toblix

Fez

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Fez is out on XBLA today, and I've played an hour or so. First impressions:

  • Sweet graphics
  • Sweet music
  • Controls seem a bit slow
  • Holy shit I'm so confused.

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I'm a play the heck out of that game when I get home.

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I'm going to wait for the PC version just like I didn't for Braid, Bastion, Stacking, ad nausium.

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I'm going to wait for the PC version just like I didn't for Braid, Bastion, Stacking, ad nausium.

I am similarly waiting, but instead of not waiting for the others you mentioned, I actually did wait.

Sadly, I also waited for N+, and that never happened. ):

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I'm going to have to wait until it's released on PC, cause I don't have a 360. ;(

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I've been trying to avoid spoilers since i'm undecided on whether or not i want to play this, but i keep hearing rumblings of people being totally stumped on what appear to be puzzles about deciphering numerical systems and invented languages. Some really, really perplexing buzz is circulating around this game.

Like, it's sounding as if the game somewhere along the way takes a sharp swerve from "charming puzzle platformer" to "hey, but we're also big fans of Riven." (Which, if that's that's the case, i'm suddenly way more interested in Fez.)

Has anybody played it? Can anybody clue me in here, without revealing too much?

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I've been trying to avoid spoilers since i'm undecided on whether or not i want to play this, but i keep hearing rumblings of people being totally stumped on what appear to be puzzles about deciphering numerical systems and invented languages. Some really, really perplexing buzz is circulating around this game.

Like, it's sounding as if the game somewhere along the way takes a sharp swerve from "charming puzzle platformer" to "hey, but we're also big fans of Riven." (Which, if that's that's the case, i'm suddenly way more interested in Fez.)

Has anybody played it? Can anybody clue me in here, without revealing too much?

There are sequences of glyphs which could well be their own alphabet (or they could just be chosen because they look neat). Given how long the game was in dev, I would suspect the former, but until someone cracks the code, there's no way to tell for sure. And without decoding it, it's impossible say whether understanding the glyphs would unlock any additional gameplay or whether they just add background lore.

Also it is utterly amazing. I mean that kind of literally too...if I have one gripe with it it's that I get lost pretty easily and finding my way back to a room I've already visited can be a challenge.

edit: man, the rabbit hole goes deep. There's a QR code embedded in a background texture. It's partially obscured by foreground sprites though. I personally can't be bothered to reconstruct it by rotating view to unobscure & copying the thing down. I'm sure someone will be OCD enough to do it for me and post the solution to the web eventially.

Edited by juv3nal

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if I have one gripe with it it's that I get lost pretty easily and finding my way back to a room I've already visited can be a challenge.

Yeah, I'm enjoying it so far, but this has kind of robbed it of any real sense of progression for me. I just kind of end up going into doors and going wherever they take me. It doesn't feel like I'm navigating a real space or anything, or that there's any kind of cohesive structure, just a succession of stages with little to no connection to one another.

And then I look at the map screen and nearly shit myself.

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Yeah, it's hard to determine whether the whole 3D map thing is merely a genius thing that will at some point "click" and make total sense, or just a terrible thing.

It just struck me that one of the things the map has to be 3D to show is which direction the various exits go in. I'm guessing this has to used later on for more complex puzzles, to determine where to look for hidden exits or whatever.

Oh, and how do I use the cube teleport thing? The hypercube tells me to "select my destination" but I don't see how.

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Oh, and how do I use the cube teleport thing? The hypercube tells me to "select my destination" but I don't see how.

I think the cube teleport thing will take you to 4 kind of "hub" areas one of which corresponds to each side of the cube. I've only gotten to 3 of them so far I think.

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This game is fabulous. We ignored the map initially, but after doing few of the levels, it becomes pretty easy to navigate with it.

The QR code we found

gives you a control sequence to get an anti-cube.

Loving it.

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After a busy weekend, I just got to sit down and play this for the first time, and did a little sex wee.

I'm finding the map okay. It can get a little confusing, but I can generally get to where I want to go.

