Fez Review: Trading Perspectives

When I was really young, a lot of older kids in my neighborhood were really into The Legend of Zelda for the NES. When I played it, I hadn't played much else. At the age of 7, I thought the goal of Zelda was to run around shooting/swords at bad guys. Puzzles? No clue. Getting other items and upgrades through logical progression? What does that even mean because I'm 7 years old. Later I came to realize that the allure of the first Zelda game was its inherent mystery and the risks and rewards of exploration; a far cry from more modern games including Zelda sequels. The fun and frustration of mystery has been replaced by the yin-yang of accessibility. Because I missed that chance with Zelda, Fez is a game for me. Fez may or may not be a game for you.

What is Fez? You play Gomez, a resident of a 2D world whose inhabitants claim that 3D shapes are simply “non-possible”. There is no third dimension except OH WAIT THERE TOTALLY IS. Some cube-looking entity shows up, wrecks your shit in a spectacularly meta way, and Gomez gets the titular Fez, allowing him to shift his 2D perspective 90 degrees to the left or right. Though he perceives the third dimension, Gomez's brain can't cognitively sort out depth, so each perspective is smushed back down to 2D terms, making new paths: the crux to solving traversal issues as well as solving puzzles. If you've ever played Crush or Echochrome, you've seen perspective-play in action before. Though intimidating at first, this perspective-based platforming quickly becomes so routine that newcomers may watch you play and wonder how your skull managed to withstand your brain's internal explosion. So what else is there to do? Puzzles that make sure your brain stays exploded.

FEZ LAUNCH TRAILER

While most modern games focus on guiding player experience, Phil Fish and company wanted to bring back not just mystery in open worlds of the non-crime-spree variety but also, an attempt to understand what a game can try, and is trying to tell you in every form but real language. After an incredibly brief tutorial in a kiddy-pool of sorts, you're quickly granted free license to swim the entire metaphorical ocean. Furthermore, you have the basic tools you need to go anywhere and solve anything. There are no monsters to fight--like many modern games, death in Fez is rare and hardly an inconvenience. Instead, you're battling enigmatic clues, a made-up language, and a test of how games-literate you are.

This is where things get divisive. I agree mostly with Phil Fish when he urged players to avoid the Internet when solving Fez's puzzles. Impatience often drives me to the FAQ-safety-blanket, but I rob myself of the sense of discovery and accomplishment every time I do so. I'm glad I played the game early, prior to the inevitable FAQs that will expertly & coldly dissect the game's inner trappings. I often got stuck and sometimes frustrated during Fez. But I also solved some puzzles that were truly challenging, making Zelda's best puzzles feel like a paint-by-numbers book. Fez's puzzle-solving mostly takes place literally outside of the game, whether it be because you're taking notes or scanning a QR code with your smartphone (don't worry, the QR codes are optional). Though most of these puzzles are clever, there are many that you will solve and not be sure what you did to solve them other than dumb luck. Others are so abstract and mysterious, that even if you do find the solution elsewhere, you'll wonder how anyone logically solved it. I'm currently in New Game + with items whose functions I have yet to discern.



These puzzles are the opposite of the hand-holding tutorials that permeate triple-A games made by hundreds of people with millions of dollars invested. They want to ensure the easiest experience for the widest range of people. And that's fine. And that's not Fez. Many puzzles leave almost everything to your imagination. an opposition to the fault of hand-holding games never letting you try anything, some of Fez's puzzles don't work because you're too busy trying everything. Sure, you'll flip some switches and move some blocks, but you'll also be translating symbols, drawing maps, and writing notes. And though a lack of contextual info means more possible solutions to work through, there is a discernible lack of feedback from the game up until you've finally solved a puzzle. Or you'll get to just before that point and not deem it worth the effort. And that's fine too.

