Jump to content
MFGamers

Hendo

Recommended Posts

Black holes are temporary. Leave the room and re-enter and they'll probably be gone.

This really is a game of two halves. 125% was where i maxed out before hitting youtube. Up to the point where i finished the game and was exploring and collecting the golden cubes, i loved it, one of my favourite games of this gen.

Then i got really frustrated with the game because i couldn't figure out the secrets. I'm disappointed i'll never get the feeling of cracking the games' secrets myself.

Looking back, I kick myself for not figuring some of it out, for not seeing what was in front of me. But i had explored the length and breadth of the map several times over, so i can't say i didn't try.

That being said, there are A LOT of things in the game i would never have figured out.

Anyway, up to 203% now. I'll have maxed out the game soon enough.

It's a game you really need to discover for yourself. My only piece of advice is, after you complete the game, pay attention to the classrooms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Black holes are temporary. Leave the room and re-enter and they'll probably be gone.

This really is a game of two halves. 125% was where i maxed out before hitting youtube. Up to the point where i finished the game and was exploring and collecting the golden cubes, i loved it, one of my favourite games of this gen.

Then i got really frustrated with the game because i couldn't figure out the secrets. I'm disappointed i'll never get the feeling of cracking the games' secrets myself.

Looking back, I kick myself for not figuring some of it out, for not seeing what was in front of me. But i had explored the length and breadth of the map several times over, so i can't say i didn't try.

That being said, there are A LOT of things in the game i would never have figured out.

Anyway, up to 203% now. I'll have maxed out the game soon enough.

It's a game you really need to discover for yourself. My only piece of advice is, after you complete the game, pay attention to the classrooms.

^ that's pretty much how i got on with it too, great ideas/graphics/music, really great game but after about 40 cubes and finishing the game for the first time i gave up and headed to google for answers which yeah does sort of spoil it. not really spoilers about the codes but just in case:

i couldn't be bothered to try and work out the alphabet, counting the frequency of all the letters on stuff doesn't seem like fun to me - and would have required google anyway - i'm guessing that method would work anyway. i'd never have worked out the alphabet another (the propper?) way. the tetris and number codes i did try and crack and failed, maybe would have got the tetris had i seen a certain room at a certain point in the game but would never have got the numbers.

and as above many other things in the game i'd have never worked out. some of the puzzles are brilliant though - mainly for me the early/easy ones i could solve on my own :awe: feel bad for sounding negative because it's great and at a bargain price.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Black holes are temporary. Leave the room and re-enter and they'll probably be gone.

This really is a game of two halves. 125% was where i maxed out before hitting youtube. Up to the point where i finished the game and was exploring and collecting the golden cubes, i loved it, one of my favourite games of this gen.

Then i got really frustrated with the game because i couldn't figure out the secrets. I'm disappointed i'll never get the feeling of cracking the games' secrets myself.

Looking back, I kick myself for not figuring some of it out, for not seeing what was in front of me. But i had explored the length and breadth of the map several times over, so i can't say i didn't try.

That being said, there are A LOT of things in the game i would never have figured out.

Anyway, up to 203% now. I'll have maxed out the game soon enough.

It's a game you really need to discover for yourself. My only piece of advice is, after you complete the game, pay attention to the classrooms.

^ that's pretty much how i got on with it too, great ideas/graphics/music, really great game but after about 40 cubes and finishing the game for the first time i gave up and headed to google for answers which yeah does sort of spoil it. not really spoilers about the codes but just in case:

i couldn't be bothered to try and work out the alphabet, counting the frequency of all the letters on stuff doesn't seem like fun to me - and would have required google anyway - i'm guessing that method would work anyway. i'd never have worked out the alphabet another (the propper?) way. the tetris and number codes i did try and crack and failed, maybe would have got the tetris had i seen a certain room at a certain point in the game but would never have got the numbers.

and as above many other things in the game i'd have never worked out. some of the puzzles are brilliant though - mainly for me the early/easy ones i could solve on my own :awe: feel bad for sounding negative because it's great and at a bargain price.

Yeah.

I figured out the alphabet the long-winded way (or at least, figured out 5/6 letters, checked to see if i was right, then cribbed the rest). The so-called proper way (i.e. this apparently obvious "pangram" which i've never heard in my life) annoyed me a little. Must be an American thing.

Unfortunately, the alphabet is useless because the only two puzzles it's relevant to (that spring to mind), are the two really crazy puzzles in the game anyway.

I never would have figured out the numbers, even looking at the online solutions, makes no sense to me.

