After watching the Quick Look I was like eeehhhhhhh :/

But after hearing that: Oh boy! I like the Mass Effect indoctrination theory, I like the Portal 2 viral marketing, I like that the end of Bioshock is totally a commentary on game design if you play it enough times, I like hearing about what MGS2 was REALLY about- Is that the kind of stuff this game is about?

Me too, I'm going to get it as soon as possible, because the whole 'zeitgeist' nature of the experience seems way better than the actual game itself.

This talk kind of explains Phil Fish's arrogance. Not justifies, but explains it. He's been talking lots of smack, and he only seemed to have one gameplay hook to back it up with, which wasn't enough for the 'David Simoning' that he was doing.

Now we see why, and I want to play this damn game.

@Tylea002: @I_smell: No, not really FEZ is all about letting the one true God, The Black Monolith, into your heart.

When all accept his existence, he will finally let us solve his riddle. And then... we all become space baby.

I already had thegame,but lost interest. Then the bombcast sparked it up again. So last night I "finished" the game and started the new game+... then lost interest again. I would love to get caught up in the madness like they have, but I don't think its going to happen

It made me download the trial, though I found the game itself incredibly boring. Not for me

Totally bought it based on the bombcast. I need a good mindfuck.

I had already purchased it but was kind of eh after playing it for a while. Then the quicklook I couldn't even get through. After hearing the bombcast I'm really trying to get through it to get to newgame+ to see what the extra depth is. Kind of excited to see what it turns out to be. Hopefully I haven't put odd expectations on it.

I'm still not getting the full crazy part of Fez the guys were talking about yet. But it's really cool so far regardless. I'm just having fun exploring. Maybe when I see the crazy part my mind will be blown too but it hasn't yet.

I don't like ARGs, so I doubt I will ever enjoy Fez.

Bought it, played it.

I'm playing through it - but now that I have the Witcher 2, I doubt I'll be back to it for awhile. But in general, I just don't know if I find the puzzles in the game that compelling as a game - sure there's something to be said for things being a bit esoteric and requiring critical thinking, but there's no way I could even figure out half of the stuff in the game without a FAQ outside of the simple puzzle platformer bits. And I guess I don't know if I like puzzles for the sake of puzzles - I got so drawn into Portal (and even moreso Portal 2) because the puzzles also served a great narrative. Just breaking codes to get cubes to appear doesn't necessarily make me feel like it's a great game.

@rebgav: Burn the Heretic.

Paid reviews/coverage usually does. /troll

Yeah, the Bombcast discussion guaranteed that I'm going to at least give the game a shot even though I still think I'm probably too dumb to get much out of it. 

@I_smell: How is the end of BioShock commentary on game design? Is it that adding a boss fight at the end is generic? Or are you talking about all the "Would you kindly" stuff?

But more in line with the topic here, I kinda feel the same way. I'm still not 100% sold on the game, but listening to them made me go from having no interest to having a lot of interest.

Do I need X-box gold to play this game?

Same, except I don't own a 360. Have to wait for the inevitable Steam release.

@DamianOgre: Its a single player game, so I would be shocked if you had to pay a gold sub to play.

eh, I liked the game better when I thought it was a puzzle platformer

Yeah, the Bombcast sold me on it as well. I hadn't (and still haven't, really) paid any attention to it in the media, aside from that thing that happened at GDC. I wasn't going to buy it out of principle just based on that, but then I heard them talking about it during my bus ride on the way home yesterday. First thing I did when I got home was hop on the XBLA and buy it. :D
 
It seems really good, but I'll have to get further into it in a couple of weeks when I'm done with my seminar essays.

I would like to know what's so mind-boggingly crazy about the game without getting spoiled. Jeff said this game shouldn't exist, why?

@CptBedlam: ARG man ARG, also Flatland.

So the real crazy thing about Fez was buying it on release day playing through it thinking it was just a fun relaxing little exploration game and then finding out about all the crazy stuff. Then being here as people are truly discovering the depth of the game for the first time. I'm not sure if it will really have the same effect if you're going into it expecting the crrazy stuff. I kind of feel like if you didn't get it on release day and experience the crazyness over the weekend you might have missed the bus. It's just not something I think can be relived.

@Bocam: wat

@Barrabas: That's my impression as well. I'll probably pass then.

Also, are there any truly spectacular reveals in the game that change everything and such? Are you at some point playing a completely different game maybe? Or is it always just this "here is this riddle and the solution has nothing to do with the game"-thing?

@Barrabas said:

So the real crazy thing about Fez was buying it on release day playing through it thinking it was just a fun relaxing little exploration game and then finding out about all the crazy stuff. Then being here as people are truly discovering the depth of the game for the first time. I'm not sure if it will really have the same effect if you're going into it expecting the crrazy stuff. I kind of feel like if you didn't get it on release day and experience the crazyness over the weekend you might have missed the bus. It's just not something I think can be relived.

