On Sun, 9 Apr 2023 18:15:27 -0600, "rms" <
rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:
Well, I enjoyed both games. (here is The Carmack praising him, and wishing >him well): >https://nitter.net/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1612484342567010306?lang=en
[And here is my (very old) review of Madness Returns, just to put my finger >in the pie:]
Well, since we're comparing reviews... ;-)
I was far less happy with "Alice: Madness Returns" when I first played
it (in July 2011!). I greatly praised its colorful and detailed
levels, and wsa generally pleased with the minute-to-minute gameplay.
But I thought the controls "stiff", the combat unpolished that -
thanks to a stun-lock mechanic - resulted in a lot of 'cheap deaths'.
And the game quickly became tedious, with a many levels overstaying
their welcome and too many identical challenges being repeated one
after another. Its narrative wasn't particularly enthralling either.
It wasn't a horrible game, but not one I rushed back to replay.
I was a bit more forgiving when I finally did go back to replay the
game (December 2017). Most of its faults, I determined, were in the
latter half of the game; "'Madness Returns'", I wrote, "definitely
front-loads all its best parts in the starting levels; the second half
of the game, on the other hand, was every bit the tiresome drudgery I remembered." Colorful and fun at the start, it began to wear more and
more the longer I played it. And the DRM for the CD-version no longer authenticated the disk (it was only through some cleverness on my part
that I could play the game at all). So, again, while not entirely
without merit, neither was the game enticing me to come back any time
soon.
Oddly, I don't have a written review for the original "Alice" game; I
guess it pre-dated the c.s.i.p.g.a monthly round-ups. Have I really
not played that game since 2006? Surely that cannot be true.
Definitely a game that deserves another chance to shine. Say, maybe
I'll play it on the Win98 PC...
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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