QCF: FEZ

About five years ago, the world was introduced to the wonderful vision of Phil Fish’s flatland-inspired, pixel dream world starring a marshmallow-like man named Gomez, and featuring his defiance of two-dimensional physics. Time moved on, and through troubled development, FEZ rose from the ashes of irrelevance and finally made its way to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. With conclusive play on the finished product, the overview of FEZ is as mixed as all of the different camera perspectives you’ll encounter.

FEZ is a puzzle platformer which focuses on collecting objects. The game has a unique approach in its emphasis on constant exploration. It labors to take away several different conventions established by platform gaming (which even includes "Metroidvania"), and it blends surprisingly well in its enticement. The incentive behind the simple premise of clear-cut exploration and collecting is FEZ’s core mechanic. The action of shifting perspectives manages to stay refreshing throughout the entire course of the game. Panning perspective views from the left or the right provides an angular viewpoint that takes the environmental settings and positions them into points of accessibility, which determines different routes through particular stages.

Like portals in Portal 2, the charm and whimsy of this gimmick perpetually grows on you. As you gradually progress deeper in the world, you’ll find the role of this mechanic is modified with innovation. Approaching view-shifting platforms, or experimenting with bombs and applying the potential results of blast physics against a particular puzzle, grants a genuine sense of accomplishment as you continue to successfully complete particular tasks that work to immerse you into its world.

The jumping physics and platforming mechanics are mostly responsive, and any misstep will usually be the player’s fault.  In moments where you’ll have to shift perspectives mid-jump in order to progress, you’ll find yourself attempting these jumps blind, and trial and error attempts are needed to ensure precision. This causes needless but minimal frustration -- thanks largely in part to the generous checkpoint system placing you on the exact platform you were previously on before plummeting to your death.

The climbing involved is incredibly touchy, making it a bit tedious at times. It’s one of the few points in which the game physics and controller response fail to work in tandem, and can be spotty at best. Regardless of platforming experience, failed jumps from climbing sections only add to the aforementioned pool of frustration. These moments, however, are few and far between because of the mostly consistent jump mechanics. Overall, stages are brilliantly designed to complement all other aspects of platforming in ways where the game will properly demand your skill.

The whimsy of exploration in FEZ, however, held back from being its greatest strength when the dynamic slowly starts to become the game’s biggest flaw. The approach behind exploration in FEZ is almost entirely non-linear (in vain of "Metroidvania"). The game provides a large expansive world intersected and connected by areas, providing several different routes to other zones completely open to the player.

At some point, you begin realizing how there's no clear sense of direction. You’re constantly collecting smaller cubes to make bigger cubes, and each of these bigger cubes are made of eight pieces to form these larger cubes, which are needed to unlock doors within a dedicated hub section in FEZ. Stages are littered with several doors that either provide an entrance to smaller interior rooms, or routes to other stages deeper into the world. When you access the map, you’re treated to a diagram similar to a spider graph -- which also does little to nothing in effectively deliberating where you are. The familiar tropes of warp gates are also poorly navigated, as labeled sections only highlight paths to other areas that remain blank unless you stumble upon them physically. The map never provides any of the reassurance it should in your navigation, and adds to the overwhelming nature of progressing through FEZ when you feel like you managed to just stumble through it.

The game itself attempts to pantomime a deeper story outside of its contextual plot scenes. The stage environments don’t live up to their intended roles, and feel rather pretentious at times when your game completion demands you to try and follow all of these obtuse little clues. Though the game is mechanically brilliant in most aspects, it isn’t as technically sound. As a further annoyance, there are several points where slowdown pops up and stage models clip in and out (I'm aware of the empty voids of space obstacles and their aesthetic effects of glitchiness for the sake of nostalgia, but these voids are not what I'm referring to).

 An experience unlike any other, FEZ is worth playing. Unfortunately, the game falls short of reaching the prestige of being considered a platforming masterpiece. FEZ should instead be accepted as a stepping stone towards further innovations of the genre.

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Four out of Five Hadokens