A Note From Wonderland.

Before I start in earnest, a quick anecdote: early in American McGee's Alice: The Madness Returns, there's a point where a singular path splits into two. Nothing too flashy -- games do this all the time. A quick switch into Alice's shrunk form that allows me to see chalk markings that are otherwise invisible, and I see two notes; one with an arrow and a childish rendition of a Jolly Roger, and another with an arrow and a flower, both leading down the two paths I mentioned earlier. I haven't played enough to know that the Jolly Roger is Chalk for "main path" (meaning the other path leads to a reward and a dead end), but I get enough to know that's where I'm supposed to be going.

But I double-check myself. I go along the main path first, to see far enough ahead so I know I should double back. But after going too far, the path behind me is closed by rock-slide. I've lost that little reward I knew I should've gone after. I did what I did because most games let you go back. Madness Returns didn't.

They don't make games like this anymore.

Really, they don't; it doesn't take much to see that Madness Returns finds much of its design fundamentals from 3D platformers of yesteryear, which is a good and a bad thing. Good because honestly, this throwback design sets it apart from most other games. Bad, because it's not revamped return to form. Poor camera controls, switch and door puzzles, both repeated ad nauseum -- this might've been one of the reasons these kinds of games stopped filling Wal-mart shelves (the other, perhaps,being that companies ran out of appealing mascots to slap onto covers).

But that's not what set the 2001 game, Alice, apart either. American McGee, partly heir to the Doom empire, has a panache for horror themes and "dark atmosphere" that would make Todd McFarlane and Tim Burton blush. And what's true of the original game is true of its sequel: Madness Returns is a powerful story told in adequate way between sections of an average game. Combat is consistently challenging (due to both careful difficulty balancing and occasional frustration), but like many an indie game where "art" is a keyword, you endure what you're doing to see what will happen. In this case, it's Alice reconstructing the puzzle of her fragmented memory to find out what actually happened the night her family died in a fire. Not common video game fare, though it's told in the medium's bread-and-butter tricks: cutscenes, memory fragments the tell a story during gameplay, and a few in-game sequences where you're left to experience a scene while wandering about.

But even if you're the kind of person that hates the separation of story and gameplay, Madness Returns may still hook you. Scenes in an asylum, the Carpenter and Walrus' dark philosophical waxing -- that's what you're here for. Before Alice redeems herself, you see some dark stuff, and not just aesthetically. Where McGee outdoes McFarlane is impact; Madness Return's worst moments hit hard because you don't know if a silver lining exists, where Spawn's dark corners add up to so much fluff and attitude.

Conventional in all but the one way that counts -- that's Madness Returns. Its tale is worth seeing more than most others in gaming this year, but you may have to slog through memories of gaming's past to see it. Which, as it happens, is just fine with me.