Fez is the product of five years of work from Polytron Corporation and Trapdoor – the guys and gals behind Warp. It mixes puzzles and platformers in a charming fashion that is only seen done in games like Valve’s Portal series and Rare’s decade old Banjo-Kazooie series.
Fez puts you in control of a cute loveable little dude named Gomez who lives in a small 2D down with 2D people in a world of two dimensions. One day, Gomez receives a letter calling him to the top of his village where an old man with an eye patch explains it’s time for him to save the world. Gomez’s world is in trouble after a large golden cube explodes above the town, scattering pieces and fragments of itself across the world. Gomez then adorns the magical fez that allows him to turn dimensions and sets off. It’s also explained that cubes are needed to open doors and that doors are needed to beat the game. After this segment though, the games story takes a backseat and let you simply enjoy it.
The game play in Fez is arguably the games main selling point. In Fez, perspective is the key. You use RT/RB and LT/LB to rotate your perspective of the world on a center 3D axis, then, a gap that did look too far to jump now becomes connected to another platform, and, while you can always rotate the axis of the world, depth is nonexistent. This is extremely confusing, but, once you start playing it’s extremely easy to pick up. Your goal is to collect cube shards and full cubes with 8 cube shards building a full cube. While you only need a total of 32 cubes to complete the game, there’s 32 hidden “anti-cubes” throughout the game in more difficult to find places. These are for the puzzle lovers of the world, as Fez has its own unique language consisting of squares and shapes that you’ll have to solve and decode to figured out the most unique of puzzles.
The most obscure are those that come in the Tetris like shapes that make up the games own Konami-code-esque shapes and if you can take the time to decode the shapes into the corresponding buttons you’ll be faced with an even larger skew of puzzles to figure out, many of which cannot be beaten until NG+ all leading up to an amazing ending once you collect all 64 cubes and the game a second time around.
The reason Fez’s puzzles are so amazing is because they capture something that few games manage to – the feeling of being smart. While Fez’s puzzles are hard and challenging, solving them never brings frustration, only the feeling of being the smartest person in the world for solving them. Every puzzle in Fez makes you feel like you’re the first person to solve it. It’s a very ego-stroking game, and in a good way.
The graphics of Fez really tie it all together. Presented in a beautiful 8-bit graphics with a broad palette of colors, the game constantly amazes you. As you walk, animals scurry about below your feat, birds caw until running away as you draw near, and the game constantly changes time behind you. While trying to figure out a challenge you’ll see the world slowly going from bright blue skies to dark purple as the skies darken. Waterfalls fall silently, neon lights flicker in the rain, and stars twinkle in the ever changing night sky – it’s truly awe inspiring.
The music in Fez is also amazing; the constantly changing 8-bit soundtrack will grow louder as you get closer to solving a puzzle and quieter when Gomez isn’t in the foreground or hidden behind an object, never growing old or getting annoying.
All in all, Fez is one of the most amazing games of the 2012 line-up and I’m already proclaiming it 2012’s version of Bastion (my 2011 Game of the Year). With beautiful graphics, an amazingly simple yet great story, some of the best platforming adventure gaming I’ve seen, Fez truly deserves the 10/10 I’m giving it. If you have 800 Microsoft points, go buy it now. If you don’t, go play the trial and get this game as soon as you can. I feel as strongly about this game as our own Chris Lock felt about Journey.
This game makes me wish I liked platformers…
I played the demo of this and was very happily surprised by the fluidity of the gameplay and will probably be picking this up very soon. Great review Austin!