Alice: Madness Returns Made Me Go Mad

Alice: Madness Returns beholds an incredible environment with such a distinct art style. The people in London are twisted and Tim-Burton-like while the different worlds of Alice's psyche (aka Wonderland) each lend a theme along with imaginative enemies and landscapes. Despite the dazzling art style of Alice: Madness Returns, gameplay is not as great as I had hoped. Let me begin by saying you've better be more than skilled at jumping onto platforms of all kinds, or you'll never make it past the first world. I'm not kidding. Maybe 90% of this game is determined by how well you can jump and/or float onto a platform. No doubt you will spend countless hours screaming at Alice and beating your computer at your failed attempts of trying to land perfectly. Hey, here's a fun fact. I discovered a game glitch where once you spawn, the W button appears stuck (though it isn't) and she will keep running forward until you beat on the W button a few times. I fell quite a bit due to this glitch, and it kept happening; it didn't happen ALL the time, but every now and then after spawning. And it pissed me off. Something else: when I first played the game last summer, I discovered another glitch. I think it was just after I bought the game after it was released, so this has probably been fixed since then. Upon the first major boss fight, you must use your umbrella shield to redirect fireballs into the enemy. In this glitch, the umbrella button, well...didn't work. At the time, I had no idea what was wrong or thought maybe I was pressing the wrong button. After meticulous research, I discovered others were having the same problem and maneuvered my way around dreadful instructions in order to fix the problem. I am proud to say I did some computer-science-manipulations (which is funny, considering I am a Communications major), and made it happen. I am still proud of that moment. Since then, I've had to buy a new computer and start all over again from scratch and was worried I'd have to conquer that glitch again. But I didn't, because I'm not sure I could work that magic again. With the constant rage-quitting and a sore wrist from beating the computer desk with my fist, and my mouth tired of stringing curse words, I still can say I hope to finish Alice: Madness Returns in one piece. After a while, I got a hang of the jumping and floating and landing. The combat isn't too hard and the puzzles are measly.  Overall, I loved the story, character design and environment of the game. I can handle jumping onto platforms any day if it means being surrounded by a gruesome version of a childhood fairytale. During some cut scenes, the art style changed into something like this. It's dark and I love it. Character design hardly disappointed me and I felt thrilled to see what came next. For instance, take the zombie guards of the Queen of Hearts. Just so cool and they tie right in to the story, since they were killed in the first Alice. Like I mentioned earlier, this game takes a certain amount of skill, senseless skill, but a skill needed to advance in Alice: Madness Returns, and I think I find myself only playing to finish the story rather than enjoy the constant jumping from platform to platform. It's about timing and if your computer lags a little, well good luck. Some games you can play laggy, but not this one. I play it for the story, and the art.