Review: Alice Doesn’t Live There Anymore

She lives in a depressed area of London, her family is all dead from a fire she might have caused and something keeps pulling her into a world where everything wants to kill her.

Or maybe it’s all in her head.

Alice: Madness Returns sees Alice back in Wonderland, a place now devoid of wonder – just deadly things and misbegotten residents.

As the game begins, Alice has been out of the asylum for criminally insane children for 10 years, but doubts about the fire that killed her family still linger. She sets out to recover her memories and solve the mystery.

Her life in Victorian London is filled with misery and – while following a mysterious cat – she ends up in a ruined wonderland, populated with a variety of evil, nasty characters.

Beginning in a steampunk-type environment, she begins her quest to resolve the great mystery in her life, armed with but a knife – the Vorpal Blade.

Along the way, she gathers several other weapons – a pepper grinder machine gun, a hobby horse hammer, a clockwork bomb and a teapot cannon – all necessary in her battles to come.

Also important in playing the game is Alice’s ability to shrink at will – down to the size of a keyhole. Doing so allows her to find hidden areas, obtain clues and escape enemies.

As a platformer, Alice: Madness Returns shines. It incorporates the best aspects of the genre – intricately-designed levels, diverse puzzles and a mess of enemies itching for combat.

The puzzles are as mind-trippingly varied as any in recent games. You have chess puzzles, sliding picture puzzles, math and word puzzles. In addition, there are lengthy slides to gather teeth (used for weapon upgrades), levels played as a rolling doll head and even some old-school two-dimensional side-scrolling levels.

Alice: Madness Returns, being about insanity and asylums, goes to some dark places in its journey. Trepanning (drilling holes in the head) of children, for one, is not the usual for a video game. A back story of child abuse and more lurks in the shadows. The fact that you’re playing a video game belies the subtext and depth of the story.

The design of the different levels – a Japanese motif; a deep-sea journey; abandoned dollhouses and others – are top-notch. The worlds to traverse are massive and beautifully drawn. There were points in the game that I just stopped the action and gazed at the tableau.

Another feature of platformers – side activities – are also present. There are pig snouts to fill with pepper, shrinking violets to recharge in and Radula rooms, where singular combat rewards Alice with paint to color roses.

Most of the main characters from the original Alice in Wonderland book are here, in one decrepit form or another, but Lewis Carroll wouldn’t recognize what they’ve done with the place.

But I think he would have approved.

Alice: Madness Returns is the best platformer this year and the best one for the Xbox 360 in quite some time.

Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Rating: Mature

Manufacturer: Electronic Arts

Rating: 9.5 mad, mad, mad, mad chilies