Reviewing the Review: Eurogamer’s Alice: Madness Returns review

Ah Eurogamer. They really have made the ‘joke review passed off as a legitimate critique’ into an art form all their own. The last time i read a review of theirs so bad it made me want to review the review, it was their hilariously shit drubbing of not-at-all-crap-and-actually-pretty-fun shoot em up Wolfenstein. Now not content with having literally the worst review ever written about anything, ever, with their Braid review, their Alice: Madness Returns ‘review’ is vying for the inglorious title of possibly the most wrong thing in the existence of everything, ever.

Meet the cunt:

Our reviewer is Quintin Smith. You can read more of his high-larious and totally informative and worth reading drivel here http://twitter.com/#!/Quinns108
For the purposes of childish namecalling, we will be referring to him as Cuntin Smith.

The offending ‘review’ :
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-14-alice-madness-returns-review

Whats wrong with the review:
More or less everything. Alice scored a whopping 5/10 and was recommended in a smug way for people who are into shit games, basically.

Whats right with the review:
Well…the spelling and punctuation is probably better than mine.

The Review:

Cuntin wastes no time at all, getting his first bout of wrongness out of the way in the second paragraph, proving that he may be a cunt, but hes a damn efficient one.

 Worst of all is that exploring Wonderland is, in practice, about as full of wonder as watching paint dry. Paint the colour of blood and dreams, but paint nonetheless.

Now, i can actually remember the last time i watched paint dry. And while it was fun, i don’t remember there being many wow! moments like exploring a world filled with giant floating mechanical steampunk teapots, enormous snails, floating cities made of playing cards, flying Trains made out of Cathedrals, Cities filled with Ants made of Origami, or Samurai Wasps. I mean, maybe if i huffed enough paint fumes while i was waiting for it to dry i’d have seen that shit, but no, im fairly sure there was more wonder to be had playing Alice. I’m assuming Cuntin probably spent his afternoon huffing paint fumes himself before writing this shit.

BORING, BORING, BORING

The level design of the platforming sections is fine, in the sense that you can and will jump from one floating platform to another without clipping through the floor, but it’s mostly uninspired.

Yeah, i guess thats why most of the gamers who’ve played it are drawing comparisons between Alice: MR and the golden age of N64 platformers. Cause it’s platforming is so uninspiring. Saying it’s fine in the sense that you can jump on a platform without clipping through the floor is literally the most ludicrous complaint you could make, akin to saying “yeah well this new FIFA game is alright cause any time you kick a ball in it my Dog doesn’t get raped”.

Similarly, the puzzles are of that sad breed where they don’t involve any actual brainpower – you’ll find a lever or button, use it, and it will open up a new path through the level that will speed you onwards.

Oh i’m sorry, i’ll petition american McGee to make it so you have to do the fucking countdown conundrum in order to progress next time.

Weirdest of all, you might find one of the game’s hundreds of bottles. I collected these with the eagerness of a boy scout until I realised that they served no purpose at all.

Or, if your’e not suffering from being a massive cunt disease, you’d have copped that each bottle unlocks bonus content in the menu.

Then we have the other problem – it not being mad enough.

Really? So what wasn’t mad enough for you Cuntin? The bit where Alice arranges a stage show for a group of singing oysters? When Alice shot a flying pig snout with pepper from a gatling gun made form a pepper grinder? When a 50 foot tall Alice stomped on an Army of soldiers made from a deck of cards? When Alice is literally committed to a mental asylum? None of this was mad enough for you? Hey, maybe if they had made it so you clipped through platforms while jumping they couldve made out that its all your fault and that your’e actually going mad in some awesome 4th wall breaking shit. Perhaps that wouldve been mad enough.

REMEMBER RICO FROM KILLZONE 2? HE WAS MORE ENTERTAINING THAN THIS

While Madness Returns looks thrilling in screens and trailers, what you’re seeing there is almost all of the assets that the game has to offer (you’re also seeing the PC version, which is slightly prettier than the console versions). Those are the environments that you’ll see, repurposed and arranged in different ways, for hours on end.

This, again, seems like another complaint that is so fucking lunkheaded i can actually feel a few IQ points slipping away every time i read it. So, basically, what Cuntin is saying is that, youre going to see stuff int he trailer that you see in the game….and it’s going to last longer in game than it does in the trailer. Oh FUCK! No!! Really?? Aw that’s bollocks that is.
Now, if im being thoroughly neutral, i can 100% agree that some chapters in Alice are overlong, and can drag after a couple of hours.  Where i have to disagree with Cuntin Shit is that a game like Alice, which has literally the most imaginative art style and unique settings and backdrops seen in a game for quite some time, is somehow committing a cardinal sin by reusing it’s assets throughout the course of a level. Name me one fucking game that hasn’t done that.

NOT AS GOOD AS HOMEFRONT

With its ostensibly wondrous setting, this game should have felt like a celebration of creativity. Instead it feels cynical and even cheap, as if it were the official game of a Hollywood movie that was never made. The strangest thing about this is that there’s probably almost enough content here to make for a pacey and surprising 12-hour game – but it’s all spread out over 22 hours instead, making the game’s title irritatingly apt.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where Cuntin literally transcends being just wrong, and has actually written the most factually incorrect statement in the history of mankind.
First off, Alice has the most imaginative, creative art style seen in a game, possibly this generation. Aside from maybe stuff like Kirby’s epic yarn, it’ the most glorious celebration of colours shapes and sounds on the HD consoles. There is not a single segment where the art direction fails to impress. From Victorian london which looks like you could be playing an interactive segment of Corpse Bride, to the demented beauty of Wonderland, the aforementioned origami Ants, the Doll Faced Ruin enemies, the shambolic, insane beauty of the Red Queens abandoned Castle, to the haunting, disturbing introduction to Chapter 5, Madness Returns puts every single me too FPS or grim n’ gritty third person shooter of this generation to shame. Not just to shame, but to fucking shame. To compare this to some Hollywood movie cash in a la Transformers, proves that this man literally has shit for brains, or this is the first videogame he’s ever played and has zero to compare it to. I think its more likely his head is just actually filled with human feces.
Also proving how utterly wrong he is is the little gem about what a great game Alice would be if its running time was 12 hours, not 22. Which is rather odd as most people completion times so far seem to be weighing in at….12 hours. I guess it’s possible that if you are the kind of person legally required to wear a bicycle helmet all day and you stand around on street corners waving at Buses and Puddles, and your name is Quintin Smith, and you play the game using your feet, it might take 22 hours.

The further you push into the game, the more the ideas feel hollow, unfinished and unloved.

You are literally a walking, talking, cunt.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Review of Eurogamers review. Alice, one of the most imaginative and interesting games in recent memory, is a game that they scored lower than Homefront (6/10). And lower than Resistance 2 (fucking 9/10). Lower than cookie cutter run of the mill tripe FPS’es like Singularity (8/10). Even lower than the most generic of generic, brown & grey, linear, foul mouthed military FPS’es, the high (or low) watermark of videogame mediocrity, Killzone 2 (9/10). Ladies and Gentlemen, Alice is less fun than listening to Rico Velasquez say ‘motherfucker’ for the 4,324th time.
The next time Eurogamer runs an article about the loss of creativity in the medium of videogames, please, point them in the direction of this review, and remind that shower of smug tossers that they gave Homefront a better review than Alice.