POSTED 19/4/12


FEZ

Polytron/Microsoft
Xbox 360/XBLA

Candy! Sweet, sweet candy! Whassat? It’s an ‘F’? Oh, puck.

So, no lolly pellet-stuffed flip-top heads, rather a red Moroccan headular adornment with magical powers. You see, little blocky Gomez was happy trip-tropping about his resolutely 2D world. But then along came a cube – a completely impossible construct to a world so flat - that bestowed upon him said hat, fucking-up his world just like that.

We worship the super-brilliant C64 game Nebulus, a platformer that span the world around on its axis as you walked/jumped through or around towers. Fez channels it, but in a more cube top, squared-off, eight corners, 90 degree angles kinda way that has you sitting and rotating. A bit, erm – lot - like Crush 3D.

So, with your pixel puppet Gomez you traipse around various 16-bitty universes, chatting to natives, breaking and entering, disinterring obtuse puzzles and accumulating treasure and golden cubic objecticles. The more you gather, the more places become visitational from a purple-dicular hub world.

The best bit – although not necessarily for everybody - is that it’s all physically non-confrontational. No fighting, nobody trying to kill you except you yourself. Then, when you do make little G-man go ‘splut!’ now, he just rematerialises at his last safe spot.
 
Progression unearths weird glyphs, plus an apparent surfeit of leftovers from a Tetris explosion. Far from decorationary stuff, these are usually fiendish – and we mean that, possibly indicating how dumb we are - puzzles. Decipher, push this way and that, ring bells, find warps, go collecty on anti-cubes... Fez ain’t no casual walk in the Block Forest.

Despite real glitches – others, like an early reboot, are quite obviously intentional - Fez beguiles then staples itself to your bonce like a brain slug, but with red hatacular flair, rather than green and slimular bleah.

Damn, where’d we put that garlic shampoo?

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