Fez
Year: 2012
Rating: E
Time Played: 312 minutes / 5.20 hours
When it comes to indie games, I appreciate how much can be done with minimal graphics. These pixel-based games have a charm that’s difficult to get right but really shines when they’re successful. Fez is such a game. As a puzzle platformer, the genre isn’t original. However, pivoting in 2-D planes to create a 3-D game is an ingenious way to expand the gameplay. Of course, this also makes it a little difficult to keep track of where you are and where you’re going. But with such relaxing visuals and sound design, spending extra time in this game isn’t a bad thing.
There are limitations to the pixelated style that make navigating the half-dozen worlds difficult to memorize. Sure, there are gimmicks in each world that define how you move around it, but knowing where to go to solve a larger puzzle within the game can be challenging. That there are so many branching paths that need backtracking to explore every corner of the Fez universe is both a blessing and a curse. There’s a lot to explore, but you’ll also be going through the same hub locations a lot as well.
With minimal plot, I appreciated the somewhat meta ending that played on how games from decades ago would behave. These games definitely inspired Fez and its visual style hearkens back to the time when you had to use pixelated graphics because that was all the computers could render. After getting to the credits, I had little desire to reach a 100% play-through. There were enough missing items that I knew where they were located, but did not know how to unlock them or get to them. Still, I enjoyed myself playing the amount of the game that I wanted to.
A retro-inspired puzzle platformer with a mind-bending gameplay mechanic, I give Fez 4.0 stars out of 5.
