EA. It’s amazing how much ill will two letters can inspire in the gaming scene nowadays. After numerous scams, attempts at money gouging, and multiple years of being voted the worst company in existence, what could they possibly do to make up for it?

Well apparently someone had the bright idea to launch EA Originals. Indie titles given additional funding by EA in order to make their visions a reality. It’s actually a really cool idea and one from which I hope to see a lot of unique and original games emerge.

Fe is the first of these titles. Announced at E3 2016, this small game follows a fox-like creature on its journey to save the woods with the help of its forest friends. Completely void of dialogue and incredibly open ended in terms of design and direction, the game is heavily inspired by the likes of Journey and Shadow of the Colossus, but unlike those games it dares to ask players one simple question… 

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?!

Well, let’s hop into the forest and find out.

Fe starts out with what looks like an alien attack on a peaceful forest, with a loud explosion taking place. It then cuts to our character, Fe, a cute little fox creature who’s just waking up from his nap. Realizing something’s wrong, Fe gets up and begins to search for answers.

Over the course of the game, Fe will travel across the entire forest, investigate the invasion, save its fellow creatures, and save the forest. The entire story is told without dialogue, opting instead for a visual narrative. There isn’t much to be seen aside from this basic premise, but there are little hints scattered around the world.

First, there are the stone walls with cave paintings on them. These show small pieces of the larger picture one at a time when found, often in an ambiguous way. And these are aided by stone cubes containing gems. 

By looking into these, Fe can see into the mind of one of the invaders, using their perspective to understand what the enemy is up to. Unfortunately, neither of these storytelling methods really does much to enhance the plot. 

When it comes down to it, this is a simple tale of a forest creature saving its home and the additional pieces of plot are so vague and uninteresting that by the end of the game I mostly ignored them altogether. 

Even worse is how slow and boring the first-person sequences are in the enemy’s head. They last far too long and never have any actual gameplay, resulting in me just wanting them to end. A boring story is unfortunate, but at least the game doesn’t place a heavy emphasis on the story, meaning this is all supplementary and not necessarily to the game’s detriment.

What the game does go out of its way to excel at is its presentation. The world of Fe is magnificent, with its dark, saturated color palette, gorgeous lighting, and neon glows, it’s one that’s striking from start to finish. 

The polygonal world is simple, but that helps to make this entire forest feel otherworldly. Plus the animals are detailed enough to show their similarities to real-world creatures, but at the same time retain certain unique elements that make them feel like original beings inspired by real animals.

The only downsides I can mention in terms of graphics would be the basic textures making some parts of the environment look plasticy, simplistic effects sometimes feeling lazy, basic animation that’s definitely lazy. I don’t… I don’t think birds can turn 90 degrees like that…

Plus, the world probably could have brightened up every now and again instead of being clocked in the darkness for most of the adventure. Aside from this, the game is beautiful and the small issues don’t keep it from being easy on the eyes.

What’s practically flawless though is the soundtrack. Fe’s journey is all about the power of communication over destruction and without dialogue, the sound effects, animal voices, and music take over to create an incredible audio experience that’s sure to impress. The soft and calming tunes of the forest are a delight to the ears, constantly giving the player something to feel, even in the simplest of sequences. 

Combine that with the unique growls and tones sung by the different kinds of animals inhabiting the forest, their simple melodic voices somehow recognizably animal while also distinctly otherworldly and you have an auditory experience that perfectly aids in establishing this unique world.

Unfortunately, we now have to move on to the gameplay. And this is where Fe begins to really show its mediocrity. At its core, Fe is an exploration game with basic puzzle and platforming elements. Over the 3 to 5 hours this game takes place, players will be tasked with meeting certain animals and befriending them in order to use their help to progress.

And right out of the gate we have quite a few issues. Fe’s controls are just not functional for a majority of the game. Trying to climb ledges, hop to a platform even slightly out of reach, or use abilities to get to new areas almost always ends in frustration one way or another. It just doesn’t feel good to play. And that’s just the start.

The game functions on a formula that repeats about 6 times. Follow the marker on the map to an new animal species, communicate with one of said animal, allowing you to use its cry as a means to interact with the environment and progress, continue until you reach a large version of said animal in peril, save the large animal, learn its language, and move on to the next area with the ability to use these cries any time you wish.

It sounds fairly typical, and of course it is. Very few of the environmental elements players can interact with make an appearance outside of the story segments in which they appear, so there’s rarely a moment of thinking back to a previously inaccessible area and returning to find a hidden collectable, making a lot of the progression feel meaningless.

