Blue Chairs

The game deserves 4 stars. A good edit would get it 5 stars.

The implementation is utterly sound and the prose is consistent and error-free. And that alone is enough to set this apart from 80% of that year's offerings.

It's a beautiful game, and I got really immersed. However, there's a dream section that goes beyond the nightime otherworldly and into pure surrealism for the sake of getting some exposition done. It's not needed, and shakes the mood.

What I'm saying (non-spoilery) is that the conversation with the reporter could as easily have been done by a conversation with Chris, while flying through the dark in the car.

I played Blue Chairs because I looked specifically for games with a surreal setting and surreal is what I got. The opening scene is really great, both technically and as a plot device, and it seems like the start of some psychedelic fun. But it isn't really psychedelic, it felt more like the stoned ramblings of a preachy zen-buddhist who read too much wikipedia on Freudian pychoanalysis. Then again, I don't know what kind of drug I, the player that is, is on.

I have no problem with games with a message, but either I didn't really get it or I'm not interested in it.

But mine is a very subjective point of view: The game is flawles technically, has various endings and if you are into psychology of the sub-consiciousness, symbolism and new-age-isms or just more tolerant than me, you will love it.

Even though I didn't like it I advise you to play it, it deserves it!

Don't do drugs.  I think that just about sums up this whole piece.  Of course the moral could be don't step inside freezers if you stop at a gas station, or for that matter it could be promoting the game Carcassonne.  Yes, it was that type of game; the type where I ask myself what the heck i'm doing inside playing this game.  I can't really see what the charm really is with it.  A guy does drugs, goes slightly delusional, and tries to get to his friend.  There that's the main storyline.

Now it isn't really that the implementation was bad at all.  It was very good.  I didn't find any kinks in in the puzzles (most of them fairly straightforward), I wasn't verb guessing, and there were multiple endings (which was nice).  However, the plot itself absolutely was incredibly confusing.  Instead of sticking with a straightforward line, the plot dives off either side into simply extraneous and pointless puzzles.  It felt almost like the author wasn't sure where to take the story and decided to confuse the issue.  It goes from trying to get a drive to your friend's to walking in an endless maze.

I think that the most frustrating thing about it was that the author expects the readers to understand a whole bunch of in-game allegories.  Many of the puzzles hinted that what you saw was referring to "the bigger picture".  (Spoiler - click to show) for example, In the freezer maze, the people that we see (Carcassonne girls, old man, monsters etc. Are surely supposed to mean something, but it made absolutely no sense and felt like I was doing busy work   there were so many questions which the story threw at me that in the end, the story made no sense, and left fifty pieces which made no sense.  Yes I know the main character is under the influence of drugs, but it just doesn't work giving readers a bunch of pointless dead ends.

I know many people are going to be annoyed at this saying that I've missed it altogether, and please leave a comment, but I really felt like this was trying to look way more deep than it really is.  I didn't like it, but due to the mixed reviews it's a detonate must play.