And the tetris language completely went over my head. The room with the plinth that lights up, i was in that room 3 or 4 times and didn't make the connection. Again in the classroom in the world behind the 8-cube door, the link is clearly made, but i didn't take it in. Seems glaringly obvious when you know how, but if your mind doesn't join the dots...

I think in this case one reason i didn't figure it out, was because the game didn't have a designated area where you were prompted to input a code. There is no point where the game says "here is some information" or asks you to give information. This lack of interactivity, or handholding, is quite revolutionary! I like the game for it, but my brain certainly wasn't up to the task!

Yes i feel that for the golden cube portion of the game, the game's gentle mix of platforming and puzzling was amazing. Mixed with the lovely aesthetic (i'll be damned if that isn't my favourite title screen of all time), and you had a real winner. But then the game kind of hits you ever the head with a mallet, it's hard to love a game that reinforces your own stupidity...

@ Hendo: Have you been through the 8/16 cubes doors in the area just below the central hub? The 16 cube door takes you to a village with a 32 cube door (counting both your cubes and anti-cubes) which if i remember right is the door you go through to "finish" the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the tetris language completely went over my head. The room with the plinth that lights up, i was in that room 3 or 4 times and didn't make the connection. Again in the classroom in the world behind the 8-cube door, the link is clearly made, but i didn't take it in. Seems glaringly obvious when you know how, but if your mind doesn't join the dots...

I think in this case one reason i didn't figure it out, was because the game didn't have a designated area where you were prompted to input a code. There is no point where the game says "here is some information" or asks you to give information. This lack of interactivity, or handholding, is quite revolutionary! I like the game for it, but my brain certainly wasn't up to the task!

Yeah the tetris code -I didn't see that room till after I'd already googled it. If I'd seen it too early I doubt I'd have understood it but later on maybe. I thought it related to rotating the world like you do tetris pieces, so wasn't on the right track.

One of the puzzles I really liked was the tuning fork ones

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the tetris language completely went over my head. The room with the plinth that lights up, i was in that room 3 or 4 times and didn't make the connection. Again in the classroom in the world behind the 8-cube door, the link is clearly made, but i didn't take it in. Seems glaringly obvious when you know how, but if your mind doesn't join the dots...

I think in this case one reason i didn't figure it out, was because the game didn't have a designated area where you were prompted to input a code. There is no point where the game says "here is some information" or asks you to give information. This lack of interactivity, or handholding, is quite revolutionary! I like the game for it, but my brain certainly wasn't up to the task!

Yeah the tetris code -I didn't see that room till after I'd already googled it. If I'd seen it too early I doubt I'd have understood it but later on maybe. I thought it related to rotating the world like you do tetris pieces, so wasn't on the right track.

One of the puzzles I really liked was the tuning fork ones

Yeah they were cool. Currently waiting in the clock room for the grey hand to strike 12. It only happens once every 48 hours and it's been right next to it for ages now... I want to get it tonight and be done with it because it's driving me crazy. It's the only thing i'm missing, after than i can visit the 64 cube room and 100% the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I played the hell out of this game when it went up. I didn't put it down for most of the day and when I did I was ranked 55th in the world, or around that. Only 54 people as sad as me.

I think I have 56 cubes at the moment but I can figure out the rest and I don't want to look it up because I did figure out the Tetris thing and it felt great and if I can't get that self congratulatory feeling then I don't see much of a point. I never finished Braid properly either for the same reason.

I had loads to say about it while I was playing it but the moments kind of gone now.

I just hope that there are game makers out there seeing how well these 4th wall puzzles work and how discovery is used really well and getting inspired by that. Very few games tie up the guidance with mystery so well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I think I have to resign myself to only finishing this with a guide as I keep getting stuck, and early on, we're talking before you have to start deciphering messages. I know that much from GiantBomb and I also nearly read a Eurogamer spoiler article on it so booted up the game instead.

I'm currently using a pivot to spin a tower round but it really isn't doing me any good.

EDIT:

Got past that bit, picked up an ancient artifact that's meant to write things and then some black holes started appearing alongside me, at which point I give up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Its a patch that fixes one fuck up but still has a very small chance of fucking your save file. I was pretty unlucky.

Started again, i still absolutely love it but its really tricky, im super stuck. Then i read about having to decipher a language? Really?

EDIT: Just read some spoilers, seems so. I shall crack on and see what i cant do by myself. This game really oozes quality though, its really nice to play.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah i loved playing through Fez, it's a beautiful game. Don't worry about the secrets until you beat the game for the first time. Unfortunately the hidden stuff is very abstract though, i had to use a guide for most of it, after trying to figure it out for ages.

The game walks a bit of a fine line between intuition and nonsense that nobody would figure out, it's subjective i guess. But in terms of interactivity and how the game communicates with the player, it's pretty mindblowing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Oh yea, Fez.

