newcritics.com

Alice: Madness returns follows the character Alice (go figure), a character whose family was tragically killed in a suspicious fire.  Alice’s mission is to discover who and what killed her family, in order to uncover the truth the game will have you traversing between Victorian London and a dark and macabre Wonderland that is both similar and also very different from the last time she visited it.  The visuals in this game are simply breathtaking, the environments are so detailed and so imaginatively designed, the developers have clearly poured everything into this and succeed at pulling the player into Alice’s surreal world.  Although the narrative is gripping, the visuals are a much greater draw and play a much greater role in moving the story along.  The game will take you to wide variety of places, industrial worlds, underwater ship wrecks, a house of playing cards in the sky......the environments are all incredible to look at and will leave you in awe at the sheer depth of imagination that was poured into this game.  However the visuals and the environments are not without their flaws.  Some of the textures have trouble loading and look like they could have used some more work, but these few texture flaws don’t diminish the overall artistic brilliance that is constantly present within Alice.  
    There’s also plenty of content that comes packed along with this game which gives it plenty of bang for your buck, including the original Alice and wonder game which is available for download.  The game play is fully immersive and really contributes to bringing the imaginative world of Alice to life.  Certain aspects of the game really help to make you feel like a girl who’s utterly insane or just really imaginative.  The game controls nicely, you’re given a few weapons to cycle between, one of which is mortal blade, basically a sword that you use to kill your opponents, it lets you jump, float, double jump, shrink and do just about everything you would expect Alice to be able to.  On the downside the repetitiveness of the combat system becomes increasingly glaring as you progress through the game, the enemies are pretty easy to kill and can all be killed with one button and although the game does include a few puzzles here and there to add some variety to the gameplay, they eventually become stale and irritating later in the game.
    Alice is a game with plenty of life and scope, the environments are all well imagined and beautifully rendered, unfortunately it’s few major flaws keep it from attaining the level of brilliance that it aspires to.
Rating: 75% “A decent adventure game worth embarking on.”
Pros:
Very imaginative environments
Interesting take on Alice and Wonderland.
Cons:
Repetitive combat mechanics
Some laggy and unpleasant looking textures