Even if you don't think you'll be that kind of person, or if you're not sure, there's plenty in Fez to see that you can experience without finding all of its secrets. Polytron have done incredible work with the 3D/2D visuals in their Trixel engine, but more importantly, the art direction and fourth-wall breaking moments are what really stand out visually. Various areas utilize vibrant, consistent color schemes, and certain cutscenes will make you wonder whether or not the in-game performance hiccups are intentional or not. The ambient, sometimes foreboding and sinister soundtrack by Diasterpiece makes me feel like I'm playing in a cartoon world made by someone who just watched a Darren Aronofsky flick or Donnie Darko, so naturally I love it. When I heard the soundtrack being described as chiptune, I imagined something much different (for the worse), but the soundtrack perfectly sets the tone of Gomez's world on the verge of either salvation or destruction. These all tie back into the gameplay elements in ways that show that Polytron knows what medium they are using to create their experience. This is the gamiest game I've played in a long time. It speaks through gameplay and sound instead of exposition; it shows more through environments instead of cutscenes or scripted events.


Full disclosure: I've been waiting five stupid years for this to come out, and though I try to avoid getting swept up in hype, I was at least relieved to finally have the finished product in my hard drive. As of this writing, I have solved 40+ of the 64 (or more) puzzles. The hardest ones have only been solved by a small group of people whom have yet to drop any hints or spoil the whole game entirely, and for now, I'm glad that they're waiting.



Polytron have made a game that not only encapsulates the visuals and sounds of an 8- or 16-bit game, and then ran them through a digital version of Pink Floyd's The Wall, but they've also captured the trappings that surrounded those games during the pre-Internet days. If you were the kid who actually wrote notes in the backs of NES instruction manuals, or at least were upset that you didn't get that kind of experience of playing a game steeped in mystery and abstract clues, Fez will bring you that feeling and more. The lack of constant feedback allows the game and the player room to breathe and ruminate, though the lack of feedback during puzzles might get to be too much for some. The esoteric nature will either be what keeps you invested in Fez, or what forces you to walk away.


More info:
Fez is a game currently for Xbox Live Arcade, with tentative plans to be released on Windows PCs. It costs $10 in Microsoft space dubloons, and you should probably try the demo first if you're still not sure.

Official Fez website

Fez soundtrack with streaming samples

I'm so glad I got through that review without making a single Doctor Who reference.

The Serious Business of Adapting The Hunger Games

I remember sitting in a dark, air-conditioned cineplex as a kid, probably too young to be sitting so close to the screen as a T-Rex devoured Donald Gennaro, as my screams of terror would attest. In the summer of 1993, Jurassic Park was my world. After being amazed by the film, I became obsessed with the story and discovered the novel that inspired the movie. I tore through the book, eating up the drama again despite some glaring differences and an amazing river rafting scene that never made it to the big screen. But hey, the film got me to read a book, and was my gateway to Michael Crichton's other novels. An adult-ass novel, at the tender age of 10 or 11!

"You think this is a f*cking GAME!?"

It was also my first taste into movies-adapted-from-books, and at the time, made me think that films could never be as faithful to the original stories due to obvious limitations. My opinion was challenged by Fight Club and The Lord of The Rings. Though both omit/mix-up details, they cover the essentials and then some while having directors with a great sense of the tone and vibe of those stories. I even dare to say you could skip the books in these cases--sorry Palahniuk fans, the Fight Club movie had a better ending!

Gary Ross seems to also understand the sense of general dread and bits of hope tinged by oppression in his adaptation of The Hunger Games, though I'm not sure that I can recommend seeing it without reading the source, before or after. The casting choices were excellent, especially in the cases of Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, and despite my initial reservations, Woody Harrelson. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, but having read the books first, I can't help but think about what was lost in translation. Would the film still have the same emotional impact as the novel if I hadn't read it in advance?

Team Haymitch all the way.