Let me see... i loved it. Loads. Absolutely no way in hell i could have ever have got close to finishing it without a guide. Managed all the tetris puzzles without one and once i had the directional input puzzles explained to me i could solve those but some if it was just too clever for my simple little brain. Managed to get everything with a guide though, just took some time.

Braid, Lucidity, Limbo and now Fez. XBLA is a great platform.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

So, because this was on sale, a few of us over at Cane and Rinse are playing it completely blind. I know fuck all about the game. this is a copy and paste post. In fact, pretty much everything I post in here will be a copy and paste job. Anyway, lets do this shit!!!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Oh man, where to start.

I'm going to spoiler whole lots of this, as I've played according to the leaderbaords in the game about 40% in. Don't worry if that seems like a lot and you won't catch up, it really isn't. It comes from about 2 and a half hours play of going in blind besides some quicklook thing I saw on I think Giant Bomb.

Onto the game. This might be out of sequential order, I've had a lot to think about typing this up and I'm not sure if everything is in periodic order. I've been hit with so much information it's hard to know what started where.

The game opens and you are treated to a light show at the top of Gomez's village. At first I thought it was speaking in pictures, but the letters appear to some sort of language we cannot understand. I didn't think much of it until I got the rotating ability and started exploring the houses collecting the cube until I noticed that the stuff taped up in the boiler room looks the same. I looked at it for a bit and couldn't tell what letters were which, so I left it at that. Actually, concerning that boiler room... It says there's a secret to it. I searched high and low and even managed to get outside the room and fall to my death. I couldn't find any secrets in there at all though. The room with the monocled gent in the painting also has a secret according to the map, I could find this neither.

Anyway, I carried on playing until I came to the room with the doors you need to have cubes to open further doors. I cannot remember which door I went through (I think there were two?), so I'm going to spoiler the next part.

So I'm noticing that these legends are all over the place, especially signs I try to deduce them. I'm looking at these signs I pass and noticing they have two legends on them. I figured they said up or something, but then I saw that the legends were different. My second guess is they were telling me what to press on the controller. I couldn't fathom out any particular pattern to these legends so just decided to make each room I went through golden.

It was about then I noticed a strange legend on the wall that I though was a secret I was looking for in a particular area, when I walked past it it started to glow, so I went through all the button presses on the pad seeing if I could activate it and claim my reward and it opened a door up and sent me to another area I'd already been to. They look like some sort of quick travel between places. I'm sure that's all they are, nothing important, although they'll come in handy when you need to get to places quite fast.

Playing a bit more I came across a bell...

Now I noticed it had legends on each side, but I also noticed that each side had a specific tone. I rang it in several different orders including the famous riff Big Ben plays. I didn't get anywhere though. I remembered that I'd claimed some treasure maps on the way to the bell and thought that some of them might have orders or legends which would correspond to the ones on the bell. It didn't. However, I theorise that those legends emblazoned on the bell are either numbers (0 through to 9) or they are the letters of the note the bell plays when it chimes (A through to G). I had a quick look of the maps while I was in this area and I couldn't place any of the areas depicted in them. They might as well be illegible to me right at this minute, I'm looking and racking my brain trying to figure out what the hell they are refering to, but I'm pulling a blank.

A bit further into my exploration I came across a blue door...

When I went through it i was given a puzzle to work out using blocks that i had to stack to make tetris shaped pieces (which look like the legends I've seen all over the game so far). I put them in some sort of order. I was turning the camera trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle when an achievement popped open and I was given a Anti-cube. I didn't even know these things existed until this moment. I thought I'd solved the puzzle, but on observing the map later I found that I had not. Anyway, later on I came back to this area and solved the puzzle right away, it seemed so bloody obvious after rotating the field loads of times.

Solution to last puzzle in next spoiler.

if you stack a pile two high and rotate it until you finally find the stack that matches the legends on the bottom, you've almost beat the puzzle. After that it's just a case of putting the other block in one side and then rotating fully until it stays sat in the designated zones. If you struggle to get this right, just pick it up and move the camera and try again. Really simple once you've figured it out.

I went through areas clearing out the rooms according to the map and came across another blue door...

This one I couldn't for the fuck of me work out. It's like a pyramid that's underwater, with one side cut away. When you drop into the water on the side that's cut away it makes a noise that's very specific to being in the water at that point, but I just couldn't figure out how to push it any further. I came back a few times to this area and sometimes I had the black hole stuff floating about in the tree above. I don't think that has anything to do with it though. I tried to see if there was any other things I could exploit while i was on that island but couldn't find a way in.

