Hey all! A few quick thoughts as I finally recover from a crazy 6 day long strep which torn me to shreds:

• Only positive of being bedridden on Wednesday and Thursday? Having the chance to play probably around 8 hours of Fez. Got through the first 32 cubes without FAQs and actually figured out some of the game’s “language”. I have started my second playthrough and I’ll admit it…. I gave up on the alphabet after a few hours of trying and I looked up where to find the hint(s) for it. I completely MISSED it/them the 1st time so I would been running around for hours (which I don’t have) aimlessly. Figured it out and I am now working through everything without any more assistance. Just a wonderful experience and completely not what I expected in the end – Jeff Gerstmann ‘s “rant” about it on the last Bombcast sums up the whole thing nicely I think. Don’t think I will get as far as @bluesforbuddha or @gkokoris have but I will try as much as I can handle.

• @zegolf Welcome back! Regarding the board games, I have also started to delve into the area mostly through iOS versions but I have played some in actual board form. I would highly recommend Ticket to Ride and Catan. Great starter games that should peak your interest nicely. I wish I had more to recommend but none of my friends really my interest past Catan and I haven’t really found a board game group in the area to join with to try games like Pandemic or Arkham Horror :p Either way, enjoy the plunge!

• My fitocracy activity for our group will commence soon – my regular running up and down Mont Royal here in MTL will begin as soon as I am 100% from this damn sickness

• Also, any free-ish Asynch multiplayer iOS to recommend? Hero Academy is satisfying me nicely right now but I’m always open to trying other experience. Which reminds me: what happened to our Carsassone group? I’m looking at you @angryjedi @ajguy @rocgaude

NeoTokyo: Yeah we’d have to get at least four people on that. Even then, four people is just a two-on-two round-based team deathmatch basically. Actual objective games require at least four-on-four I feel like. Even then a whole round can end with five seconds of gunfire.

Refer to my last detailed post on this under-appreciated mod: http://squadronofshame.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/bowlisimo-cgrajko-oh-so-now-you-guys-start/

I’m about where @bluesforbuddha is on FEZ, but the last Golden Cube shards are driving me nuts. You want me to give you a clue on what to do with those little pillars you mentioned? I’m on this clock thing now, which I admit I had to ask someone about, even then the solution is kinda bullshit.

As for the language, I haven’t even begun to decipher it. I haven’t found any Rosetta Stone or anything and I’m already on New Game+.

This is the most of my time any downloadable console game has taken up.

@bluesforbuddha I still haven’t found the last gold cube but I’ve been solving Tetris block puzzles and am currently trying to crack the big one in the library with all the landscapes on the wall. I still haven’t even scratched that other language though. I think I got one phrase that’s on a sign, but I’m not even sure about that.

@bluesforbuddha I don’t know if I’d go that far with Fez, but I did feel like it sort of misrepresented itself. I played the demo based on all of the positive buzz, and I liked what I saw: a 2D platformer with a “twist” (pun intended), so I bought the full game.

After playing the game for what really didn’t seem like a very long time, I now see what you guys have all mentioned below. The problem is that I don’t want to play Super Riven 3D World. I fucking hated Myst, and as a rule I don’t enjoy wandering around trying to make sense out of stuff, Earthworld (look it up, kids) style.

Hence, 8.5%. Should I have done my research? Probably. Shame on me, I guess.

@bluesforbuddha Yeah that’s about what I was about to type up on FEZ this morning. The promotion told us it was going to be a platformer, but it’s really an adventure game, and I really miss console adventure games. Point n’ clicks are fine, but I really miss the ones where puzzles were based on physically traversing and figuring out your environment. The only current gen retail game I’ve gotten that from is Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands. AND THEN FEZ actually does break out the Riven-style puzzles.

The last thing I found before turning the game off last night was the schoolhouse in the other village, which just put a a major crack in the game’s hardest puzzles.

Note: The following may constitute a (very mild) spoiler for FEZ’s math/language.

To be honest I had all but given up trying to be useful about the mathematics. I’m not much of a numbers person. I regularly stumble over adding a number to the result of a twenty-sided die when we play Dungeons & Dragons.

However, as it turns out, the trick to cracking the numbers isn’t really so much about your mathematical chops as your ability to notice things.

(Likewise the Rosetta Stone, which may not be obvious as such, since it doesn’t quite do what the original Stone did.)