Fez Review
Polytron were approaching April 13 at a disadvantage. Their baby, Fez, and its five-year development cycle was marred with numerous setbacks, including a scrapping and complete redesign. In the meantime, 8-bit inspired games were fast becoming the staple of the indie development scene. Titles such as Super Meat Boy, and Braid swept in and stole the hearts of many gamers, and a slew of others side-scrolling platformers soon began to flood the market. As more 8-bit lookalikes were churned out, Fez, to some, was beginning to be seen as another attempt to hop on the nostalgia bandwagon. Fortunately, the lovingly crafted aesthetics pushed Fez above the chaff, for it truly encapsulates all that which inspired Polytron to come up with such an expansive concept for a tiring genre.
Fez’s mechanics are ostensibly simplistic. Jumping and interacting with the world is as familiar as any platforming title. The left and right triggers rotate the world ninety degrees, opening up new paths to higher ledges that house either cubes that help to rebuild the shattered world Gomez inhabits, or rooms to more environments and secrets. Death is a nonissue as you frequently respawn at your most recently touched ledge should you mess up a jump.
Fez’s short story, captured within a handful of worlds can lead to a potentially underwhelming experience. Treat it with the single objective of reaching the end game screen and you will probably regret spending 800 Microsoft Points. Look beyond the navigation and rotations for the sake of closing the gap between two points and you will soon discover new elements that begin to organically tie into one another. From here, you soon learn how to…well, learn the game and read what is actually being conveyed. Much like the fez allows Gomez to see four plains instead of one, the slow discovery of information allows you to now decipher messages that were once thought to be random drawings. It is a shame however, that frame rate drops and game crashes are too common of an occurrence and drag players away from Fez’s fluidity. Certain puzzles can also be broken easily by rapidly rotating the world in order to reach unreachable heights (at that particular time). To be honest though, the critic in me says that these issues are borderline unacceptable, however the gamer in me feels that this only adds to the recreation and recollection of an era of games that I grew up surrounded by.
Video games are mainly an extra-curricular activity. Fez takes that one step further. The time sink here is not in the form of traversing multiple worlds but rather in the pondering on what each specific symbol scribbled onto graph paper represents. Are these sketches just miscellaneous iconography that Phil Fish (Polytron cofounder) threw into the game, or do they correspond to some new undiscovered facet of the game? I eventually found myself fervently searching for that moment of revelation. Upon happening, it all made sense in a bizarre logical manner. When it happened again though, I simply froze in awe. The goal here is not to achieve a measly thirty-two cubes and reach new game plus. It is what is beyond the stereotypical linear progression of reaching a game’s end that earns Fez its ubiquitous praise. Unravel its mysteries; find the doors you did not open, look beyond the idea that the beautiful environment is just a means of traversal, and if you are frustrated, move on for it will make sense eventually. Hell, just stop and listen to the tantalising soundtrack if you cannot do anything else.
It has been a long, but worthwhile wait. The adventure is ready! It’s Gomez time!
