Alice in Wonderland

Let me just start off by saying that Alice in Wonderland is my favorite Disney classic, and when I heard that a remake was being made a few years ago, I was ecstatic. My boyfriend and I went to see it yesterday in IMAX 3D and well, I was a little disappointed. The movie was too dark. There were only a few short scenes where Wonderland is really beautiful and a wonderland. I kind of expected it, because I've seen Tim Burton movies before, but I was hoping and hoping he would make this movie pretty! I didn't like the tree stumps and all that ugliness. I get that the Red Queen took over, but I still wanted to see the wonderland that was in the original movie (and how incredible that Wonderland could have been in IMAX!). I loved the characters. The Mad Hatter was incredible and hilarious (Johnny Depp! ♥); I loved his makeup and his outfit. The actress who played Alice did a great job, and I loved her dresses throughout the movie. the Red Queen was funny (and I liked her lipstick!), and I liked how the White Queen walked and was so composed and magical-like. The humor and dialogue was outstanding. BUT I WANTED TO SEE THE BEAUTIFUL WONDERLAND IN IMAX 3D! I can't believe that I actually think that Avatar was prettier.

However, there were these two people sitting to the left of me that wouldn't stop eating popcorn and some other thing in a bag. That annoyed me a lot. People don't have courtesy anymore. Eat it while the movie is loud but don't chew like a fat cow and reach into a plastic bag really loudly when the movie is at a slow part without a lot of sound. It bugged the hell out of me! I wanted to switch seats with my boyfriend but then I didn't want to make them feel bad! It was frustrating, but then there were these little kids sitting right behind us that kept talking for the whole thing: "OH MY GOD! Look! A caterpillar! A cat! That's a cat! What does that mean? HAHAHA Why did she do that? What does this mean?........" I wanted to yell at them and then yell at their stupid parents for not informing them to shut the hell up during a movie. With all that said, I'm hoping that that was a big reason why I didn't thoroughly like the movie as much as I had wanted to. I'm going to go see it again in a while, this time maybe not in IMAX because our IMAX is kind of far away, but definitely in 3D. I'm giving it a second shot, and I am so hoping I like it the second time.

My review for the movie after the first time seeing it: It was very well written. The cast was amazing. The humor was great. However, it was too dark and Tim Burton didn't really capture the Wonderland that I have loved and dreamed of since I was a little girl.

Heavy Rain Update

Sooo...I got all my trophies (plus 2) back on Heavy Rain. I was playing Borderlands co-op with my boyfriend and as I was receiving all these trophies, when it started to really bother me that my Heavy Rain trophies were gone. So I went back and got them all, plus 2!

I almost decided to buy Heavy Rain too. Yesterday I found out about the Heavy Rain Chronicles! They can be downloaded in the PlayStation Store and they're extra stories! Only one of them has been released, called The Taxidermist. However, it was supposed to be in the PlayStation Store yesterday from what I've been reading but it wasn't. I haven't checked if it's there today yet. Apparently, it's already been released in Europe though. That makes me mad. I want to play it. I was supposed to return Heavy Rain yesterday at Blockbuster, but I didn't. I still have it and I think I'm going to wait another day to see if the first Chronicle comes out. I just don't really want to buy it because I beat it. It's done. I'm not going to replay it for another year or so. I really want to play the Chronicles, but I could just get the game at Blockbuster when more of them come out. But at the same time, what if the Blockbusters don't have it because it's a popular game. Also, the two Blockbusters that are close to where I live only have one copy of the game each. Decisions, decisions.

Heavy Rain

I just finished playing Heavy Rain yesterday and oh my God, it was incredible. The one thing that I'm a little upset about is the whole PSN crash because half of my trophies got deleted. It's not that I really care that much about trophies, but I was almost (if not already) 50% complete with the trophies! I was also thinking about getting all of the trophies for Heavy Rain because I haven't done that with a game yet. I'm not going to lie; it's also pretty cool having your trophies show up on your Facebook. =) I did almost go back to get all my trophies again but it was just too much game play and I was excited to know what happened!

I heard that this recent PSN crash was PlayStation's first crash since it's been going on. Xbox Live has had quite a few crashes, right? My boyfriend has an Xbox and I think it was down a while ago. I'm not one of those "PlayStation is awesome, Xbox sucks" people, but I know a lot of "Xbox is awesome, PlayStation sucks" people. My boyfriend used to be one of those PS3 haters. After hanging out with me for a while and watching me use my PS3 and himself playing games on it, he recently told me that he realizes now that the PS3 is pretty cool. Yeah, it's cool: it has Blu Ray, HEAVY RAIN!, Uncharted, free online, an internet browser, wireless Sixaxis controllers, PS2 and PS1 games, PSP gameplay....I think it's great. I do prefer the Xbox Netflix though, and Xbox 360 has some neat features that PS3 doesn't....YET. I heard that there's going to be a premium service coming soon that you have to pay for with similar things that Xbox Live has. Click for site that has supposed "leaks" for the premium service!

Let's get back to Heavy Rain, though. It was unlike any game I've ever played. I loved that there was no Game Over screen, and that many of the little decisions you made rippled through the story and changed things. I don't like how in most games you have super hard challenges where you have to start the level over or go back to a checkpoint a bunch of times to complete something. I don't like starting over. My boyfriend likes it because he says that it's challenging and when you finish it you feel more accomplished. Well, I completely disagree. I like the story of the game and along the way, sure, there should be a few harder things than others (like boss fights), but I don't want to start over 50 times! One system I really liked was the Bioshock 2 vita-chambers. I think it was also in Bioshock 1, but I can't remember for sure. Once you got killed, you'd revitalize near the enemy and the enemy would still be at the same health that you left it at. That made things a lot easier and more fun for me. I hate redoing things over and over and over again. Anyway, Heavy Rain was not only interesting to the person playing the game; it was also extremely interesting to someone watching. Heavy Rain was like an interactive movie. It was like watching a movie while influencing the characters to do things. Incredible story. I read somewhere that it's rumored to have 22 different endings also. The first time around, I forgot to do one little thing and I didn't have that great of an ending. I was mad. But I redid it (they have all the different chapters in the main menu and you can just redo a chapter rather than starting over) and got a really great ending that I was happy with. While a lot of people were saying that it starts off slowly with the beginning tutorial part, I loved it. As a girl, I loved how pretty it was! Immediately after playing for about 2.7 seconds, I knew I was going to love this game. I would highly recommend this game to anyone.

I really, really, really loved Heavy Rain. I rented it from Blockbuster and I have to return it tomorrow, and it makes me sad. I probably won't replay it for a while though. I mean, the different decisions you make in the game don't really cause drastic changes in the game play until the end. I might want to replay it to get all those trophies I lost, but I just don't see myself replaying it while it's so fresh in my mind. I'm different than a lot of people, though. I don't like replaying games unless it's been a year or so. Like Kingdom Hearts, another one of my favorite games: I've beaten both games (1 and 2) twice but with a long time in between. While my boyfriend played through Mass Effect and then went right back and beat it a second time doing renegade actions after going paragon all the way. And while Mass Effect probably has more of a difference in the game by different decisions, I wouldn't want to go back and play it a second time so soon after the first. While the fun parts are fun, the long annoying parts stick out and make me sleepy just thinking about it. So I'm about to go return it, and I'm sad because I really liked it...I don't want it to be over...and a few friends on Facebook are playing it and I'm seeing their trophies and it makes me angry because I had more than them! Hah. I think there should be more games like Heavy Rain, and hopefully there will!