At this point I'm noticing more of those teleport legends about, although they don't take me between the two areas the others did. There's some other teleport thing and a teleport cube. I've no idea what the hell they are for really, although I'm guessing further into the game they'll make it easier to jump between bigger portions of the map.

I came across a blue door...

(warning solution)

That I solved almost instantly. Each cube was engraved and each side of the cube had engravings on that you had to throw them into. Really basic stuff.

I went about and polished some fragments of cubes off, for the most getting the cubes has been really straight forward. I had enough cubes to open all but the final door when I stopped playing, and I've not been into those doors opened by the cubes yet. It's bugging me and my mind is racing as to what what is in front of me with this game.

I'm really enjoying it so far. I hope it doesn't get as complex as Braid did, I didn't really understand how I completed some of those puzzles and eventually my mind broke and was unable to comprehend what the fuck was going on in the latter end of the game. I can't understand the complexity and beauty of some well crafted puzzles when they are way above my head.

I hope I didn't spoil too much in the bits I've not spoilered new players. If I'm going to far just say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dude. Dude. After reading that I wish I was you. Going into that game completely fresh not knowing a thing about it and piecing everything together from scratch. I still have a notebook full of random scribblings and half-solved puzzles, just looking back through it makes me feel all warm inside.

It's such a beautiful game on so many levels. You can play it as a quirky platformer and still have fun with it, or jump head first into the rabbit hole and not climb out until every single puzzle is solved. I fell so deep into that game at one point I thought it'd send me mental, but it was totally worth it for the pay-off and satisfaction of solving everything.

Easily one of the best game experiences I had this year. I'm glad you have a bunch of people in the same boat as theorising was a big part of the experience when it was released.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I played some of this tonight with the main priority of cracking the code. Yeah, that was a weird night.

I started off in the village for some reason, I think I went back looking for ways to get gold all the rooms so I wouldn't have to go through them again. I knew they were drawings of legends posted up around that area so wrote them all down.

WP_000067_zpscdfa0bf8.jpg

I noticed some of them weren't exactly the same but thought nothing about it. Until I came across a city block area that had loads of neon signs I wrote them down as well in the hoping I could make something of them. I couldn't make anything definite out, The words were too long. I did learn that The words are written vertically, which was something I hadn't notice before, Maybe I was just being dumb.

WP_000068_zps73000206.jpg

I was trying to work out vowels. I think I saw "The" but I couldn't cement it, so I might have been pissing in the wind.

I went further in my travels and found this.

WP_000062_zpsdc4721f8.jpg

By this time I'm noticing my notes were getting quite a lot. I count them up and notice I have way over 26. I ponder a bit and think that the extra ones are probably numbers.

I then happened to stumble across this...

WP_000063_zps4508a20c.jpg

Obviously that's a massive game changer I wrote it all down. I finally had a reference point. Now for some reason it didn't figure in my head at the time to...

decode all the things I'd written down. I still have not done it even as I type this. Yes, I know, I am an idiot. Now I'm armed with the knowledge of what the legends refer to in letters and I know that the scribbles are written vertical and backwards I decided to go and have a look at that bell to see if each side had a note assigned to it A-G.

Guess what? It fucking didn't even have one legend I could read. I had a bit of a mess about trying the bell and didn't get anywhere. I then noticed that on my treasure maps that the same legends were on them. About 10 minutes later I roughly worked out what the code was and got a dark cube from the bell. I had to fill in the blanks from the numbers I didn't know, but I worked out that the format they were using for the numbers could only accommodate 5 different codes. Those eureka moments people talk about when they play this game? Well that was a big one for me. It felt so good after having the alphabet handed to me like it was.

So now I'm wandering about and I notice that I'm in a place where I have the treasure maps to. On top of that I know the code to use them. I ended up getting an achievement for picking some cube up.

Now I'm looking at the map and it appears I need to go behind a waterfall. There's a totem on the area marked with the tetris bits, but I've not got a fucking clue as to what they mean.

It's totally obvious that it's instructing me to spin the world around, as when I do spin the world around it always displays the same legends and is always visible. Beyond that I am clueless. I think I need to get through the waterfall to progress too, I can't see any other ways forward on the map.

I was 68.8& complete when I'd done for the session. I have no idea how many cubes I have. The last door opened so I have over 16. I should have written it down. I sort of got distracted by working stuff out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can find out how many cubes you have via the pause menu. Should be the last couple of screens after the maps and stuff showing the cubes and anti-cubes.

Sounds like you're making good progress with it all. Finding the monolith in the forest is the game changer. Once you've worked it out and are armed with that info, you can pretty much work everything else out with relative ease.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...