The Other Worlds Shrine

Your place for discussion about RPGs, gaming, music, movies, anime, computers, sports, and any other stuff we care to talk about... 

  • More Fez

  • Because playing them is not enough, we have to bitch about them daily, too. We had a Gameplay forum, but it got replaced by GameFAQs.
Because playing them is not enough, we have to bitch about them daily, too. We had a Gameplay forum, but it got replaced by GameFAQs.
 #161104  by Flip
 Sun Jul 14, 2013 5:05 pm
Is Fez really all that good? I played the demo and had no idea where to go. The game lacked direction, the one gimmick gets old, and the graphics really are pretty shitty. There is a difference between good retro 8-bit and whatever Fez is. The world seemed too big and it was too slow to get around and accomplish anything. I read the creator called it a "Stop and smell the roses kind of game." but i never found any roses to stop and admire.
 #161105  by Eric
 Sun Jul 14, 2013 5:21 pm
Fez is way overrated. I played it for about an hour or two and I just couldn't get hooked.
 #161110  by SineSwiper
 Sun Jul 14, 2013 10:55 pm
Flip wrote:Is Fez really all that good? I played the demo and had no idea where to go. The game lacked direction, the one gimmick gets old, and the graphics really are pretty shitty. There is a difference between good retro 8-bit and whatever Fez is. The world seemed too big and it was too slow to get around and accomplish anything. I read the creator called it a "Stop and smell the roses kind of game." but i never found any roses to stop and admire.
Both of you are crazy. Yes, it's a top-notch game. Honestly, I don't even know how to respond to this logically.

The graphics are really shitty? That's the style of the game. How many indie games have you played? Hell, Monaco has much worse graphics than that, or the new Megaman 9/10 games (and those aren't indie). So does Gunpoint, but it actually looks like something I want to try out, anyway.

The world seemed too big? What? Are you going to tell me that Fallout 3's world was too big? GTA's world was too big? That doesn't even make sense. There's probably a good 10-20 hours of gameplay to find everything. Good size for an indie game, but that's not as much as the 100 hours I put into Fallout 3.

The game has less direction than most, but that's on purpose. Braid didn't have a lot of direction, but that didn't stop it from being a great game. It's more open world and less linear, though the cube progression does put barriers on some of it.

There are a ton of different secrets and hint references and clues everywhere, but you have to go beyond the surface to find them. Most of these aren't required to solve the puzzles, but really add to the depth of the game. (The sync level was one of my favorites.) My only complaint was that certain key elements to learning the backstory were rather difficult to uncover (like the numbers and alphabet).

Really, a short demo just doesn't do it justice. (Which may be the dev's fault with making the demo so short. I hated BC:Rearmed's demo, too.) The game is all about depth of content. It's about the smile on your face when you find something within the game and say "that's so cool that they put something like that in there".
 #161113  by Shrinweck
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:25 am
I'm enjoying Fez. The mechanics are varied and nothing introduced has made things annoying. I like the graphics a lot and there's a sort of joy to it when he jumps up in celebration of constructing/finding a whole cube.

There's a lot of subtlety in the graphics as well, which is impressive because they are styled to be kind of retro. I'm not as in love with the game as I thought I'd be but it's fun and I look forward to pushing my way through it.

I bought The Swapper today during the 50% off sale and I'll probably give it a whirl tomorrow.
 #161114  by Eric
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:33 am
Fez is boring, I don't want to explore the world and be like "Aw, that's neat", because I was falling asleep as I was playing it. There's 0 action, the gimmick of turning 3d gets old quick, the music isn't terribly memorable, it's just my opinion dude. If you loved it more power to you.
 #161117  by Shrinweck
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 10:57 am
Too many great puzzle games are bogged down by action. Fuck. That. Shit.
 #161118  by bovine
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 10:59 am
The "cute indie platformer" aspect of Fez is sort of a ruse. The real game are these extremely subtle puzzles that you don't really notice their existence during your first playthrough. It was the first game in a long time that I had to bring out a notebook to jot down clues and solve puzzles.
 #161120  by Flip
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:39 pm
It's hard to believe Fez was in development for 5 years, it could use a lot more polish, in my opinion. I understand they went for 8-bit graphics and its "supposed to be that way", as Sine said. Duh. But, there is a difference between Mario 3 8-bit and Kung-Fu, for example. I dont think its a good looking retro interpretation.

Image

Why do all the shading on the main character? He constantly looks out of focus and its ugly.

It looks pretty rough at times, frame rate can dip a lot which effect control and the rotating effect itself sometimes makes the level look turned inside out due to the flat lighting. There's not much to render here, it's quite baffling why this can't run at 1080p at a solid frame rate, but im not much of a technical guy so know knows.

You walk, jump, and collect cubes, thats it. You dont know if you missed any in a particular area, how many more you need, what new section of the word just opened up, etc. Its altogether a slow boring game. Sine, i cant even believe you are comparing the openness of this to Braid which was very clearly seperates out the world, the puzzles, and is a sidescroller. You always know where to go in that game and what it wants you to do, with different mechanics and an awesome story. Its light years above Fez.
 #161121  by Shrinweck
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 4:44 pm
Flip wrote:You dont know if you missed any in a particular area, how many more you need, what new section of the word just opened up, etc.
The world map clearly tells you if you've cleared an area and what areas connect to the area you're in.

