Alice: Madness Returns (PC) Performance Review - PAGE 1

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to 2000 PC game, American McGee's Alice, and like its predecessor follows the events surrounding a darker and more mentally unstable Alice. If you're not familiar with the first game, it takes place years after Alice's first ascent into Wonderland and is set shortly after the events of Through the Looking-Glass.

In the first game, Alice became traumatized by her family's untimely demise in an accidental house fire. As time passes, she slowly descends into madness and is institutionalized in Rutledge Asylum, placed under the care of Dr. Heironymous Wilson. While in the asylum she is transported into Wonderland, but like Alice's mental state, Wonderland is also darker and at times more psychotic than before. To make issues worse, the Queen of Hearts has taken control of Wonderland and it is up to Alice to restore Wonderland and her sanity.

The second game takes place immediately after the events of the first, but Alice has been released from the Rutledge Asylum and now resides at an orphanage in Victorian London. Still haunted by the demise of her parents, Alice regularly visits Dr. Bumby, who is helping her to forget the past so she can move on. However, after an unproductive visit with Dr. Bumby, Alice is again transported to Wonderland where she must face a new foe and confront the truth behind the fire that killed her parents.

The reason we are following Alice down the rabbit hole is not to evaluate the game, but rather to gauge the performance of Alice: Madness Returns and see what PC hardware is recommended to properly play it. Since the game engine utilizes the Unreal 3 Engine it should be playable on most systems, but to make sure we are going to see how it performs while using as many Nvidia and AMD based graphics cards as we can find.

The video options screen in Alice: Madness Returns is rather basic and only allows for changes to the game's resolution, Anti-Aliasing, 3D Vision, Motion Blur, Post Process, Dynamic Shadows and PhysX. With the Anti-Aliasing options being limited to either on or off, and no filtering options to even toggle, it will be up to the user to fine tune these changes on their own through the graphics card control panel before they will take affect in the game.

The PhysX option at the bottom of the menu is designed to work solely with Nvidia based graphics cards and is a multi-threaded physics simulation. With PhysX enabled, the GPU is able to calculate the dynamics of clothing, characters, explosions, liquid and so on. This increases the visual effects of in-game movement and adds to the overall feel of the video game. However, since Nvidia is the only company that supports PhysX, their products are required to properly utilize this technology.

The video menu in Alice: Madness Returns has three options for PhysX; Low, Medium and High. Each option will adjust the degree to which PhysX is leveraged in the game. When the PhysX level is set to Low, there will be less dynamic cloth, character and liquid moments, and when set to High, the effects will naturally be greater.