No More Madness

So, I sent Alice: Madness Returns back early yesterday. Early being defined as before I finished it / farmed it for achievement points. Truth be told the game isn't . . . terrible, it's just not good. If this were a just and fair world there would be a second release tier for games like this, not quite budget / indy, but not quite blockbuster either. It would be priced somewhere between $30-$40 instead of $50-$60, come with some sort of freebie (like a soundtrack) to sweeten the deal, and a disclaimer that it's not a top flight title.

Alice is the kind of game that used to come out in droves back in the early psx days, the kind of game that was loved by its designer, but not necessarily its developer or its publisher, so it got released early, or got its budget slashed, or just generally lacked the kind of resources necessary to make it what it should have been.

Its functional enough, you go from room to room via platforming and switch hitting, dispatch waves of enemies with at least a couple different weapons, all the while waiting for the next cinematic to happen and explain whats going on. The downside is the camera's not great, the combat is pretty boring, and the way the game flows is disjointed and confusing. And not confusing in the clever way its trying to be, with charming flowery dialogue or cryptic and interesting characters. No its confusing in that, wait a minute, I was just there now I'm here for no reason sense, or the what they're talking about has absolutely no relevance to whats going on, and my personal favorite feeling: if anyone actually played this, it might actually work right.

I might be able to see past some of it if I was a huge fan of the source material (alice) or even its predecessor (american mcgee's alice), but I'm really not. I was just looking for a trippy game, with an interesting protagonist, and gameplay that wasn't all take cover and shoot (western), or double jumps and air combos (eastern). Alas, while I wouldn't say Alice is a total failure, nothing is going to happen in the last 4 chapters that is more interesting or entertaining than what happened in the first that I did complete.

Which is a shame, because from what I've read its one of the few games with a proper attitude towards replayability and achievements. After a level is completed you can go back any time to get more secrets and collectibles, and its even broken down into little dvd like chunks so you don't have to play through the whole level to get that one thing you missed inches before the boss. I can certainly appreciate that, and believe me as I was sealing up the gamefly envelope I gave serious consideration to powering through it just for the 1k. Fortunately that version of me was killed and buried in the Afro Samurai dvd sleeve.

-F.