The overall performance of Alice: Madness Returns is quite good across the board, regardless of the type of graphics card we used. In our testing we were able to achieve smooth frame rates on nearly all of the tested hardware, with the only exception being the AMD HD 6670, which was not able to play the game above 20FPS when the resolution was increased to 2560x1600. So, regardless of which graphics card is being used, Alice: Madness Returns is a game that can be enjoyed on virtually any system ranging from entry-level to high-end.
There were some issues observed with the game that lead us to believe Alice was either released too early, or was designed for consoles first and then ported to the PC. The first issue we ran into was an FPS limitation that only allowed the frame rates to vary from 22 to 31FPS. These are essentially the target frame rates for consoles, and it is unfortunate to see a game released for the PC with frame rates below 60FPS. Additionally, there is no option to disable Vsync from within the in-game menu, which makes the process hard for those with only minimal knowledge on how to do so through the game's .ini file.
Another issue we ran into was CrossFire support. When testing the AMD HD 6990 in CrossFire, the total frame rates were on average lower than that of a single HD 6970 card. This issue has been passed on to AMD and they are currently investigating it so we hope to hear back from them soon. However, with the frame rate limitation and relatively high FPS on even entry-level graphics cards, the lack of CrossFire support is not going to negatively impact the overall performance greatly.
Jun 26, 2011 Completed it in 13.5 hours. Great game, I'd say it should have gotten 8's from the critics. There are some occasional frustrating issues with the combat/camera, overly tight timing of a couple platform puzzles and mediocre pacing due to the length of the chapters - but overall the good far outweighed the bad.
The last issue that lead us to believe this game was designed mainly for home consoles was the poor mouse support. During the gameplay there were multiple instances when the mouse would lag, almost as if the DPI level of the mouse was being adjusted to the lowest level for a few seconds. This of course was not what was happening, but it is the best manner in which to describe the random mouse lag. Also, there were times when the mouse stopped working entirely. I would have chalked both these issues up to my mouse, but after experiencing the issues I installed another mouse and still suffered the same problems. There were no issues with my motherboard ports, leading me to assume that perhaps the controller support would be less flakey.
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The time I spent with the game was both rewarding and frustrating. The game was playable on even the most inexpensive hardware setups, yet the game still limited the performance of even higher end graphics cards to 31FPS max. While the gameplay was fun and engaging, the flaws with the mouse control proved to be a real distraction from the gaming experience.