It is possible to play the first Alice game through this one. There is a guide how to do it. And since I played through it all through this one, I might as well review the first game as well.
[h2]American McGee's Alice[/h2]
A very good action platformer. I love the visual style of it, environments look superb. Combat is pretty good. Platforming controls, the movement in the air are quite interesting, they are definitely unique and I like them quite a lot. Overall the platforming is enjoyable. I love the dialogues, so creative and poetic.
8/10
[h2]Alice: Madness Returns[/h2]
Some of the compliments I have for this sequel are the same as in the previous game. It's a visually stunning game. Environments look astonishing. The storyline is very good.
Platforming controls have completely changed and for the worse. It's pretty much broken, or perhaps I do not understand how it works. Sometimes you can jump 4 times in the air, or jump 2 times and glide and jump again, but sometimes you can only jump twice and that's it, you cannot even glide. Sometimes you increase the height with each jump, but sometimes only the first jump increases the height, the rest of the jumps add no extra height. It's random and it's very annoying when you keep failing the jumps due to inconsistent platforming physics. It's still pretty decent, but it could be good if it worked properly.
Combat is completely revamped as well. You have less weapons, and lock-on plays a major part in the combat. I'm mixed about it. Camera can be your enemy, and you often lock-on on the wrong enemy and it may be troubling to lock-on on the correct one. It's still good and fun, but worse than in the first game.
Overall gameplay bothers me a bit. The game is very linear (with collectable secrets everywhere) and very long for a linear game. And even though you have amazing looking locations, the level design is often simple. The whole game progression is monotonous. You fight, you performing some platforming, then solve a simple puzzle and then it all goes on repeat for a very long time many many times. And what's up with every puzzle needing to be done 3 times? It felt lazy. And they could've solved this problem by spreading the same kind of puzzle through several chapters instead having to solve the same type of puzzle in the same chapter 3 times. And it happens with almost every type of puzzle. So odd. So, even though the game has pretty good combat, and pretty decent platforming, they're not amazing and it is not enough to make the game truly special. It is definitely a good game, but it's too repetitive to be an all-timer.
Also, the game crashes on menu every single first time when I try to play it, and always works the 2nd time, and I can play for hours with no crashes. And if I tried it again (quit and open the game), it would crash on the 3rd try, and work on the 4th try. So basically it works on every 2nd try. So odd. Besides that the final boss was glitched for me and it took me some tempering with the game files to fix it. Either it's a pretty bad PC port, or the game aged terribly for the modern systems.
7/10
