GDC 12: Hands-on preview of FEZ

As I stumble through the doors being frisked by weary bouncers, I find myself standing in the middle of the DNA Lounge. It is here that 8bitSF is throwing their POW event, where indie developers mingle and network at live show of various indie rock bands inspired by video game culture. As I just finished listening to The Glowing Stars set finish on stage, I turned my head and confirmed what was curiously in my peripheral. Low and behold, FEZ was available for play in a make shift kiosk where no one was playing it. This was an opportunity that spoke directly to me and on this wild ride; I was spoken to yet again on so many levels by little Gomez.

The immediate impression I felt was the incredible ease of immersion in the world of FEZ. As the camera slowly panned out and around the stage layout, I was able to fully take in the setting in ways that screenshots or even a montage trailer could never do justice for. The physics behind movement and jumping were simple enough, but when balanced with traversal through the stage, it’s nothing short of the most elegant platforming done in recent memory. In case you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of years, then I can only assume that you’re familiar behind the core fundamental that plays the hook for FEZ.

The game takes the premise of 2D platforming and places it in a 3D world, defining a whole new approach to 2.5 stage design. FEZ allows you to shift the view of the stage through horizontal rotation, and reveals a completely different perspective on the same setting of the stage itself. Where this sounds gimmicky in writing, its execution is simply brilliant. Think back to the release of Portal 2, when Valve ran a marketing slogan emphasizing all of us to think with portals -- FEZ will have you thinking with perspective every step of the way and the entire dynamic becomes more engaging as you progress.

The presentation compliments the stage design, with a charm that displays the articulated effort behind each and every pixel within its visual layout. The animation in the world of FEZ employs a unique equipoise with fidelity that’s pushes modern graphical standards while still catering to retro aesthetic it recreates. Small details like the animation of water or the texture transitions between perspective shifts, to the surprising amount of sprite frames Gomez has in his animations, FEZ simply comes alive when you spend time with it. The puzzle aspect to the main objective in collecting smaller cubes to create a bigger cube encouraged exploration to locate what you could or what you felt comfortable with doing as you chose what to how ever many cubes you wanted to progress to one of many optional doors. The world of FEZ resembles a "Metroidvania" setup, but does something new with it that no one else has been able to accomplish in years. The style is paced to where exploration is deputized by your character growth in abilities that would open up new paths.

However, this wasn’t the case in FEZ. Instead, I was dependant on my own ability to ascertain what was possible for me to achieve and to pace myself at a level that was comfortable for play but never hindered my capability of exploration.

Many games choose routes pandering to one’s nostalgia, but from the brief time I had with FEZ, it’s clear that Polytron doesn’t just get it -- they completely fucking get it.