American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns Brings the Crazy Back to Wonderland

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns Brings the Crazy Back to Wonderland

The new teaser for American McGee's creepy adventure game shows how a rich vibrant imagination can go horribly, horribly wrong.

Eleven years have passed both since Alice was published and the events that took place in that game. American McGee's gothic horror game set the table for many reinterpretations of Lewis Carroll's trippy "childrens" story, and if Tim Burton doesn't send McGee a fruit basket every year, he damn well should. In the sequel to Alice, dubbed Madness Returns, the eponymous English girl is grown up and living in London. She uses the fantasy world of Wonderland to piece together the events leading up to the death of her family, in what McGee describes as a mystery-meets-Memento plotline. But given the horror nature of the subject matter, McGee has actually clashed with publishers about not including enough blood and gore. Alice: Madness Returns is due out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in late 2011.

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"This game is much more like a murder mystery, it's her going back into her past again, using her mind as a tool, using Wonderland as sort of a conduit into her mind, and trying to piece back together the events that lead to the death of her family," McGee told MSNBC's In-Game [http://ingame.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/10/6029073-madness-through-a-looking-glass].

The player has to help Alice put the fragments of memories and events in Wonderland together. "[Madness Returns] picks up in a day in the life for her, and that's actually central to how the story is told. I don't want to give too much away but the idea that this is something that she is dealing with and has been dealing with is critical to how we present her exploration. I think if you look at a film like Memento, that might be similar to how we are dealing with the story's timeline."

For those who don't get the reference, Memento was a film where the central character could only remember the last five minutes of his life and has to figure out his past based on notes and tattoos that he leaves for himself. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you do.

Even though the trailer for Alice: Madness Return has some violent images like Alice repeatedly knifing a teapot-Beholder-crab thing, McGee said that he tries to stay true to the character and the story. "We often get pressure from outside to make things more violent than we think they should be," McGee said. "So the battle is actually the other way around, it's not about trying to have more gore and blood in there, but trying to have what is in there be reasonable and maintain some sense of contrast between the moments of light and the moments of dark. I don't think people are going to view this game as overly violent or bloody - though it does have some pretty mature themes in it."

Based on the images in the trailer and all of what Mcgee is saying about the game, Alice: Madness Return just might be the game that washes the taste of that horrible Tim Burton film off my tongue. Blech.

This game is what madness should taste like.

Source: MSNBC [http://ingame.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/10/6029073-madness-through-a-looking-glass]

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Cowabungaa

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Feb 10, 2008
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Note to self:

Finish the first game before this comes out, that looks fantastically insane. I could use a game like that amidst all the typical RPG's and FPS's.
 

VincentX3

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I remember playing the 1st Alice slaughter game as kid (The one that used the original Quake engine)

Fun times...
I'll try this once it's out if theirs a PC release.
 

Aeryn Seoung

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The first one was one of the first games I ever played as a child. I really hope this is just as good and twisted as it's predecessor, if not even more so.
 

Legion

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Never played the first but I want to.

I also like the look of this.
 

Drakmeire

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I know what I'm going to do next time I drink tea. mmmmm glass
 

DeeWiz

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One of the first games to really make 3D into art, just the way the landscape was shaped and moved, fantastic. Some extremely fond memories of that game, I can't wait to see what he does again.
 

WanderingFool

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dathwampeer said:
Based on the images in the trailer and all of what Mcgee is saying about the game, Alice: Madness Return just might be the game that washes the taste of that horrible Tim Burton film off my tongue. Blech.
Amen brudda!

I'm pretty damn freakin excited for this game.

I've been waiting on it since I first heard of it's announcement.

Colour me. Excited.
Fucking Ditto. I havent a clue what my friend saw in that movie, but I know what I saw, and I did not like.
 

Frank_Sinatra_

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Dec 30, 2008
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Alice? What have you done?

Glorious, absolutely glorious.
Out of all the games I've been anticipating, THIS game is the one I've wanted the most for over a year now.
 

Gaderael

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Apr 14, 2009
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That trailer's quite the acid trip.

Having Alice come out this year makes me so happy that I want to spin around in my chair, but that'd make me very ill.

If this is a good as the first one, we're all in for a crazy ride.
 

LaughingAtlas

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Wha...? We already know how her family died!
They were revealed to have burned alive, were they not? The Jabberwocky scolded Alice in the first game for letting them die while she dreamed, Alice was quite aware of what happened, I think.
Are we going to have a mystery we already know the answer to, shouting it at the screen every time someone acts like the first game never happened?
 

SpcyhknBC

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I have such fond memories of the first game. I'm really tempted to try and get it running again now, who knows how many loops I'll have to jump through to get it running though. I don't remember which flavor of windows it ran on and from what I understand, if it was Windows 2000, it's a pain to try and emulate. Though the hedge maze at the end was exhausting, I think if I do actually play through it again, I might have to noclip that section or just FAQ it. But is one really different than the other?
 

Erana

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Eeenh...

I wasn't quite into the first game; it had a lot of things going for it, but American McGee just seems to stride a little too far on the side of Kitsch when dealing with gore and mature themes. Of course, with the improved graphics will come a chance to better realise his vision and I bet he'll have evolved since the first game...
I'm not really jumping for joy here, but I'd like to see if this game manages to shake the "Hot Topic" feeling of its predecessor. I'm certainly not opposed to its existence.

I had a feeling we'd see an announcement soon, 'cause I saw a poster of the original game's box art in Blockbuster the other day, and I thought it was pretty odd to see merchandise for a decade-old game without reason.
Surely, they're going to capitalize on the Tim Burton movie for their hype.