That is kinda how I think some people expecting madness as Jeff puts are going to feel. I am somewhere in the middle I think, I played it on release and noticed that something more was going on in the world but never discovered any of it.

The Bombcast conversation had the exact opposite effect on me. I was looking forward to a fun little indie pixel art puzzle platformer thing. All this talk about like metagame and ARG bullshit is a complete turn off for me.

Bought it this morning, finally cashed in some BingRewards points for some Microsoft points. If it wasn't for classes I would be playing now.

@MooseyMcMan said:

@I_smell: How is the end of BioShock commentary on game design? Is it that adding a boss fight at the end is generic? Or are you talking about all the "Would you kindly" stuff?

OK I'll write about what I read into in Bioshock, but heads up: If you think "Raiden represents the perspective of NEW players, and Snake represents the-..." sounds like the start of a dumb sentence: You are gonna fuckin hate this and shouldn't bother. It only works if you ignore the part at the end where Fontaine becomes a big muscley boss.

Up-front it's a game about choice. All the E3 demos and trailers and stuff are about how there's so many ways to deal with enemies, you choose which plasmids to equip, you have freedom to hack and use everything; and at the centre of that idea is the choice with the Little Sisters.

The TRICK part is that everyone does what the tutorial voice says, and everyone does what the game's designed for, even though it FEELS LIKE you're making your own way. In the fiction it's because Fontaine says "would you kindly", but in the real world it's because he's the designated friendly helpful tutorial voice and you're guided to listen. At the end of Bioshock, you find out the game's about the ILLUSION OF CHOICE, and making someone THINK they're in the driving seat. The tutorial voice is one of many manipulators in games, and the illusion of choice all Fontaine ever talks about.

The real point of the game that illustrates this is at the end, after you've made all the choices you like and chose to rescue or harvest whichever Little Sisters, no matter how many different ways you play it, you'll always beat Andrew Ryan to death. That's Fontaine's plan, and that's the designer's plan: To keep you happy enough that you're in control to never notice that you aren't. The Little Sisters had nothing to do with Andrew Ryan, Rapture, or Fontaine. After you kill Andrew Ryan (a scene where you DON'T have control), Fontaine says "Now would you kindly take his genetic key, and put it in that machine" after it's revealed that that's all a bad idea, and it gives you free control to run around again. That illustrates that you technically have freedom to run around and do what you want, but the designer's only permitted one exit from this room, and wants you're going to do it. This doesn't help you, or your character, or Rapture, it's not a good idea, but you're going to do it anyway because you want to progress. That's how the whole game was, and that's how all games are.

Bioshock came out in 2007 when player choice was a massive trend: If you look at this shack in Half Life 2, you have a freely open choice to go in there or not, but EVERYONE DOES because it has a lot of "would you kindly" gamer-friendly ATLAS effects of guiding you towards it. In Mass Effect you choose for the whole game to be paragon or renegade, but EVERYONE did the renegade interrupts without thinking too much because they're timed. Similarly, most people chose the middle path at the end of ME3 even though that's not a good idea at all, because the game does a lot to guide you towards it. The whole point of this is that the illusion of choice is a powerful tool for manipulating people. All you have to do is make certain menu options the right colour and put certain reward in specific places, and you can get people really excited about ripping little girls open and fucking themselves over.

Of course Bioshock is NOT about that, and I don't believe Mass Effect is about indoctrination either. I've just read too much into it cos that's what I enjoy doing. But if FEZ is actually a game designed to be read into, then boy howdy am I interested in that.

@CptBedlam: You ever read Flatland. Fez is like that but crazier.

@Bocam: No

Okay, so I also bought Fez, put in 15 minutes, then went back to Dota 2..

Bombcast got me to put in like two hours last night. Here's what I'm worried about - spoiling myself on the internet. I'm going to do as they said and not look up anything until I get to new game+ and get stuck.. but for some reason, I feel like I'm going to be left behind like you do in ARGs if you aren't in on the ground floor. Is that a valid fear, or should I continue going at my own pace and all that?

Like all this Black Monolith stuff.. man, I just don't know. I'm afraid if I finish the game in a month, it won't have the same impact/effect of figuring it out as it would right now. Does any of this make sense?

@Bocam said:

@CptBedlam: You ever read Flatland. Fez is like that but crazier.

... I didn't know Flatland was a book. I thought it was just a short little animated video. Now I kind of want to read that.

It sold me as well, however I have a small pile of games I've already purchased and have yet to finish which I feel obligated to get to before buying another new game. Although since it's only ten bucks I might give in, and hopefully it won't just get added to the pile.