Fe communicates with animals by choosing a language to speak and singing either loudly or softly in order to match its partner’s wavelength. This is fine and all, but after the first few times the novelty really wears off and when switching from one animal to the next the process becomes straight up tedious.

I think the game would have benefited a lot from ditching the language wheel. This way, the payer wouldn’t have to constantly stop and spin the wheel when faced with a new piece of the environment, momentum would be maintained, and different kinds of environmental abilities could be combined into one platforming segment rather than being split up into pieces determined by the languages used to activate them.

When it comes to Fe’s character upgrades, the game has pink crystals scattered around the map. But finding enough of these, players are able to learn new abilities from a tree in the center of the woods. The first is the simple ability to climb trees, a central mechanic of the game and holy shit it’s completely broken.

To use this ability, Fe must jump at a tree. If it makes the slightest contact with it, Fe will stick to the thing like it’s covered in super glue, but miss by even a millimeter and you’ll fall to the ground below. After this, Fe climbs the tree by repeatedly tapping the jump button to kind of teleport to the top, only able to jump off when finished climbing.

I cannot tell you how many times I mindlessly jumped to the top of a tree only to have pressed the jump button one too many times and flown to my death. I really wish that Fe just automatically climbed to the top of a tree since there’s nothing a player can do besides climb once attached and the slight lag between climbing multiple times and Fe performing the animation resulted in a bunch of frustration.

The second ability is the only other one necessary to finish the game- gliding. This allows Fe to swiftly float over to new platforms rather than use a simple jump. And while this is, for the most part, a fine addition to the game, it’s not free of any jank.

Fe doesn’t glide like anything else I’ve seen in a game. Rather than slowly descend to the next platform, it starts by moving downward, then floats back up, only to begin the glide afterwards. It’s just a weird system that, while not unfun, does feel a bit weird and unintuitive.

The final ability I unlocked is the power… of running. That’s right, after collecting a surplus of gems from around the forest you get the fantastic ability to run on all fours. Even then it’s just weird. Rather than have a run button or make this a permanent upgrade, Fe must now run in a straight line for a bit before being allowed to speed up.

So in addition to this being a power that should have obviously been unlocked from the start, it’s not even that fun or useful from a gameplay perspective. It was so disappointing that I didn’t even bother to find enough gems for what was sure to be a disappointing fourth ability.

So with the powerups being either too basic or too janky to get excited about, the collectibles don’t feel rewarding to find. And as such, I just stopped looking for them, which is a shame because some are pretty well hidden and even a slightly better reward would have probably made them worth the effort.

On top of all of this, the explorative aspect of the game, the very center of the experience, is just. So. BORING! Skittering from one place to the next on the map feels either incredibly linear when in a story mission or completely directionless when looking for gems.

When your map is so poorly designed that I still can’t find my way to the next objective when it’s clearly marked on the map, you have a major issue with your environments. Even the bird companion that specifically shows the player where to go is both tedious to use and barely any help!

Blocked off areas, parts of the environment that look climbable but aren’t, and the boring slog of most languages only being used in the area where they’re learned all make for a supremely boring world to explore.

This tedium is only made worse by the lack of any kind of fast travel system, despite its size. And when your protagonist is as small as Fe, the world is massive by comparison, and massively empty at that. It’s just a huge disappointment that such a beautiful world is so irritating and pointless to explore.

And the absolute worst part of this whole experience is how the game punishes failure with boredom. While most of the checkpoints are fine, it’s just how slow and repetitive certain segments are combined with the bad controls that make the slightest mistake in this game infuriating.

The thing is, while I’ve focused mostly on the negative parts of the game, there are plenty of positives. Certain puzzles are creative and fun to solve, sneaking around various enemies in the environment can be tense and exciting, and gliding around the gorgeous world can be mesmerizing. It’s just not enough to save the game from its own mediocrity.

Fe is not a terrible game by any means. The problem is that when your controls aren’t satisfying to use, your upgrades are boring to obtain, and your world is tedious to explore, even a presentation as wonderful as this begins to lose its luster.

I really hope the developers can move on to something better and leave this IP alone, and I recommend most others do the same, which is why Fe for the PS4 gets a 5.5 out of 10. There are redeeming aspects, but they’re so hard to find in this empty world that they’re not worth searching for.

That being said I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, be sure to like and subscribe to see more mighty reviews, dissections, and other gaming content. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!