Alice: Madness Returns for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

There are a few bad things to be said about the game, to be certain. Despite worlds built with expansive vistas and an assortment of little nooks and crannies, it feels very linear, with most of those nooks blocked by invisible walls and attempts at full exploration prevented by either high walls or bottomless pits. Up close the textures tend to look a little rough, but personally that doesn't bother me. Graphics are great, but they're hardly everything, and the game does a great job of animating Alice, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, etc.

Overall it plays like an old-school platformer in many ways, with the inclusion of mostly-invisible platforms making an interesting addition. Alice can't grab the edge of ledges, which was troublesome in places where it's necessary to milk every inch of her impressive jumping/floating ability to reach the next location. The only thing I really didn't like overall was the difficulty in targeting the enemies I wanted to, but it didn't hold me back overall.

I greatly enjoyed the storyline and the worlds - though the underwater world seemed very out of place and childish, bereft of the creepy factor the other worlds maintained faithfully. Snippets of time where Alice was awake in the real world were a sometimes relieving break from the wierdness, but I wish more happened in between realms of madness.

I was disappointed in the final boss, but overall I found the fights were dynamic and required a decent amount of strategy to finish without entering Hysteria (I did manage to complete my goal of playing the whole game without using Hysteria though), and there was a good variety of enemies requiring different methods to defeat. The minigames felt forced in places, but the puzzles were fun nonetheless.

Madness Returns was a nostalgic reminder of old platforming, with excellent writing and appropriately creepy (and sometimes nonsensical) dialogue. There was enough of a variety to keep me interested, while maintaining the dreamy feel. 9/10