Fez Rant

I first heard of a little game called Fez about two years ago, since then I maintained an interest in the game, and finally got to play it, but I hate it.  Not to say that it is bad, just that I personally cannot stand it.  Unfortunately I cannot form my thoughts into a full review, so let’s just call this an opinion piece and wait while all 0 of you penetrate my asshole with rusty pieces of metal, because that’s how opinions work.


Why I hate Fez
Release Date: 13/4/2012
Platform: XBLA
Price: $9.99

It is fitting that a game that I thought was released on Friday the 13th was actually something disastrous for me, but onto the actual game.  Fez is a retro style 2D puzzle platformer where you can alternate the world by 90 degrees thanks to your magical Fez.  You use this to alternate your perspective, maneuver objects, and find hidden little cubes that serve as your collectables.  The beginning of the game has you going through basic platforming, but it is very well presented due to the game’s lovely 8 and 16 bit artstyle.  The music alternates from wonderful ambiance to what I assume is a frequency too high to be heard by humans, and as such forced me to take off my headphones sue to the frustration I had.  It mostly happened during a lovely looking light green sky area that I found within my first hour, and in ambiance filled the rainy cemetery zone, which I distracted myself from by thinking of a more fitting melody, like the Count Duckula theme.

But the fact that the game looks wonderful and visually represents all that is good about games that are 20 years old means little when we get into the actual mechanics of the game.  Fez has you spend the better half of what feels like 15 hours of looking through rooms while wondering what in god’s name you are suppose to do.  This game is under the influence that Metroid and the Legend of Zelda for the NES were some of the finest games of all time, but were too self-explanatory and too easy for people who began playing games on the systems that were new when they were born, and not the pure blooded Aryan race of the 1980s who had everything Nintendo.  The game features, but is not limited to:  A Navi like figure that always is confused about what to do, defeating its only reason to exist.  Multiple rooms where you have access to a QR code, which is useless to anyone who was inbred enough to not purchase a smartphone, which is about 5 people on earth, right?  A hidden language where you use a scene of a Fox leaping over a dog as your Rosetta Stone.  And a number system that is mostly found through trial and error.  Invisible platforms that are hidden by maps, but even with all the maps, the game might just not tell you about a series of platforms on one of them.  And content that is required for 100%, but you can only ever hope to figure it out by using an ability that you gain in New Game+.

Now, I think that most NES games are shit by today’s standards, there are exceptions like a good chunk of the original Megaman games minus that disappearing block rubbish, Contra if you have the extra life code and remove the downgrading of weapons via power-ups, and Super Mario Brothers 3, which offered some of the best level design for its time, and it still holds up to this day.  But classics like Kid Icarus, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, the first two Super Mario Bros. games, and about 90% of the NES library are average at best by today’s standards.  And I don’t mean graphical, I mean from a design and enjoyment method.  The original two Super Mario Bros. suffered from sluggish running jumps. Kid Icarus had a short ranged projectile with enemies that too 10 hits to kill if they did not see you, along with some overly precise platforming.  Metroid had no direction at all, a samely looking world, started you off with 30% of your maximum health, and had a horribly short attack range that made the first enemies you saw invincible while they were on the floor.  While the Legend of Zelda always starts you off with 3 hearts out of 14 or so, which made the game far more difficult if you decided to stop playing or die, and the game gave you a projectile attack that only worked if you had full hearts.  That and an endlessly confusing world that let you choose your dungeon order, vague secrets everywhere, and an awkward combat system due to the enemy placement.  But despite all of those massive flaws, I still think that these games are better than Fez, mostly because the people who beat the game had either too much free time and patience, or use a magazine for instructions.  Whereas with Fez, I feel like I’m raping a child whenever I look something up, but there is hardly anything.  

This brings me to the main reason why I don’t like Fez, it makes me feel really, really stupid.  I rarely need clarification for what I learn in school, and have maintained favorable marks, so I would assume that I have the expected level of mental processing to handle Fez.  Unfortunately for me, no, but everyone else does except me.  I’m the kind of guy who likes to 100% things, and think that a lot of people do it if they like a game, and since Fez has received 9/10s across the board, everyone must have gotten 100% completion.  Except for me, an autistic fucknugget who must be purged from this earth with fire because he did not do the Vidja Garmes right.

I just think that it is bad design to place a player in a room, have them decipher a language, which is a massive eye strain due to the character’s size, and have them move blocks to answer a riddle in a block language.  Now, I am reminded of a “puzzle” from Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, the Regi riddle.  It goes as this:  find a hidden area that requires you to surf into a 2 by 1 tide formation, dive beneath it, learn visual braille, bring two specific rare Pokemon that require to be in certain slots in your party of Pokemon.  Then use the move dig at the proper place, and go find three rock formations that house a trio of Pokemon.  Now, this was a game that was targeted towards 7-12-year-olds, why would any of them know visual braille?  

Now, you may think that I just don’t like exploring, but that’s actually my favorite part in any game.  Take Skyrim, Xenoblade, most of the Metroid titles, Shadow Complex, and the Batman Arkham series  My favorite thing about all of these games is the act of exploration.  I love being placed in a big world, being given a ton of small objectives, and having more content being revealed as I go on.  Or you may get the impression that I do not like puzzle games, but I do actually enjoy simplistic puzzle games, but who doesn’t with the advent of social games, and found the first Professor Layton title to be very fun.  But the biggest difference between that and Fez is how Professor Layton shows you a puzzle with occasionally deceptive wording, there are multiple hints that you can obtain if you are stumped on a certain puzzle/riddle, and there does not appear to be any lasting consequence if one fails at a puzzle.  Whereas Fez is like playing the Japanese version and with a full sentence answer reply that is needlessly specific.  In short, Fez is hard since it does not explain what you should do and expects the average person who does not like to translate sentences while relaxing over a piece of entertainment.  Some people may like that, but some people think that religion is fact, LGBTs are satanic spawn, that people should be shot dead for being a stereotypical black teenager, and that women should marry her rapist.  Am I saying that people who like Fez are as bad as that?  No, I’m not that much of a twat, they’re actually better life forms, because people read what they have to say.

Now for a picture of happy Gomez!
http://polytroncorporation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/FEZFAQ.jpg
So cute!