Alice: Madness Returns - Dissected

By Tom Pakinkis for computerandvideogames.com

A bite-sized Dissected feature this week for a short, sweet teaser trailer of our little darling Alice as her madness gradually returns to devastating effect.

Spoilers for the first Alice game will commence momentarily, by the way. You know the score by now.

If you're not familiar with American McGee's particularly horrific imagining of Lewis Carrol's novel (which was no Disney sing-along to begin with), it follows on from Alice's literary adventures to a time when she's older and a little bit more cynical.

Oh, and her parents have been killed in a fire, leaving her all alone and suitably deranged in Rutledge mental asylum.

From there she is transported to Wonderland, except it isn't quite so wonderful thanks to the tyrannical rule of the Queen of Hearts and Alice's broken mind, putting a bleak and demented spin on everything and everyone.

Of course, this being an Alice interpretation with maximum trip-factor, The Queen of Hearts herself is a metaphor for Alice's insanity and once she realises this and defeats her, both Wonderland and her mind are restored to normal.

Alice leaves Rutledge happy and reaping the gratitude from the liberated Wonderland folk.

All caught up? Good, because we're going back down the rabbit hole and into a Wonderland that's gone and gotten itself all insane again. Honestly, you turn your back for a minute...

Alice Madness Returns picks up more than a decade after its predecessor. Our lass has been staying in a psychiatrist's care but her hallucinations, visions and general mental fragility are all flaring up again.

So Alice goes back to Wonderland to seek comfort and refuge, which is what we can see here, an idyllic place where our protagonist can feel safe and relaxed. In fact there's good ol' Caterpillar now, the wisest creature in Wonderland and the one who ultimately helps Alice find the remedy to her problems in the first game.

It's not long though before things take a turn for the manic as flames begin to engulf Wonderland (no doubt symbolising the source of Alice's madness) and our girl slips back to her much more gothic look.

She's sitting at the table of The Mad Hatter's tea party along with the March Hare, the snoozing Dormouse and the impeccably designed man himself.

You'll notice The Mad Hatter bites off a section of his teacup, which reminds us of a scene in the 1951 Disney adaptation where the March Hare slices his cup in half before pouring an impossible half-cup of tea. Why does this idea keep recurring? We don't know - answers on an electronic postcard, brain boxes.

The trailer ends with The Mad Hatter sending a one-eyed, robotic teapot scuttling down the table at Alice who promptly counters the attack by stabbing it in the eye with the Vorpal Blade. She seems to enjoy it too.

Watch the trailer and have a look at the teapot load of screenshots we've grabbed over here. Tell us if there's anything we've missed.