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Monday, 02 January 2017 00:00

Blue Tear Review

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You are the true heir of the Blue Tear, a blue amulet with great mystical power.

This amulet is the key to destroying the evil “Black Wizard” from killing your family and friends and possessing a body to return to human form and wreak more havoc. In order to save your family, the good “White Wizard” sends you to Africa to make a tribal mask, talk to the African tribal gods, heal a healer, and trek the African Safari... Let's admit it: the plot may slightly sound like neocolonialism is making its way into video games. It's also pretty random. Why did I have to travel to Africa to save my family back home? And if I’m the true heir to the Blue Tear, why did I have to go retrieve it?

During the first quarter of the game, you spend your time in Africa searching around for things that seemed to have absolutely no relevance to the plot. I, for one, was never sure how any of my required tasks were supposed to help defeat the “Black Wizard” or save my family. Half of the time, I was just talking to a weird tribal mask about voodoo rituals and healing the healer in the African village. I guess the healer wasn’t very good at his job…

The plot was also not scary at this point, which is what I had expected from Blue Tear’s marketing material. It seemed like MysteryTag, the developers of Blue Tear, needed to add more time to the game and just threw these scenes in without much connection to the rest of adventure.

Negatives aside, do not let this deter you from continuing to play the rest of Blue Tear. Once I successfully completed the irrelevant tasks through the African village, I was transported to the core of the game, where the story picks up and I could not stop playing.

Blue Tear truly starts when you are transported from Africa back to the creepy family home.

The “Black Wizard," which you find out is very similar to Chucky from Child’s Play, has transferred his soul into a baby doll and is using it to kill your family and friends and prevent you from reaching them or from interrupting his evil plans. As you progress through the house and come across dead bodies, it gets convincingly more creepy and intriguing. The story builds on itself, and you feel as though every step closer to the “Black Wizard” becomes more haunting and chilling. The graphics are also pretty decent and on par with a hidden objects game, and the sounds are extremely relevant to a horror story: creaking floorboards, shuffling leaves, and suspenseful music.

Blue Tear is not a typical hidden objects game.

It is more like a point-and-click adventure that incorporates different types of puzzles and hidden object challenges. I was surprised by how many areas there are to explore and that you had to backtrack to already explored areas in order to find clues you missed before. These areas are also always changing as you progress through Blue Tear, and you have to constantly go back to make sure you completed every challenge. Truthfully, there were not as many hidden object challenges as I had expected, but there were so many other types of puzzles that I didn’t even care. MysteryTag’s Blue Tear is the ultimate puzzle of puzzles. Other than hidden object challenges, there are jigsaw puzzles, coloring activities, decoding challenges, and even tasks like the popular oldies, Bejeweled and Tetris. Even the hidden object challenges in Blue Tear are not the typical hidden object challenges you find in other similar titles. Not only do you have to find objects on the provided list, but there are also some objects you can only find if you combine other objects first. For example, “Smoke” could be the object listed, but instead of simply finding smoke in the hidden objects scene, you have to find wood and fire and combine them to make smoke. I thought this was truly unique and a great game-changer for the hidden-objects genre.

7

The Verdict

I completed Blue Tear in 4.5 hours and for the original price of $8, I think it was well worth it. After getting through the nonsense of Blue Tear’s African travels, the story becomes creepy and engaging, and just like a great horror novel; you don’t want to turn it off. Continuing to play will not disappoint you. The story builds and builds as you progress, and increasingly becomes more intricate and scary. The puzzles integrated within the story are excellent and cover the whole spectrum of puzzles from hidden objects to codes to jigsaw puzzles. Blue Tear combines all the great puzzles classics and is a true delight for any puzzle seeker.

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Jessica Andrews

Whether it's dancing on the streets of Paris or swimming with the dolphins in the Dominican Republic, you can find Jessica anywhere in the world at any given moment. While she is an avid traveler, she calls Washington, DC her home and spends most of her days working as an analytic writer for a tech firm. Growing up in a Japanese household, gaming was always a part of her life. Video games brought her family together and she has kept the tradition alive ever since. In her free time, she also enjoys photography, traveling, running, dancing, and Krav Maga.

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