Suzanne Collins' trilogy is told from the perspective of our heroine, Katniss, and as such, the reader spends a lot of time with her emotions and logical thought processes as she reacts to the horrors of kids killing kids for entertainment and oppression. The film thankfully avoids choosing to have Katniss narrate over everything, instead taking moments she presumes or flashes back to, and inserts them at key moments. Many explanations are conveniently handled by the TV hosts speaking to the audiences both in and outside of the film.

While some small details are left out are trivial, there are some glaring omissions that undermine the story, particularly hunger itself. Collins constantly references food in the books and it quickly becomes important symbolically as well as literally. People starve to death in the districts on a regular basis. Katniss hunts to provide for her district as well as her family. Food is often used to connect characters, build trust, and occasionally, take that trust away. Only one symbolic scene involving hunger makes it to the film but isn't handled effectively. The very real need for families to enter their children's names multiple times for The Reaping in exchange for more food rations, which still aren't enough, is never mentioned, nor is the fact that the winners each year provide extra food for their entire district for the rest of the year. The irony of this theme almost entirely missing from the movie is not lost on me.

"What's wrong?" "I'm just so tired of all these HUNGER GAMES."

I still encourage people to see the film, but also to give the novels a chance--well, at least the first entry. The book is very fast-paced, which makes the film seems frenetic at times. The screenwriters and Gary Ross did an amazing job cramming in a lot details with visual shorthand and efficient storytelling and even at almost two and a half hours, I wonder what a longer runtime could have meant. Until then, in our apparent desire to make books a giant multimedia experience, I can always hope for an extended cut when The Hunger Games makes its way to our homes. I'm pretty sure that the odds will be in my favor.

Extra Life

Over the last weekend, I took part in my first Extra Life marathon. The charity event is only 4 years old, but has been growing exponentially every year. Every October, gamers ask for donations to support children's cancer research through the Children's Miracle Network and their local affiliates. In return, they pledge to play games for 24 hours from Saturday to Sunday morning (or whenever they can make time). People's reactions ranged from positive to derisive. The easiest cynical barb to shoot back in response is usually something along the lines of "Isn't that how you spend your weekends anyway?" Apparently, some portion of the population still views self-professed "gamers" as so far removed from humanity that we consume one form of media non-stop without getting bored or driven to the brink of insanity, and we can apparently do so without sleep.

Obviously we're not running for boobies, or wearing pink while we play football, but it shouldn't make Extra Life any less of a charity. And the numbers agree: Extra Life received over $1.1 million dollars in donations this year, more than the charity previous 3 years' worth of donations combined. When it came time to make good on the pledge with my two teammates and I, we were excited and proud of the contribution we had made.

Of course, this excitement changed and warped over the course of 24 hours. Fully caffeinated, the early day started with lots of shooters and twitch-based games, but by the end of the marathon, we were playing more passive, casual stuff. Somewhere in the middle we mixed things up and got some exercise in Rock Band. I broke records in Pac Man CE DX. We converted a friend to the world of Minecraft while my girlfriend used it to make serious progress in her blocky recreation of Sunnydale High from Buffy. I revisited some old favorites like the serene music-puzzler Chime and the ever-irreverent ball-rolling Beautiful Katamari. I would take breaks and play something quick and casual on my iPod. I proved that my You Don't Know Jack trivia skills are nearly unaffected by having a fried brain at 3am. We made lots of silly jokes that are probably only funny when sleep-deprived. We bonded playing multiplayer games and sharing Minecraft protips. By the end, my eyes were burning and swollen, joints sore and stiff, and the general punchiness that comes from not sleeping. And our team raised over $1500 for sick kids.

If you were expecting some deep examination and epiphany as to why we play games or why interactive media is important, it's not here. But that's ok. Extra Life reminded me why playing games (especially with others) is fun. Did I feel like shit Sunday morning and couldn't get to sleep? Yes. Did I remind myself why I only play games for 1-2 hours at a time? Yes. But would I do Extra Life again next year with friends? Absolutely.

