Alice: Madness Returns takes bits and pieces from Lewis Carroll's original vision and filters them through a gritty, new light to great effect. Navigating Wonderland via jumps (and double-jumps and triple-jumps), floating, and shrinking makes things more interesting, and viewing secret messages using Shrink Sense to find hidden paths and items adds to Alice: Madness Returns' exploratory experience.
Alice's acrobatics are also a lot of fun to apply. Knocking over an armored enemy with the Hobby Horse, slashing it open with the Vorpal Blade, and then finishing them with the Pepper Grinder is a seamless barrage. The variety of weapons encourages an organic construction of combos, based on each item's strengths. Dodging is fast, adding to the feel of Alice as a lethal character. Combat is fluid – it animates smoothly, it's responsive, and Alice flows from one move to the next without stutter or stop. At its heart, Alice: Madness Returns combines the weapon-based fighting of third-person action games with more conventional platforming.
