Maize Review – Culture of Gaming

Release Date: December 1, 2016 (PC), September 12, 2017 (Xbox One, Playstation 4)

Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Playstation 4

Publisher: Finish Line Games

Developer: Finish Line Games

Genre: Adventure, Indie

ESRB Rating: T

MSRP: $19.99

From poor optimization to every puzzle solving itself, the only quality that Finish Line Games brings to Maize is their comical sentient corn. Yes, sentient corn, and you know what? They’re not even that funny. Oh, and the payoff at the end? A pointless joke to a pointless story. Let’s break this maize down.

Story & Gameplay

Maize is a first-person “puzzle” game that takes place in an abandoned facility where scientists accidentally created an army of sentient corn. The player is simply dropped in, without any explanation, to start collecting keys to unlock doors to collect more keys. It goes through various locations like a cornfield, barn, and underground scientist facility, the usual, where you collect various items that can be combined and used for specific purposes to access the following area. This eventually leads to a pipedream quest to bring the corn to the promised land.

Pointless Plot

Before I break down on this poor excuse of a payoff, I want to address the absurd “plot-twist.” Basically, without giving anything away, your character has something revealed to him that makes absolutely no sense. It’s not even the knowledge behind the revelation, it’s the fact that the character didn’t know already. You’d think after walking around a place for several hours you’d notice that something wasn’t quite right. I understand that the game isn’t supposed to be serious, but this moment is treated as if it’s a big reveal and the meaning of everything has been changed. Well, it hasn’t, your revelation means nothing and this game means nothing, which brings me to my next problem.

At the very end of the game, where your last objective is to bring the corn to the promised land, Finish Line Games inadvertently renders this four hour long journey pointless. The payoff at the end, during the credits, is a “clever” joke that concludes the story, which wouldn’t satisfy anyone after playing through Maize. If there was some philosophical meaning or clever pun they were trying to get off, it’s completely lost on me. A game this short usually tries to make a point at the end, similar to The Beginner’s Guide or The Stanley Parable, and it truly does feel as if there is a point somewhere in here, but it just seems like an inside joke that the audience isn’t a part of.

Try-hard Characters

Along the way, you meet some sentient corn whose personalities can be summed up to short-term memory loss and the desire to take a nap. Also, they’re British and, I’ll admit, occasionally funny with a smidge of charm. The corn—Jim, Bill and Fred—periodically point your character in the right direction through cutscenes. Or sometimes, they just stand in puzzle areas blabbering about random nonsense that has nothing to do with the context of their situations.

Then, at some point, you decide to make a Russian robot teddy bear named Vladdy whose dialogue can be pretty much summed up to “garbage, stupid, idiot.” How and why did you make a Russian-robot-teddy-bear-named-Vladdy is beyond understanding, it simply happened, just like this game. Vladdy’s dialogue is not a joke by the way, what he brings to the table varies from indiscernible Russian to insulting the main character often enough that you believe it’s actually what’s keeping him alive. Needless to say, he is the most cringe worthy being in this entire game. Oh, and he doesn’t ever stop following you around. In fact, the game warns you that the insults will never end when you first create him.

Eventually you meet The Ruby Queen, a mock-Queen Elizabeth, while creeping on her through an air duct. She asks you to help take the corn to the “promised land.” This scene is the only semblance of plot we get before we actually know what we’re doing, which isn’t until the very end. The Queen doesn’t do much besides spout nonsense about bathing in the sun and the corn’s rightful place in the world. She talks too much yet explains nothing, which may be a joke on the writer’s part, but it’s not funny, it just comes off as annoying.

While on this arbitrary quest, you meet The Cornacabra… yeah you read right. He’s basically this giant narcissistic corn who wants to incite a coup against The Ruby Queen, the “villain” if you will. The Cornacabra, similar to Vladdy, constantly insults the main character about his insolence. You know how the lovely creators decided to make him different and comical? They gave him a lisp. But was it funny? Barely. Did it help his character? No. You cannot save poor writing with a lisp.

