Savor the visual details in this game while playing. Extraordinary imagination and creativity.
First off, Gamespot deducted points because the PC version doesn't include the 10-year old original Alice game! What other game did they ever review and deduct points because it did not include older versions of the game?
They said the gameplay doesn't evolve, but I found that it did. Yes, the jumping puzzles with vents, bounce buttons, pressure pads for clockwork bunny bombs, and platforms only visible using Shrink Sense were there from beginning to end, but the variation was also there. Some puzzles were quite challenging, for instance the use of two pressure pads in Queensland in the Card Bridge section; or the rotating doll heads you had to jump through in the Dollhouse chapter.
Gamespot said the mini-games inside the game were not fun. I found them refreshing, and found that they broke up the game nicely. And there was definitely a certain satisfaction gained when finishing them.
But even if you did deduct rating points for the things that Gamespot found to be "Bad," I think the Good things about the game clearly raise the rating above what they gave it. I don't think they're giving the game enough props for the creative artwork - to me every environment was straight out of a nightmare, as it should be. This is a horror/adventure game, where a unique, mad world is imagined in fascinating detail. To me, the asylum cutscenes between the Queensland and Dollhouse chapters is the ultimate horror trip. The 19th century English street and bar/brothel scenes were equally well imagined. That the characters were portrayed as caricatures was perfect. I consciously savored the visual elements of the game as I played, rather than rushing through it.
I give the Spicy Horse development team a lot of credit for this game. I don't think they skimped in any area - the voice acting, level design, environments, sound effects and music, and gameplay challenges were all well above average. I finished this game in about 23 hours (savoring it, as I said), and found this to be a perfect length to keep my interest the whole time, while never becoming stale. I really only had one problem with the game overall: Quick Save and Manual Save features would have been nice, to avoid having to replay entire sections multiple times when beat down in a battle, and to enable replaying favorite sections (hey, I wish I could watch that scene again). Subtracting points for lack of manual/quick saves, I give Alice Madness Returns a solid 9 rating.