Review - Fez

Seeing as so many people ignore review text and skip straight to the score at the bottom, I'll save you the effort: Fez gets a 10. That doesn't mean it's perfect by any means (and anyone who thinks that's what top marks suggests is a bit of an idiot) but, yes, that does mean it's pretty damn wonderful. That's enough to justify getting it, right? Good – off you go then.

If a score alone isn't enough though, there are plenty of genuine reasons that explain why Fez is deserving of your affections and, more importantly, deserving of the hype surrounding it. Well, most of the hype anyway; a well-earned reputation for being an indie darling means Fez comes with a whole heap of expectational baggage, some of which it could never live up to. But while it's never going to be a game for everyone (some just won't like it, others just won't get it), there's no denying it's one of the most elegant, stylish and thought-provoking games to appear for a very long time.



That there's no story beyond the initial set-up (2D hero Gomez discovers new 3D world, sees mysterious cube explode and then has to reconstruct it before the universe self-destructs) no combat or enemies to speak of and no way to die makes Fez as laid-back a game as they come - a fact reinforced by the gentle, almost languid music and tranquil atmosphere of its world. Day turns into night, animals go about their business and Gomez himself roams at a pace more suited to an afternoon stroll rather than a mission to save the universe, exploring everything from foliage-covered stone towers, waterfalls and tree interiors to book-lined rooms of academia, graveyards, lost ruins and more just because it's there for the finding.

Of course, nothing in Fez is there just because it can be; in truth, each location is a key component in a tightly-woven puzzle box, riddles heaped upon riddles that need to be twisted, aligned and unravelled like a Rubik's Cube. It's thanks to this that Fez oozes the elusive ability to make you feel smart with each conundrum solved that so many other puzzle games lack, even though its techniques aren't all that complex. What they are, however, are ideas that have rarely (if ever) been used in a game before. And it's not the 'rotate the world, see things from a different perspective' spacial awareness concept on which the game is built either – from QR codes and vibration to time lapse, language decryption and more, there's a whole lot going on under Fez's gorgeous retro exterior that you wouldn't initially expect.



It's also far more complex from an exploration standpoint too, mainly because almost the entire world is there for the taking from the very start. Yes, so there are a select few locked areas that require certain amount of cubes to be collected before they open, but the fact that the portion that's already available is big enough to yield more than enough cubes to access the end of the game says a lot. What's more, Fez's relaxed nature extends to the freeform nature of the map, since there's nothing stopping you going all the way to the end of the earth without stopping. It's like Metroid with all the power-ups unlocked from the off, meaning the signposting that would normally tell you where to go next is practically non-existent.

Whether you see that as a positive or negative depends on your mood; some have criticised the game for failing to nudge the player along outside of Dot (your not-particularly-helpful sidekick) and his/her/its infrequent comments, while others have praised it for letting you off the leash to do as you please. Personally, I'm in the latter camp - having grown up in an era when games were hard just because they could be, the hand-holding mentality that exists in gaming today annoys me greatly and so Fez is a breath of fresh air in that respect. Still, I can see why some might see Fez as too vague, too nebulous in its design and take objection to it; with most areas offering multiple exit routes and new scenery always just a doorway away, it can sometimes feel like you're discovering new locations without making very much progress.



What I do see as a flaw though, perhaps the only flaw in what definitely ranks as a Game Of The Year contender for me, is how such lack of direction bleeds over into the puzzles. It's not so much that you have to work everything out for yourself, piecing together clues spread across the entire map to solve individual puzzles, but more that some puzzles are literally unsolvable on your first playthrough. That's deliberate – you can't 'gold' every area until you play the game in New Game+ mode - but never explained in any way, shape or form on your first time round, meaning you could spend hours banging your head against a puzzle with no hope of success and not even realise until you give up in despair.

For a game that's so elegant in its design and deviousness, that seems like a particularly big oversight - an example of Fez being a touch too clever for its own good. But then taken as a whole, that's Fez all over; from the opening gambit and deliberately bad grammar to the Clockwork Orange-esque (faux) ending and almost creepy geek stylings, it's a game that just oozes smarts but doesn't demand super-intelligence from anyone playing it. Well, not at first anyway… but by the time you get to the bits that require you to really think, you'll be too busy feeling clever to notice.