The game has one, possibly two big revelatory moments. I'll give it that, but I can't help but feel that the creators of this game are out of their god damn minds. Not in a good way. Fez takes a giant dump on modern game design. Currently right now the internet is trying to brute force 78125 suspected possible solutions for a puzzle in a video game. What the fuck.

@Bocam: Space babies?

The Bombcast discussion actually discouraged me from trying Fez, but then I'm pretty lazy when it comes to games.

@Slay3r1583: I think it does a solid job fulfilling both roles. About 1/3rd of the game is the stuff you see in the Quicklook, which leads to the eventual credit role. This is a good 6-10 hours, depending on how thorough you want to be. If you want to get into that crazy other stuff of translating languages and input codes... go for it. But the core platforming experience isn't really lost in the process.

After listening to the bombcast I spent a couple of hours playing, it's a wonderful game. I think I'm already seeing some of the strange things in the world but still collecting cubes.

Beautiful game, except for that damn audio bug :(

Me too. While the game did pique my interest, I had no real intentions of purchasing it. But now I am sitting on here, thumb hovering over the 'A' button to confirm the purchase. God damn it, Giant Bomb, you win once again.

@I_smell: Good, that's more or less what I thought you meant (and kind got a lot of that from the game), but I wasn't sure if I was missing a large chunk of hidden meaning in the game.

Also, I didn't just blindly do the renegade prompts in the Mass Effect games, nor did I go up the middle, because I believe that game is about indoctrination, but that's a different discussion that has been done to DEATH.

This game isn't a brilliant platformer. The concept is great, rotating the world to eliminate a dimension. I feel like, gameplay-wise, the concept wasn't explored very much. That or you just can't actually do much with the concept. Expecting a puzzle platformer, I left my initial playthrough a little disappointed.

That said, the world and atmosphere are fantastic. I don't think I've heard better music/sound in a game for a while.

Eventually, when I started working on the second half of the game I found a lot to like. It's not like Braid or Portal, where mechanics are explored - it's more like a puzzle game about observation.

Also, I really don't think anything about Fez is crazy. Apart from maybe the hype.

@theimmortalbum said:

Bombcast got me to put in like two hours last night. Here's what I'm worried about - spoiling myself on the internet. I'm going to do as they said and not look up anything until I get to new game+ and get stuck.. but for some reason, I feel like I'm going to be left behind like you do in ARGs if you aren't in on the ground floor. Is that a valid fear, or should I continue going at my own pace and all that?

Like all this Black Monolith stuff.. man, I just don't know. I'm afraid if I finish the game in a month, it won't have the same impact/effect of figuring it out as it would right now. Does any of this make sense?

Don't worry, the game isn't an actual ARG. It's just easy to compare it to one because people are working together. Also, no, don't rush. In fact, every moment in the game is more rewarding if you work it out yourself. There's no time limit for this game. They didn't spend the last 5 years making a game that would be redundant after a week. The reason there's a bunch of people working together is because unlike most games there is a genuine mystery with this final puzzle. It's fueled by a leaderboard as well.

@Panpipe: The insain part is that that's the way the game is rather than being a puzzle platformer like Braid. It's insain that the game expects you to decipher all it's psychobabble into something coherent.

@Green_Incarnate: Yeah, I guess in that way, it's almost a negative insane, as opposed to an awesome insane.

It's insane in that a lot of people will come away from this game disappointed - and they designed it to be like that. Some people will go away on a super-high though.

@Panpipe said:

This game isn't a brilliant platformer. The concept is great, rotating the world to eliminate a dimension. I feel like, gameplay-wise, the concept wasn't explored very much. That or you just can't actually do much with the concept. Expecting a puzzle platformer, I left my initial playthrough a little disappointed.

That said, the world and atmosphere are fantastic. I don't think I've heard better music/sound in a game for a while.

Eventually, when I started working on the second half of the game I found a lot to like. It's not like Braid or Portal, where mechanics are explored - it's more like a puzzle game about observation.

Also, I really don't think anything about Fez is crazy. Apart from maybe the hype.

@theimmortalbum said:

Bombcast got me to put in like two hours last night. Here's what I'm worried about - spoiling myself on the internet. I'm going to do as they said and not look up anything until I get to new game+ and get stuck.. but for some reason, I feel like I'm going to be left behind like you do in ARGs if you aren't in on the ground floor. Is that a valid fear, or should I continue going at my own pace and all that?

Like all this Black Monolith stuff.. man, I just don't know. I'm afraid if I finish the game in a month, it won't have the same impact/effect of figuring it out as it would right now. Does any of this make sense?

