get Lost: The game is pretty straight set. I never once got lost anywhere. But there were always different ways to go,and these led to memories/bottles or shark teeth or pig snouts which kept the game a little interesting, but got rather redundant after a while since there is nothing else to look for. You always knew which way to go because when you clicked on the key to become small alice, purple icons popped up on the wall or floor showing you which way led to what, skull leading to a fight and usually the next area, house to memories, and bottle to bottles. The downside is that, you usually couldn't go back the way you came (which could be annoying if you forgot bottles, pigsnouts, etc.)Not So Much In the Way of Puzzles: I personally like puzzle games and I like it when non puzzle based games throw puzzles at you to keep you thinking. While there WERE puzzles in this game they were far from difficult. Sometimes you would have to rearrange some puzzle blocks to make a picture, but these didn't take that long. The only thing even close to stumping me was a chess puzzle towards the end of the game. Those were basically the only puzzles. I found myself doing the same puzzle block thing at least 3 times in different stages so it was redundant and there were no exciting new puzzles to come. But at least there were SOME puzzles to keep things slightly more interesting.Slight Glitches: I am usually not one to get glitches in games, so it's weird when I do. I remember I had a glitch once where a crab enemy got stuck by an invisible force and I needed to kill him so I could advance to the next area. After trying a number of ways to try and get it out, nothing worked and I just had to reset. It wasn't that big of a deal, there are always gonna be glitches in games right? But if found a glitch, I'm sure many others probably have probably found a few too because I NEVER find glitches.Only Four Weapons? If I remember right, there were a few more weapons than four in the previous Alice. I'm not going to say only four weapons is a bad thing, you get well accustomed to all the weapons.(Plus you did get to upgrade them) But I found that using only those four got rather tedious, I personally would have preferred a few more.Controls: Maybe it was just because I was not used to using those controls, but to lock onto an enemy you had to push caps lock, and to switch to another enemy you had to use tab. While it makes sense, I often found myself hitting the wrong key a lot. (You could not change these keys in the control options)Sudden Pausing of the Game: As you are wandering around wonderland, occasionally the game with pause for a slight second to load some data. Another thing is that, if there are too many enemies or objects flying being created (with the killing or monsters of destroying of obstacles) the game will start to lag. Maybe it's just cuz I didn't use the top notchiest gaming computer in the world :PQuick to Finish?: It didn't take me more than 2 days to beat this game, and that was with a lot of breaks. I'm sure it could be beaten in less than a day.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CONS:Just Too much Fighting: You couldn't usually get to far without fighting some bad guys. I mean, after a while it just gets boring. You have to fight the group of bad guys to open the way to the next area, then do it again, and again. However, there were some new enemies thrown in at each stage so at least you had some new enemies that required you to kill them using different methods. Yet, the same darn black blobs appeared everywhere and got pretty redundant and annoying, especially the 5 faced blob.Paint the Rose Red Areas: To get another paint vile from these shell rooms, you have to complete a certain test. While that idea is not a problem, it's the fact that the tests are redundant. Once you enter the shell, you are on a platform table with a huge rabbit and mouse looking down at you it's usually you either have to kill all the enemies or survive the passage of time. The environment never changes and the tests didn't change and got boring. Plus that darn rabbit always says the same thing at the end when you complete the test, "You've already missed the train!" (Geee if you know that I fricken missed the train you annoying rabbit, why don't you tell me where it's going to be next or it's schedule!)Camera: I can't really explain it but the camera angles could get rather obnoxious. Most of the time they were fine but commonly the camera would screw up and Alice would move in a direction that you don't want her to go. Maybe it's just the way they did it, but moving the character in a certain direction would sometimes be a bit harder than it should have been.************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************OVERALL:All in all this game was okay. I took away one star away from this game because I did not like all the fighting and I took away another start because I got bored toward the middle of the game with the lack of different things to look for and the fact that it you can just aimlessly wander around and still get to the next area you are supposed to go to fairly quick. (While that makes it easy, it also makes it, like I said, rather boring.) I liked the first game better.************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************WHY i THINK THE FIRST GAME WAS BETTERThe first game seemed more challenging overall in the way of enemies, obstacles, and puzzles. In the first game there was always something exciting and new that would pop up randomly, so it didn't matter that there wasn't much to "look" for in the way of items.The environment changed at a good pace: I remember going in a water environment for a bit but then coming up on land, then not too long after going to another setting.In the first game the enemies were tougher: Enemies came crashing out from mirrors, tons of ghosts would scream at you and make it hard for you to pay attention to aiming at them, and there weren't a whole lot of those red potions to make yourself stronger.You didn't have to kill enemies: You actually most of the time didn't have to kill enemies if you really didn't want to, unlike in the second game where a good 95% of the time you have to kill the enemies.The environments actually felt like puzzles in themselves: There were A LOT more hidden things, for instance, in a few stages, you had to FIND your way to the next area, you couldn't just aimlessly wander around and walk into it. You would find yourself searching every nook and cranny of a stage until like an hour later you found the hidden area that advances you to the next room. THE ASYLUM STAGE WAS A PUZZLE. That stage was just crazy. It was a wall of mirrors that took forever to find your way through, and the enemies that came crashing out of the mirrors didn't make things any easier because they could mess up your sense of direction xD.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I would recommend playing Madness returns if you have played the first and want to continue with the series, but it was not worth the $50 I paid for it. I'd say wait till it goes down to about 30 bucks :)
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
An Updated Alice
By Taco Mike
I just received the game and installed it this evening. I spent close to two hours working my way through the first level and thought I'd throw in my two cents.First, I'm running it in Windows XP (SP3) on a 1.77 AMD Athlon 64 processor(3500+), with 2GB RAM, and a 7600GT Nvidia video card. For a machine that just meets the minimum requirements, the game runs fairly well. There are a few framerate issues, and it can lag with multiple enemies on the screen. Otherwise, I haven't had a major problem yet. There are minor dialogue cut scenes in which the dialogue skips and repeats itself (the parts where Alice recovers memories), but with the subtitles on, it's not anything to get upset about.The visuals are gorgeous. The game has some really impressive scenery, and I would say that it's almost worth the cost of admission just for that alone.The story will seem familiar to anyone who's played the original. It's been expanded somewhat, but it's definitely a continuation of the original, rather than a retread.Gameplay is virtually the same as in the first, but with some updated actions. Without reading the manual, there's not much of a learning curve for familiar players. The dodge maneuver is particularly cool-looking, and there are some new enemies to deal with, so I don't feel as if this is a slavish remake of the first game.My final verdict is that it's a nice continuation of the story from the original. There's enough new content to make it feel new to me, while still maintaining continuity. It runs on a fairly old setup, which is very refreshing, considering that Unreal Tournament 3 wouldn't run on this system. The graphics are great, and I give it an overall four out of five on first impressions.
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