When Fez, the popular puzzle/platform title from Polytron Corporation, first arrived on the scene for Xbox 360, it won a lot of admirers with mostly positive feedback. A year down the line, the game makes its debut on PC, but does those reviews and acclaims change? Not in a million years. The game is absolutely stunning.
The most impressive fact about Fez is that it wholly relies on its amazing gameplay mechanics and style, rather than the usual stuff we find so often when searching for a puzzle game. The basic idea of Fez, from the developer point of view, is the fact that it takes the entire gaming universe of the long forgotten era of simple pleasures and packs it into one single title that makes you think. A lot.
Interestingly, unlike other puzzle titles in the market, you won’t get tired from all that thinking that Fez requires you to do. On the contrary, it will actually make you go forward and hunt down every one of those in-game cubes.
As far as Fez’s presentation is concerned, it’s one giant pixilated heaven of the future. This is accompanied by a lot of pretty colors, themes, ambient settings, and a fitting musical score in the background that gives Fez its Fez-ish charm.
If you are looking for a story-based mission gameplay, Fez may not be the game for you, although the gameplay itself gives you a certain sense of belonging and purpose. As mentioned earlier, the in-game world is set in an old-school pixilated world that looks like it’s from the late 80s and early 90s, and the fact that you can actually rotate the world 90 degrees to find you way, gives the title that extra impetus it requires to make you stick in front of your system longer than you expected.
Fez starts off after a disastrous event adds a third dimension to a 2D world, and Gomez, the well known Fez hero with a cute little cap, discovers that he has the ability to shift the dimensional plane. This is where Fez starts captivating players and starts challenging the players’ acuity and judgment of the situation.
Gomez has the ability to rotate the four-sided column left or right 90 degrees, with his rotation revealing the varied sides of the already beautiful landscape the game has to offer. Each side has its own distinctive set of objectives that players can interact with, so there’s no such thing called “I can’t find my way outta this mess.” Of course, as the game progresses, you will be faced with more complex puzzles to solve, but there’s always a way out. You just need to look for them. Remember: patience is the virtue.