I was going to write a review of Fez. You know, traditional review structure, explain the story, go over the gameplay mechanics, describe the graphics… But in the end, I decided that would be a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, I am going to gush about the place the game is set, and how it is the most complete imaginary world I have ever encountered. even though I know next to nothing about it for sure. The evolution of it’s inhabitants should be first port of call.
This actually blew my mind when I realised it: Gomez’s ancestors, the ones with the tall heads and only one eye – their village was in two dimensions and their rooms couldn’t be rotated. Did they live in two dimensions simply because they only had one eye? If perception is the key to understanding the world, then maybe. It’s like trying to explain the colour red to someone who cannot see! I digress. They eventually evolved into more Gomez-looking creatures but with large, square heads, and most importantly: two eyes. When you go to their village and it is inhabited, it is clearly in three dimensions, with no rooms being neglected like in the tall-head village, or in Gomez’s home village. Now, this is the bit that felt like a penny dropping into place: The space-squids have three eyes, and can travel through folds in space, quite possibly known as the fourth dimension.
A correlation between number of eyes and number of dimensions perceived.
War Games – the new name for multiplayer Red vs Blue. This was always going to be the main area of the game for me, shooting guys is so much better than shooting AIs. It has a lot to live up to – the Halo series is the only First Person multiplayer experience that I felt was flawless – and then in subsequent games they always improve on it somehow. Halo was great – never has lugging an Xbox and TV round a mates house been so rewarding. Halo 2 improved it, made it smoother, added cool new weapons and had an amazing selection of maps. Halo 3 added equipment and refined the whole thing. Halo: Reach added armour abilities – these things really spiced things up. And now Halo 4…
I have played through the Campaign three times – once with Jane on Normal, once with Lewis on Heroic, and once by myself on Legendary. This is what I thought of it.
Also, as well as the spoiler warning, I should let you know that this may be all over the place. I’m not going to basically write out the whole story, I will jump from start to end and back again with little warning.
But I will start at the beginning.
As one of the three main facets of Halo 4’s Campaign mode, and a huge part of how successful the multiplayer side of things were going to be, this was a potential area for disappointment. Not only did any new weapons have to be balanced and Halo-ish, deciding which old ones to keep and which to quietly brush under the carpet must’ve been tough too. I was going to cover the vehicle selection in this post as well, but it’s standard stuff really. Apart from one new one, there’s just the basic, standard, (dependable) set in Halo 4. Mongoose. Warthog. Ghost. Banshee. Wraith.