I am also liking the apparent Twin Peaks references.

The world with the thunderstorm, full of owls, is accessed through a cabin with red drapes

(<-- if you've collected 8 cubes, you're probably past this).

It's beautiful, and I choked up a tiny bit to imagine one guy putting five years into this.

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This game is fabulous. We ignored the map initially, but after doing few of the levels, it becomes pretty easy to navigate with it.

The QR code we found

gives you a control sequence to get an anti-cube.

Loving it.

I found one in an empty room that did that, but there is another one in a room off the 16 cube unlocked area that is partially obscured by dudes & scaffolding. Not sure if it is the same one or not.

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Yeah, it's hard to determine whether the whole 3D map thing is merely a genius thing that will at some point "click" and make total sense, or just a terrible thing.

It just struck me that one of the things the map has to be 3D to show is which direction the various exits go in. I'm guessing this has to used later on for more complex puzzles, to determine where to look for hidden exits or whatever.

As a visual representation of the overall world, the map is a work of genius. Unfortunately, It just isn't very useful as a navigational tool.

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I found one in an empty room that did that, but there is another one in a room off the 16 cube unlocked area that is partially obscured by dudes & scaffolding. Not sure if it is the same one or not.

I've found the one you mean; different ones.

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I was finally able to crack the pictograph language. First message decoded:

Trapped in a fez factory. Please send help

Love this game

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The more of this I play, the less I like it. I think I've just crossed the threshold into active dislike. The platforming and perspective-switching parts are great (mostly), but I seem to have reached a point where I can't go any further with that stuff unless I start deciphering all this obtuse crap. Squinting at my TV writing down pictographs is not what I wanted out of this game at all.

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The more of this I play, the less I like it. I think I've just crossed the threshold into active dislike. The platforming and perspective-switching parts are great (mostly), but I seem to have reached a point where I can't go any further with that stuff unless I start deciphering all this obtuse crap. Squinting at my TV writing down pictographs is not what I wanted out of this game at all.

I can understand that, for me the deciphering was a nice sidegame as I found that only the anti-cubes really required any sort of puzzleing out. I actually just beat the game and would be curious to know what is giving you a hard time.

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Fez is out on XBLA today, and I've played an hour or so. First impressions:

  • Sweet graphics
  • Sweet music
  • Controls seem a bit slow

this is about my impression of it. the controls are a little sloppy for some of the things they expect you to pull off.

my biggest complaint about it otherwise is that it seems like it's got a memory leak or something, because the stage transitions get choppier and choppier the longer you play it in a session, until it falls back to the "oh god I can't load stuff fast enough" load screen with the rotating cube on it. when you accidentally pop into a door because you were holding slightly up on the analog stick, the 10-second wait to get in, followed by half a second of gameplay, followed by another 10-second wait to get back out, sucks.

but the art style is goddamn gorgeous, the sound design is so great and intricate that I could just listen to a bomb blowing up a wall over and over for hours, and I like the combination of platforming puzzles (favorites so far:

teaching explosions to turn corners, turning two ladders into one ladder with creative perspective

) and cerebral puzzles.

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Playing the game is really forfilling, for me anyway. Its one of the first time me and my little brother have sat down and played together, so that's one thing for starters.

There's so many little things that make the world just pop. Having tetris blocks as star patterns is nice. The invisible platforms. The jokes, and the things that appear and light up during the night.

Apart from struggling to pick up bombs occasionally and falling off when it might not be my fault, I would say its a masterpiece.

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The more of this I play, the less I like it. I think I've just crossed the threshold into active dislike. The platforming and perspective-switching parts are great (mostly), but I seem to have reached a point where I can't go any further with that stuff unless I start deciphering all this obtuse crap. Squinting at my TV writing down pictographs is not what I wanted out of this game at all.

I'm not sure, but I don't think you have to do the deciphering. The Leaderboards say I'm 80% done with the game and I still haven't done any code crackin'. I think all that secret stuff is to get all the anti-cubes.

I could be completely wrong about this, though.

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