Don't worry, the game isn't an actual ARG. It's just easy to compare it to one because people are working together. Also, no, don't rush. In fact, every moment in the game is more rewarding if you work it out yourself. There's no time limit for this game. They didn't spend the last 5 years making a game that would be redundant after a week. The reason there's a bunch of people working together is because unlike most games there is a genuine mystery with this final puzzle. It's fueled by a leaderboard as well.

Yeah, I know it's not an actual ARG - but I loved LOST and Halo and never did those ARGs, because I never got in at the start. I'd love to spend the time and try to solve everything myself after I hit NG+.. but with a three month old baby and full time job, my time to devote to it is limited. ;) And my huge backlog. I guess that's really what's going on here. I have The Witcher 2, ME3, Arkham City, Saints Row 3, among countless other games I've yet to finish.. some I haven't even started. >.>

@Barrabas said:

So the real crazy thing about Fez was buying it on release day playing through it thinking it was just a fun relaxing little exploration game and then finding out about all the crazy stuff. Then being here as people are truly discovering the depth of the game for the first time. I'm not sure if it will really have the same effect if you're going into it expecting the crrazy stuff. I kind of feel like if you didn't get it on release day and experience the crazyness over the weekend you might have missed the bus. It's just not something I think can be relived.

That is kinda how I think some people expecting madness as Jeff puts are going to feel. I am somewhere in the middle I think, I played it on release and noticed that something more was going on in the world but never discovered any of it.

@I_smell please, tell me more about MGS2! I'm playing through them all and just started 3. needless to say it's all pretty confusing.

@theimmortalbum said:

Yeah, I know it's not an actual ARG - but I loved LOST and Halo and never did those ARGs, because I never got in at the start. I'd love to spend the time and try to solve everything myself after I hit NG+.. but with a three month old baby and full time job, my time to devote to it is limited. ;) And my huge backlog. I guess that's really what's going on here. I have The Witcher 2, ME3, Arkham City, Saints Row 3, among countless other games I've yet to finish.. some I haven't even started. >.>

At this point, you've missed 98% of the ARG though.

One final puzzle remains. To cheat your way through the game, so that you can involved in working out the final puzzle would be a waste of your experience and money.

The best experience you could get out of this game now, would be to work everything out yourself. It should take around 15 hours to work out 203% of the game. There is an extra 6% that personally I think 1% of players would ever work out alone. It's up to you how you want to spend your time, but that would be my recommendation.

Also you can complete at least 190% of the game without translating the alphabet.

@Panpipe said:

@theimmortalbum said:

Yeah, I know it's not an actual ARG - but I loved LOST and Halo and never did those ARGs, because I never got in at the start. I'd love to spend the time and try to solve everything myself after I hit NG+.. but with a three month old baby and full time job, my time to devote to it is limited. ;) And my huge backlog. I guess that's really what's going on here. I have The Witcher 2, ME3, Arkham City, Saints Row 3, among countless other games I've yet to finish.. some I haven't even started. >.>

At this point, you've missed 98% of the ARG though.

One final puzzle remains. To cheat your way through the game, so that you can involved in working out the final puzzle would be a waste of your experience and money.

The best experience you could get out of this game now, would be to work everything out yourself. It should take around 15 hours to work out 203% of the game. There is an extra 6% that personally I think 1% of players would ever work out alone. It's up to you how you want to spend your time, but that would be my recommendation.

Also you can complete at least 190% of the game without translating the alphabet.

Yeah, I'm just worried that I'll do what Jeff did and just sit in an area I'm not even equipped to figure out yet, and that'll be it. While I love doing things on my own (Myst, Riven, etc), my game time is also so limited that I don't want to just.. waste it on nothing. Last time I wrote in a notebook for a game was Myst.. and, while I wasn't 100% sure there was a translatable alphabet in the game (I know now!), I was fairly certain that's some of what I've seen so far.

I'll probably put more time into it tonight.. except I'm lost, haha. I kept following doors and, after going back to the main warp gate, I can't seem to figure out how to get back to the room with all the locked doors (the 4, 8, 16, 32 cube ones).

I have the game and i am concerned that i will not get the "AH HA" moment. I did appreciate Patrick's advice where he said to just play the game and let it come naturally, but I have a feeling that i won't figure out the key to the game. Does it just come down to inserting konami-codes at certain places? who knows? What is this thing Jeff keeps talking about?

@killacam said:

@I_smell please, tell me more about MGS2! I'm playing through them all and just started 3. needless to say it's all pretty confusing.

A making-of documentary came with the English version. This part talks all about why they chose to make Raiden the star of MGS2, and what his role is outside of the game's story.

If you're confused about what happened though: THE PATRIOTS are a secret group who control all the world's governments, and the events of MGS2 was like a giant obstacle course they made to see if they could manipulate a regular person like Raiden. There are threads in the GiantBomb MGS2 forum where people talk about all the STUFF MGS2 talks about, so maybe look for that.