Alice: Madness Returns(PC/PS3/X360)

[Brill Weave]

That's a creepy ass fucking dress.

[Kaisha]

Is the original Alice only available as a DLC for Madness Returns? PSN shows it as an 'add-on'. I was under the assumption it'd be like Dead Space Extraction where it's offered free in new copies of the latest game (Dead Space2), and also as an optional purchase on the digital-stores for those not interested in buying DS2.

[Kyo]

The first one will not be sold separately.

[MoogleAura]

I bought this today and there is an option on the main menu to "get Alice". When you click this it asks if you want to input a code or purchase it. All the new copies come with the code anyway but I'm guessing if you picked it up used then you'd have the option to purchase it at least.

[Katlan]

so any opinions ?

[Tobi]

Been playing this slowly, almost done with Chapter 4. So far, seems to be lots of platforming and not much fighting. There's also few bugs/glitches I guess? Shit like Invisible walls and such, which can be a tad annoyance, even got stuck on a invisible wall while fighting and died and had to fucking restart like 15min back .-. Been playing on Nightmare difficulty, can be pretty challenging at first, 1-4 hits = dead depending on mob you're fighting, but all you have to do dodge a lot and learn enemy attack patterns, which is fairly simple to pick up, camera angle can cause few problems as well, especially when dodging. Once you get to start of chapter 3, game becomes easy mode, even on Nightmare Difficulty(feels that way to me now, now that I have OP Teapot Cannon). Controls are easy to pick up, atmosphere is also pretty nice as well. Each chapter seems to be around 3-4 hours long for me on Nightmare, more depending on how much I fuck up and die. Gameplay seems to be a bit zzz for me now since I just Teapot Cannon and Knife everything to death, this all you need to make the game a breeze, especially that damn Teapot Cannon, though I still do enjoy abusing the hell out of it.

I'd say rent or wait for it to drop in price though. It's not a bad game, just could have been better is all, pretty much my opinion on it so far.

[MoogleAura]

I agree, it's a fun game but I wish I had waited a bit and rented it. The clunky platforming really gets on my nerves at times especially when gliding.

[Kerberoz]

My only complaint thus far is the consolitis. I can't seem to find any option to change mouse acceleration or run in 16:10.

Not sure what people were expecting when they complain about the platforming..

[Tobi]

Got my Alice Plat Wednesday morning, sucked looking for missing Snouts since no way to tell which one you missed. Chapter 4 definitely wins best chapter in the game hands down, such a shame it was shortest chapter too...

Also, for anyone looking to pick it up cheap, apparently KMart has it on sale atm for $34.99. It seems GameStop also has it on sale atm for $39.99

[Yuri-G]

$30 on PC at Gamestop, even. though I'm wondering if I should pick it up for PS3 since it apparently suffers from consolitis?

[Yuri-G]

picked it up for PC tonight and played a little bit so far. can't say much about the gameplay yet but the atmosphere is pure Alice, which is all that matters. really glad they were able to capture the essence of the first game again.

[Kerberoz]

bit of a necro, but useful tweaks:

Documents\My Games\Alice Madness Returns\AliceGame\Config\AliceEngine.ini

GIsSpecialPCEdition=TRUE
bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60
bAllowMatureLanguage=TRUE

AliceEngine.ini file:

MinTextureDensity=0.0
IdealTextureDensity=13.0
MaxTextureDensity=55.0

Set Min to 1.0-5.0, 16.0 is good for Ideal, and anything higher than 55.0 will be fine (I wouldn't go past 70.0 though). Nicer relief effect follows

[XAudio2.XAudio2Device]
MaxChannels=32

Go ahead and change this to 64 or 96. You can go to 128 if you have an X-fi card lol

Look for [TextureStreaming], change everything below to the following:

[TextureStreaming]
PoolSize=520
HysteresisLimit=30
DropMipLevelsLimit=40
StopIncreasingLimit=30
StopStreamingLimit=12
MinFudgeFactor=0.5
FudgeFactorIncreaseRateOfChange=0.3
FudgeFactorDecreaseRateOfChange=-0.2
MinRequestedMipsToConsider=11
MinTimeToGuaranteeMinMipCount=0
MaxTimeToGuaranteeMinMipCount=0
UseTextureFileCache=TRUE

LOD stuff. Every texture is hi-res, no matter the distance

Find [SystemSettings], first off, here are some postprocessing things that you may or may not like:

MotionBlur=True
MotionBlurPause=True

If you hate motion blur (I do), go ahead and set these to false

DepthOfField=True

I don't like the DOF effect either, because whenever I stare at something, everything else doesn't get all blurry and out of focus, so change at your preference

Quality stuff:

Make sure AmbientOcclusion is set to true (it usually defaults to true if it detects a good video card). If you want to get a huge speed boost, set it to false

Set DropParticleDistortion to true

AllowD3D10 causes the game to kill itself upon startup, so leave it at false

Put SkeletalMeshLODBias and ParticleLODBias at -2.5

ShadowFilterQualityBias at 20. Why the fuck did you set it to 2147483647 McGee

MaxAnisotropy at 16

MaxMultisamples can be set at 1 to disable AA, or 2, 4, 8, 16 for that many AA samples. If you plan on forcing some crazy edge-detect AA through your video card, leave it at 1

Play around with MinShadowResolution and MaxShadowResolution. Use multiples of 2 (64, 128, 256, etc.) for both, generally something small for Min, large for Max. I'm using 128/1024 on my config

bEnableVSMShadows, bEnableBranchingPCFShadows, bAllowHardwareShadowFiltering, bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing, set all to true

Put ShadowFilterRadius at 1.500000, and ShadowDepthBias at 0.952000

And because it can't hurt, find [SystemSettingsSplitScreen2], and set bAllowWholeSceneDominantShadows to true

AliceInput.ini
bEnableMouseSmoothing=false

While you're there, if the camera is too close for your tastes, go to the bottom of [Engine.PlayerInput] and add these

Bindings=(Name="F9",Command="FOV 95",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="F10",Command="FOV 100",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="F12",Command="FOV 105",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Press F9/10/12 for a bigger FOV, see which one is nicest

Congrats, now it looks like a real PC game!