Because I must be missing something about this game. I picked it up after hearing so many rave reviews about "innovation" and an experience like almost no other. I bought it, booted it up. Cute. Kinda cool the way you turn the world to keep progressing. Some of the turning puzzles are nifty.

Yeah, nifty.

So 15 cubes or so in, I MUST be missing something. It's cute, it's nifty, but top 5 game of 2012? Really?

Yeah, I've heard. There's extra "hidden" stuff that isn't clear. Stuff you have to figure out, stuff that isn't spelled out the way EVERYTHING is spelled out in games now.

The thing is, I haven't seen ANY of that. I'm very deliberately not looking stuff up about the game, not watching video, or doing any digging to see what I am missing. I thought just having the knowledge ahead of time that there IS something would make it so I could spot it. But I've got nothing.

Nada. Zip.

So is it really a top 5 game? Or was that really, REALLY dependent on "being there" when Fez came out and was cool, and had some mythically awesome community of people working stuff out together?

I guess maybe I just missed the boat. Because on its own merits, at least what I've seen, it isn't much more than "nifty."

Because I must be missing something about this game. I picked it up after hearing so many rave reviews about "innovation" and an experience like almost no other. I bought it, booted it up. Cute. Kinda cool the way you turn the world to keep progressing. Some of the turning puzzles are nifty.

Yeah, nifty.

So 15 cubes or so in, I MUST be missing something. It's cute, it's nifty, but top 5 game of 2012? Really?

Yeah, I've heard. There's extra "hidden" stuff that isn't clear. Stuff you have to figure out, stuff that isn't spelled out the way EVERYTHING is spelled out in games now.

The thing is, I haven't seen ANY of that. I'm very deliberately not looking stuff up about the game, not watching video, or doing any digging to see what I am missing. I thought just having the knowledge ahead of time that there IS something would make it so I could spot it. But I've got nothing.

Nada. Zip.

So is it really a top 5 game? Or was that really, REALLY dependent on "being there" when Fez came out and was cool, and had some mythically awesome community of people working stuff out together?

I guess maybe I just missed the boat. Because on its own merits, at least what I've seen, it isn't much more than "nifty."

You HAVE seen the clues to the hidden stuff. You just don't realize it yet.

Finish it first.

It's a great game and it gets even better once you finish it. I do think Jeff over-rates this game a bit, though. It's awesome but top 5 awesome? I don't think it's THAT good.

But, opinions and such.

Don't expect quite as much of a revelatory turn as something like, say, Frog Fractions, but there are definitely moments when things start to align and everything kind of clicks.

I asked myself the same question about Spelunky. Sometimes games that click with most people just don't click with you. It happens.

You need to get to the New Game+ . Have you gotten any anti-cubes yet? Some of those are kind of reasonable; most are the reason that the game is a Top 5'er (honestly, it's by far my #1, and one of the absolute best games I've ever played.) But it's a lot more than turning puzzles.

I think I am in the best position to speak with you because I recently completed the whole game a few weeks ago. You are definitely missing a piece of the appeal because you did not get the game when everyone else did and as such you were not part of the conversation that comes from trying to get all the cubes.

I probably spent more time thinking about the puzzles outside of the game than actually playing the game when I found myself wandering the world of Fez hoping to see something that would spark the idea to solve X puzzle in Y location. I dropped the game for months and eventually picked it up again when I made a thread here to at least confirm or deny if I had enough information about the world to solve the last puzzles. A few nudges here and there allowed me to solve the rest of the game.

You wont know what you are missing until you have enough cubes to beat the game the first time. It's technically impossible to have the information required to get everything before you beat the game once. After you do that you can see for yourself if you are truly missing something.

Fez was in the #10 spot for my GOTY 2012 list, but it probably would have been higher if I could have contributed to the conversation about the last puzzles.

I believe my thread is an accurate representation of the detective work and red herrings that you'll later have to do in Fez, but you can't look at that thread until you beat the game once.

http://www.giantbomb.com/fez/61-24768/trying-fez-again-i-think-i-know-what-i-dont-know-help-spoilers/35-573734/#74

They said often enough that you shouldn't bother with any of that before your second playthrough. I couldn't be bothered though, didn't care to figure all that out.

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone not have found the deeper stuff in Fez after only 15 cubes. Like the other guys said you'll probably need to complete the game and go back before you get to any of that kind of thing, I suspect the game is a little more cryptic than you're expecting.

While I did enjoy Fez, it is my Overrated Game of 2012. It's a competent platformer, which is what you've seen so far. It doesn't sound like you've experienced the "puzzle" aspect of the game. The puzzles aren't as hard as many let on -- the only thing I had to look up was the brute forcing of the last one -- so it's fairly mediocre in that department. It's nowhere in my top 10 list, and I was amazed not only that it was top 5, but that it was placed ahead of Journey.

I definitely see some patterns in the world that I'm figuring will mean something to me at some point. I think maybe the "normal" gameplay isn't enough to get me all the way through it, I dunno. Maybe if it were my job to play about everything that comes out, I would find time for a Fez. But me? Joe Blow with 2 kids and a full-time job unrelated to games? You gotta do better than Fez to keep me coming.

Yeah, I didn't care for this game at all. Audio-visually it's amazing but I just got bored by it even before I collected 20 cubes. And I definitely don't have the interest or the time for some crazy hardcore cryptology puzzles.

Can someone explain the map to me? I forgot what the game said. Are the areas lined silver the ones that you've found everything in or is it the other way around?

It's golden when you've found everything.