Of all the humans, the cat is probably the normal one. Pigs do fly, playing cards kick you with the halberd, kids are just violent monsters and dolls come to life with criminal ideas. That’s the vision of Alice Madness Returns, the return of a similar crazy title, American McGee’s Alice, where the same designer with a weird name has created new adventures of the innocent girl caught in extraordinary circumstances.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice died a long time ago. Actually, it was never Alice, but a twisted version in a twisted universe. After her family dies in a fire, Alice ends up in an asylum and, after being set free, lands into the care of a so-called psychologist that wants to make her forget the nightmares that haunt not only her sleep, but also her reality. And for that, she must remember the night of the fire and the truth about it, not just to save herself, but the monstrosity infected Wonderland as well.

The wonderful world of her imagination is the high point of the game. The backgrounds are different from chapter to chapter and you go from lit forests with huge mushrooms to a dollhouse inhabited by knife wielders, from a gloomy castle on top of a mountain for a philosophical talk with a teapot to platforms made of cards. The parts spent with Alice in the real world are gloomy, darker than even Dickens’ Bleak House or Oliver Twist’s life, an image of a century when the psychological sciences were barely born and patients were still “treated” with ice baths and electric shocks. 

It’s no wonder then that she prefers to escape to Wonderland, technically the game being a classic platformer. It’s not hard to control the jumps, via keyboard or controller, only the fights are a little more difficult to master because of a twitchy camera. Alice links jumps, floats and jumps again, surrounded by flowers and butterflies, and her overall look changes as the story progresses.

Alice also knows how to wield a weapon, the main one being her famous Vorpal Blade. But that’s just the start, as the next ones are the pepper grinder (Piglet edition), the teapot-cannon and the toy horse with fiery eyes. Each is suited for a certain type of monster so you must experiment each time. The knife is good for melee, the horse for strong attacks, the grinder as a sort of rifle, while the teapot is the kitchen version of a grenade launcher. In any case, the grinder is the cutest one because the pepper has a special use: it makes the flying pigs snort, revealing hidden areas, alternative routes and other secrets.

The main problem is the “prone to boredom” gameplay. The jumps are the same and, if it weren’t for the design, you would quit in an hour. Fights are pretty hard to master, but the enemies give you trouble only if you let them surround you. But even so, they leave behind roses for life renewal, plus teeth to be used for upgrading the weapons. On the other hand, you have lots of things to discover in order to piece together the story, spread around in the form of memories. Each real world NPC has something to say and, most of all, to hide when it comes to Alice and you want to find all the memories, pigs or bottles to get the whole picture.

Some areas are accessible only if Alice is small, an aspect taken from Carroll’s book; fortunately, there’s no need for potions, it’s just a mapped action. But for the rest, you do mostly the same thing: jump, fight, crawl, find secrets, repeat. And as mentioned, the fights are fun only in terms of enemies: cards with pikes, petrol suffocated kids, crabs throwing grenades, fork and spoon goblins, mines that spawn mechanical bees if you don’t destroy them fast, evil dolls and so on.

There are some parts that try to bring some variety to the gameplay, but the ideas are broken by the iffy camera. A musical puzzle, sliding on ramps, a rolling doll head, an executioner coming with an axe after you are moments that could have been memorable if they were technically different, the best comparison here being Prince of Persia.

But all is forgotten when it comes to design. It’s a pity the visuals aren’t exactly up to date in details, but you are drawn without escape in Wonderland. Card bridges come out of nowhere, almost invisible platforms make your heart race, whirls and trampolines throw you into new areas and huge shells will crush you if you don’t steal the memory from their shell fast enough. Waterfalls and mountains, castles, temples, caves, underwater areas, cloud platforms and 2D sections fit together in a game where the freedom to create was absolute. The cinematics are also in 2D, but fit perfectly into the whole game, a hard thing to manage for other titles that took the same approach.

The sound is also very good, mostly for the ambient, with the pigs leading the way; the actors did a good job, only Alice’s voice has a few moments when her tone isn’t at all aligned with the text, the time and place of the dialogue. The animations are sometimes choppy, plus there are quite a lot of bad collisions. I also wanted multiplayer, since I would have liked an arena part at least where to face wave after wave of crazy mushrooms, katana wasps or zombie kids.

Yet with all the advantages of an original design, Alice Madness Returns feels rushed. It has a decent length, no useless chapters and the story doesn’t drag on, but some sections needed polishing, both from a technical and visual standpoint.

A platformer, a rare sight nowadays, has to be technically perfect, otherwise it shoots itself in the foot because this kind of gameplay is essentially repetitive. The same thing goes for the puzzles (too easy ) and fights. Still, the game catches you in its crazy universe enough so you really want to see if Alice remembers that faithful night and if it really was somebody else to blame or it was her that gave life to a criminal fantasy…