Also I didn't particularly care for Braid.
 #161126  by Don
 Mon Jul 15, 2013 11:36 pm
I really don't get the games that seems to equate retro = extra ghetto graphic. See Megaman 9 and 10 for example.
 #161127  by SineSwiper
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:58 am
Don wrote:I really don't get the games that seems to equate retro = extra ghetto graphic. See Megaman 9 and 10 for example.
Depends on the budget. Capcom had the budget to do anything they wanted, but choose to maximize profits with crap graphics. Fez is basically made by one programmer, one artist, and one musician. And it's rather large (with 4 sides), so there's a lot of art to draw.

Terraria has about the same style of graphics. Hell, Minecraft looks worse than both of them.
 #161128  by Don
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:54 am
SineSwiper wrote:
Don wrote:I really don't get the games that seems to equate retro = extra ghetto graphic. See Megaman 9 and 10 for example.
Depends on the budget. Capcom had the budget to do anything they wanted, but choose to maximize profits with crap graphics. Fez is basically made by one programmer, one artist, and one musician. And it's rather large (with 4 sides), so there's a lot of art to draw.

Terraria has about the same style of graphics. Hell, Minecraft looks worse than both of them.
It obviously is a case by case but I think most of the time the bad graphics are picked on purpose because it's believed that people were prefer bad graphics. If you look at Megaman 9 it says they had to take a lot of effort to purposely create graphics that bad because the library for that kind of graphics no longer exist. So it sure sounds like if they have some say GBA level of graphics it'd actually be cheaper.
 #161129  by Eric
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:53 pm
SineSwiper wrote:
Don wrote:I really don't get the games that seems to equate retro = extra ghetto graphic. See Megaman 9 and 10 for example.
Depends on the budget. Capcom had the budget to do anything they wanted, but choose to maximize profits with crap graphics. Fez is basically made by one programmer, one artist, and one musician. And it's rather large (with 4 sides), so there's a lot of art to draw.

Terraria has about the same style of graphics. Hell, Minecraft looks worse than both of them.
Fez's graphics were a design choice same as Megaman 9 & 10.

I don't know about Minecraft.
 #161130  by SineSwiper
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:32 pm
Eric wrote:Fez's graphics were a design choice same as Megaman 9 & 10.
No. When you have near unlimited resources (like Capcom), it's pretty disingenuous to choose to make a game with graphics so crappy that your artists have a hard time drawing with that kind of palette. A 2D game is okay, but there is a lower limit that Megaman 9/10 seemed to hit. And then to top it off with a cover that reminds you of that shitty one from MM1.

Budget matters. For Fez, some of it was a design choice, but it was mostly about resources. Either he could spend a bunch of time improving the graphics or focus on the other elements.

Why are we arguing so much about graphics anyway? Just play the damn game or don't.
 #161131  by Eric
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:56 pm
It doesn't matter how much resources Capcom has, they made Megaman 9 & 10 specifically with that look in mind to appeal to fans like Zeus who thought it was a brilliant idea.

Yes budget matters, but he designed Fez with that look in mind, if he had a bigger budget the game would have looked the same.

I'm not playing the game, but I've read up on Fez I know what he went through to get it made and what type of choices he made.
 #161132  by Zeus
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:41 pm
Eric wrote:Fez is boring, I don't want to explore the world and be like "Aw, that's neat", because I was falling asleep as I was playing it. There's 0 action, the gimmick of turning 3d gets old quick, the music isn't terribly memorable, it's just my opinion dude. If you loved it more power to you.
But Eric! Everyone else here LOVES this game! What do you wanna be known as, the Next Zeus?!? Keep your opinions to yourself if they don't align with everyone else, man!
 #161133  by Don
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:23 pm
I'm pretty sure graphics look that way because whoever designed it is convinced that's going to be the best way to sell the game. It takes effort to make graphics that bad because there's nothing modern that will support it to begin with.
 #161134  by Eric
 Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:36 pm
Zeus wrote:
Eric wrote:Fez is boring, I don't want to explore the world and be like "Aw, that's neat", because I was falling asleep as I was playing it. There's 0 action, the gimmick of turning 3d gets old quick, the music isn't terribly memorable, it's just my opinion dude. If you loved it more power to you.
But Eric! Everyone else here LOVES this game! What do you wanna be known as, the Next Zeus?!? Keep your opinions to yourself if they don't align with everyone else, man!
Touche. :0
 #161151  by Zeus
 Thu Jul 18, 2013 5:53 pm
Eric wrote:
Zeus wrote:
Eric wrote:Fez is boring, I don't want to explore the world and be like "Aw, that's neat", because I was falling asleep as I was playing it. There's 0 action, the gimmick of turning 3d gets old quick, the music isn't terribly memorable, it's just my opinion dude. If you loved it more power to you.
But Eric! Everyone else here LOVES this game! What do you wanna be known as, the Next Zeus?!? Keep your opinions to yourself if they don't align with everyone else, man!
Touche. :0
I thought it was pretty appropriate considering you're one of the loudest to point out when my views (rarely) don't align on games :-)
 #161152  by Shrinweck
 Thu Jul 18, 2013 6:25 pm
It's 2v2 as far as I can tell - it's forum v 1 when your opinions deviate :P
 #161155  by Eric
 Fri Jul 19, 2013 2:51 am
Zeus wrote:I thought it was pretty appropriate considering you're one of the loudest to point out when my views (rarely) don't align on games :-)
Yeah but I like bickering with you over stuff, lol.