Feature Creepers

Unlike other games that either expertly weave narrative in with a game's world, or force it in awkwardly like a bad porno, Minecraft gives players freedom to explore, build and survive with zero narrative. And in doing so, they develop their own dynamic experiences. It's been a huge success for Markus Persson (aka Notch) and his studio, Mojang. Aside from the basic “acquire resources, make tools to get better resources” goal, players eventually start setting their own goals, like “map out my world” or “build Castle Greyskull and a Technodrome”. Fans enjoy sharing their creations, mods and stories online, and getting together on multiplayer servers big and small to work together or against each other. Minecraft, prior to the latest 1.8 Adventure Update, has been less of a game and more of a giant sandbox full of digital Legos. But maybe it’s this freedom and personal attachment that has enabled a very vocal, often entitled fanbase to emerge.

Yep.

One look at the Minecraft forums and its Reddit page shows a mix of people celebrating and criticizing the game. The internet has served as a sounding board for an unprecedented massive Alpha and Beta test since 2009. Millions of people have purchased the game and many are content to play and explore the procedurally generated worlds. Others are taking it upon themselves to act as Mojang’s unofficial co-designers. Fans have suggested new friendly and hostile creatures, and new items. They've criticized everything from the game’s retro-styled textures to how items behave. Sometimes, user-made mods have inspired the designers to implement similar features in later updates, such as in-game maps and pistons (used for making automated secret entrances and more). And then recently, fans joined together on Reddit urging Minecraft’s creators to add snouts to the game’s pigs. No, really. And Mojang fulfilled their request.

I'm sure your Fun Factor is significantly higher now.

That’s where we start to see Minecraft’s fans and their sense of entitlement. Even now as I write this, players like myself have gotten their hands on a test version of the 1.8 update, which adds a ton of new features, including better terrain generation and a sorely-needed combat mechanic upgrade. 1.8 is easily the most feature-heavy update so far. But it took fans less than a day to return to requesting new features. This wasn’t the reporting of bugs in a pre-release version of an update, but asking for literally brand new features despite the sheer amount of changes they had yet to experience. As Louis C.K. said, “everything is amazing and no one is happy”.

I understand that some players don’t understand the complexity and hours of work required to add new mechanics to a game’s overall design and still somehow keep things balanced (or how new features might render fundamental code utterly broken), but I put myself in the developer’s shoes when I see fans receive new material that took weeks or months to perfect. When they respond with a “Meh, here’s my idea for PONIES!”, I die a little inside. Feature-creep is already an issue internally when developers sit down to discuss a game’s design. If unchecked, a game can die before it’s made by high aspirations and a lack of perspective. Content is cut for a reason. I would rather have Mojang’s programmers spend time cleaning up their code to make things run smoother than spend time making sure pigs get snouts that look right in a blocky world. And it gets even scarier when fans start calling developers in the middle of the night because they think they should.

My beef is separate from the times that Mojang’s developers publicly suggest changes to the game or ask for opinions, which is a great way of crowd-sourcing what the team should focus on improving. The designers have generally been urging community feedback and response. And while many games (especially in the PC realm) blur the line between product and service, the fact remains that Minecraft was sold as a product to be serviced in a limited scope until its "final" release later this year (though Mojang will be making tweaks afterwards). In a world where nerds get upset when George Lucas continues to alter his films with each subsequent re-release, it appears that the reverse is expected of games, assuming it’s the players and not the creators who decide what to change.

As games continue to grow as an entertainment medium, developers need to start clearly defining when their game is a product with basic service for technical issues, and when it’s a service (like World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2). It’s often both, but the customer isn’t always right. I think bigger developers know this, but the start-up that is Mojang is slowly learning this. When the feedback is open to the general public, some fan’s good suggestion could easily get drowned out by countless people clamoring for pig snouts.

And fans? I'm sure our enthusiasm is appreciated, but maybe we could all just slow our roll a little bit. That Technodrome isn't going to build itself.