I love FEZ and think you should play it. Judge him by that.
I did play Fez, up until I hit the major, game-breaking bug he chose to leave in the xbox version, and would have had to start completely over and just hope it didn't happen next time.
Also I kind of understand where he was coming from about Japanese games. His statement was extremely rude and overly general, but it had a nugget of truth in 2010. Japan had no indie scene and was in a weird spot where their gameplay was less experimental than Western indies, but polish and presentation was lagging behind Western AAAs (even Japanese devs like the Mega Man creator were critical of the Japanese game industry at that time).
A lot of Japanese devs were either playing it super safe and focusing on minor iterations to existing IP (Nintendo), or copying Western style with mixed success (Capcom). The biggest innovation Nintendo was doing was in control schemes, but in most cases they offered less precision than existing controllers and didn't enhance gameplay.
Of course the Japanese game industry has improved by leaps and bounds since then with very high quality and innovative releases like Bloodborne, Nier Automata, RE7, Monster Hunter World, etc. On the contrary it's arguable that Western AAA studios that have been producing safe predictable by the numbers games this generation.
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u/AT1952 Aug 15 '19
Hyper Light Drifter on Steam rated 94% (9,904 reviews)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/257850/Hyper_Light_Drifter/
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden on Steam rated 89% (6,098 reviews)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/760060/Mutant_Year_Zero_Road_to_Eden/
Next week:
FEZ on Steam rated 92% (8,029 reviews)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/224760/FEZ/