What we get from all of these characters is that Finish Line Games simply tries too hard to be funny. They force the comedy on you like a freight train and Maize becomes this cringeworthy game that you desperately want to finish, making four hours feel like eight. However, despite the poor writing, the performances were engaging

Item Collector: The Game

“Puzzle” game gives it more credit than it’ll ever deserve. There really are no puzzles in the traditional sense. I wasn’t joking when I said that the game is about collecting keys to unlock doors to collect more keys. It’s even more frustrating because it tells you which items belong where through the item descriptions. The game goes so far to hold your hand that it specifically blocks paths off with arbitrary boxes until you’ve collected the item in the area. Subtitles even pop up on screen and mentions the boxes as a “coincidence.” Well, guess what? Breaking the fourth wall with coincidental boxes is not an excuse nor funny, it simply breaks any semblance of immersion that this game can squander up.

Everything that Maize throws at you solves itself, which leads you to believe that the gameplay is simply a delivery for the story which, as we went over, is pointless. The only thing that could render you stuck on a “puzzle” is that you haven’t found the appropriate item yet.

Dance Corn Revolution?

Besides generating entire areas to collect one item, Maize had two interesting moments throughout its gameplay. One, being that throughout the entirety of the game you carried an English muffin around. After the first chapter, you clearly realize that this item will be used in some elaborate comedic payoff at the end. Did it happen? Yes. Was it great? Well, at this point you’re so damn bitter that this game isn’t over yet and when it actually happens your only response is “of course” followed by a sigh. Interesting nonetheless.

Two, the “boss battle” is straight up Dance Dance Revolution. It was unexpected to say the least and had more gameplay mechanics packed into two minutes than the entirety of this four hour “adventure.” As boss battles go, it was funny, but Finish Line Games could have really made this game shine by creating an intense timed-puzzle sequence. Instead, they decided to make everything a joke, even its gameplay.

I’ll admit this, I did laugh when my character decided to pick up a full fledged telescope and put it in his pocket. He’ll apparently stop at nothing to haul around absurd collectibles whose descriptions love telling us how dumb the main character is.

Broken Piece of Corn!

This game was played on an Xbox One and thus be judged by its Xbox One port, basically, it’s broken. While that may seem a little harsh, as you can see above, that’s my save file. That’s how I loaded in when I tried to continue my progress. I reloaded five separate times into that screen before I decided to restart the chapter. Thankfully, the game is short so making up for the lost time wasn’t much of a hindrance. However, this is unacceptable, if the game was longer I could have easily been making up for hours of lost progress.

Needless to say, the graphics aren’t that spectacular, but that’s nothing to complain about when the graphics aren’t the point of the game. What players should be frustrated about is that even though the graphics aren’t great, Maize still runs into crazy framerate issues as soon as you start the game. After running around for awhile you soon realize that the framerate issues are coming from the cornfield being on screen. Now isn’t that the most ironic thing? The game breaks when you look at maize. I’m sure there’s a hidden meaning somewhere in there right, Finish Line Games?

On to smaller but frustrating notes, if you’re going to port any game to consoles, it’s polite to add a TV resolution scale. How can I play the game when I can’t see anything? Not like there’s much to see anyway. Oh, and why can’t the game actually pause? There is in fact a pause button, but the world is very much active. Even when the guide button is pressed, the game still continues. This is not Dark Souls, let me pause the damn game. The most frustrating reason of course is not being able to pause cutscenes, let alone skip them. While this could be summed up to a lazy mistake on the developer’s part, I am almost inclined to think, in my bitter state, that it’s a pretentious ploy to force players to keep their eyes glued to the screen.

Verdict

While Maize attempts to woe the player with comical corn and quirky gameplay/story, it ultimately backfires to create a cringe-fest of pain and suffering that allows the player to believe that Finish Line Games put no actual effort into their game. No matter what meaning you’re trying to get across, make sure the player enjoys the adventure you sent them out on. Points I do give is for the occasional comedic moments, and the small amount of charm you managed to muster from this bore-fest. In the words of Vladdy, the great Russian robot teddy bear, “all of this is very stupid.”

Review Summary

Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t buy. The suffering is not worth it.