By Alec Meer on May 11th, 2011 at 9:35 am.

I believe we’ve only been wandering the dark realms of pre-rendered and weakman footage for USA McWow’s belated sequel to olden wierdo-actioner Alice until now, so ’tis a fine thing to finally present proper in-game videos of Madness Returns. It is it wonderland or ponderousland? Oof, that didn’t work at all.
Wait, was that Alice with a machinegun?
Looks visually highly inventive this, though I worry a little that it’ll be Dante’s Inferno all over again. Boring old fart that I am, I crave ways to interact with so imaginative a setting beyond stabbin’ and shootin’ and jumpin’. I do look forward to spraying it across 1920×1200 pixels, however – and there’s a mere month and four days until that happens. Goodness, release dates seem to arrive so quickly sometimes.


Stephen fry should do the cheshire cat.
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Nahh. Fry’s too ‘manicured’. For McGee’s interpretation of the cat you’d need something with a bit of either ‘growl’ and/or ‘sleaze’ to it, I reckon.
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No, Roger Jackson needs to voice the Cat.
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I’d say Keith David, especially in light of his wonderful performance as the Cat in Coraline.
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If it’s anything like the Cards in the first Alice, the machinegun will cost a hell of a lot of mana. Everything in that game tended to be close-range, and long-range stuff was very expensive.
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Finally, a woman with style!
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looked pretty good until it looked terrible
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True. I started to get excited while watching, then they showed the shooting and stabbing. Oh well…
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Wow, looks great! I really wonder why there’s so little female leads, and why the only female leads are “big boobs no clothes sex machine”.
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Wow why don’t you look out the window from time to time and educate yourself, all women are big boobs no clothes sex machines.
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I see Nallen is a fellow Californian. Howdy neighbor!
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Unicorns!
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Looked nice, but somehow I find the moving images less impressive then the earlier released non-moving images. Too much combat action, but then again it’s a trailer so that’s fair I guess. And I think Alice should eat more pixels, she looks more anorexic then most catwalk models.
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Well, a personality disorder would fit with the plot, yes?
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Quite a lot of Wuxia-fu looking stuff in there ain’t there.
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I’ve been craving one of these sorts of games. It’d be nice to play one with a gorgeous art style rather than the fugly Darksiders.
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I loved the imagination and weirdness Alice but the gameplay was a big turn off.
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The “machine gun” appears to be a pepper grinder. Visible clearly in the screenshot:
http://www.ea.com/uk/alice/images/3801fd28144df210VgnVCM2000001165140aRCRD
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She is the mob?
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No Butterfly Dodge footage? I am disappoint. But the Dresses!
mmmm the dresses.
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Suddenly your username makes sense…
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It’s clearly a pepper-grinder
…now I feel stupid someone already posted it
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Loving the looks – but I’d like to hear more about the actual length of the game.
Portal 2 was the shortest game I willingly paid a full price for, anything below 2€/hour isn’t worth it. I used a spreadsheet.
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What’s that expression again? Oh yeah: “All flash, no substance.”
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I can’t understand people saying that the combat seems boring/unsatisfying/bad. Usually playing the game is quite a lot different from watching it. Also, from my perspective, I’ve yet to see enemies this whacky and diverse.
This could, in my opinion, be one of the best games in 2011. And I think that satisfying combat in a unique and insipired world, such as the one we see in the trailers, coupled with a few puzzles isn’t a bad way to achieve that.
That’s what I’m hoping for anyway.
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Looks better than the recent film.
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Here I was, all interested in seeing a new trailer, and then it turns out to be the same as the one they showed at GDC over two months ago.
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“It’s just a dream.”
“It’s not a dream it’s… A TERRIBLE ACCENT”
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There’s been quite a bit of footage at Giantbomb, some time ago come to think:
http://www.giantbomb.com/ask-me-anything-alice-madness-returns/17-3984/
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I’m disapointed at how combat orientated it is, why couldn’t it be a puzzle/platformer(?) like Catherine?
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What are you basing this on? If it’s just the above trailer well, that could just be the trailer. Everyone likes a bit of biff.
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Here’s a riddle: When is a croquet mallet like a billy club? I’ll tell you: whenever you want it to be.
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I always thought the answer was “Because there is a b in both and an n in neither”, I guess I was wrong :(
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That billy club line was, in my estimation, the single best piece of speech in the entirety of the first Alice game. The way that the cat’s voice actor read it was exquisite.
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the correct title for this article would have been something like:
alice 2: rabbit holing boogaloo
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ahhh for stupid little derivatve games
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I dunno… this combines a setting and art direction style that I really like, with the type of platform-jumping puzzles and Diablo-style combat that I have zero interest in. It would have been nice to see those game assets used in a different way. I guess action games are the big market these days.
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USA McWow eh?
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Catatonia, right?
(Oh sod off, login screen, that was for Mirqy.)
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Dat hair…
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