Eleven years is a long time in any industry. In the period between American Mcgee's Alice and its sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, we had an entire console generation, the birth of Steam, the collapse of Sega as a first part developer, the rise of Microsoft as a first party developer, and the near collapse and resurrection of Nintendo.
We had Grand Theft Auto III and IV, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Pokemon solidifying itself as more than just a fan, Call of Duty, and many amazing titles. How would Alice, a game full of innovation, hope to compete in this climate?
The answer apparently was backslide. Set one year after the events of Alice, the titular character, while out of the asylum, is still being treated for her illness by a psychiatrist named Dr. Bumby. While she is thankful for being out the asylum, something doesn't feel right in her mind. Like she is forgetting something important. It is then that she is drawn back into Wonderland, to discover that an outside force called the Infernal Train is wreaking havoc. The rest of the game is trying to stop the train and to reclaim Alice's lost memories. The story carries this game, if I'm being completely honest. It takes things that were merely implied in the first game and extrapolates on them to a great degree. Without spoiling too much, this game is even darker than the first in terms of subject matter and it really messed with me at times. The dialogue and writing is even more polished than ever. It's a good thing the story is as well told and crafted, because the gameplay is objectively worse.
Before I write about that though, I want to give mention to graphics and sound. Most of the cast returns from the original game and continue their spectacular work. While the music of this game can't compare to Vrenna's work on the original, Jason Tai and Marshall Crutcher do a good job (though Vrenna did contribute one track to the game, and it's admittedly one of the better tracks).
Graphically this game uses Unreal Engine 3, and it's a great representation of what the engine could do when it wasn't being a slave to brown. The excellent art direction shines through. That being said, it pains me to say that this game has serious performance issues. I have an AMD Ryzen 5600G processor with 16 GB of RAM. I shouldn't have this much slowdown, especially from a game that runs on Xbox 360. And if you have an older system, the only thing that solved my stuttering problem was playing the game 640x480.
In terms of gameplay, this game is a bit of a collectathon in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie with the combat of a Zelda game. While it is fun, the camera's lock on feature has some difficulty targeting what you want to actually want to attack. There's a lot of variety in stages to spice things up, too. The problem is there's not a task in this game that doesn't repeat itself multiple times. I lost count of how many Mario 64 style slides I went down. It got to the point where if I had to solve one more sliding block puzzle, I was going to puke. As soon as the story begins to pick up steam, it feels like the game pulls you away to do some non sequitor. The result is a 7 hour game stretched out to about 15 hours of content. By the time I got to the game's final (and only) boss, I just wanted it to be over. Which is a shame, because the ending sets up a sequel that will never come. Thank you for that, EA.
It's worth one playthrough, at least. But I don't see myself coming back to this one the way I did the first game anytime soon. That being said, if by some miracle we ever get a third Alice game, I'll be there with open arms. There are few game series with as much untapped potential as this one. As I mentioned in my review for the first game, buying this game is the only surefire way to get the first game. So I say pick it up. And who knows? You may fall in love with it the same way so many cosplayers and goth subculture has.
We had Grand Theft Auto III and IV, Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Pokemon solidifying itself as more than just a fan, Call of Duty, and many amazing titles. How would Alice, a game full of innovation, hope to compete in this climate?
The answer apparently was backslide. Set one year after the events of Alice, the titular character, while out of the asylum, is still being treated for her illness by a psychiatrist named Dr. Bumby. While she is thankful for being out the asylum, something doesn't feel right in her mind. Like she is forgetting something important. It is then that she is drawn back into Wonderland, to discover that an outside force called the Infernal Train is wreaking havoc. The rest of the game is trying to stop the train and to reclaim Alice's lost memories. The story carries this game, if I'm being completely honest. It takes things that were merely implied in the first game and extrapolates on them to a great degree. Without spoiling too much, this game is even darker than the first in terms of subject matter and it really messed with me at times. The dialogue and writing is even more polished than ever. It's a good thing the story is as well told and crafted, because the gameplay is objectively worse.
Before I write about that though, I want to give mention to graphics and sound. Most of the cast returns from the original game and continue their spectacular work. While the music of this game can't compare to Vrenna's work on the original, Jason Tai and Marshall Crutcher do a good job (though Vrenna did contribute one track to the game, and it's admittedly one of the better tracks).
Graphically this game uses Unreal Engine 3, and it's a great representation of what the engine could do when it wasn't being a slave to brown. The excellent art direction shines through. That being said, it pains me to say that this game has serious performance issues. I have an AMD Ryzen 5600G processor with 16 GB of RAM. I shouldn't have this much slowdown, especially from a game that runs on Xbox 360. And if you have an older system, the only thing that solved my stuttering problem was playing the game 640x480.
In terms of gameplay, this game is a bit of a collectathon in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie with the combat of a Zelda game. While it is fun, the camera's lock on feature has some difficulty targeting what you want to actually want to attack. There's a lot of variety in stages to spice things up, too. The problem is there's not a task in this game that doesn't repeat itself multiple times. I lost count of how many Mario 64 style slides I went down. It got to the point where if I had to solve one more sliding block puzzle, I was going to puke. As soon as the story begins to pick up steam, it feels like the game pulls you away to do some non sequitor. The result is a 7 hour game stretched out to about 15 hours of content. By the time I got to the game's final (and only) boss, I just wanted it to be over. Which is a shame, because the ending sets up a sequel that will never come. Thank you for that, EA.
It's worth one playthrough, at least. But I don't see myself coming back to this one the way I did the first game anytime soon. That being said, if by some miracle we ever get a third Alice game, I'll be there with open arms. There are few game series with as much untapped potential as this one. As I mentioned in my review for the first game, buying this game is the only surefire way to get the first game. So I say pick it up. And who knows? You may fall in love with it the same way so many cosplayers and goth subculture has.