Maize

Let me get the word jokes out-of-the-way first, Maize starts in a maze, not a regular maze but a maize maze. To recapitulate that, in Maize you play in a maize maze, finding your way in a mysterious story full with interesting characters.  Pretty great concept, right? A shame that a good concept doesn’t always mean a good game. Find out more in this Maize review!

THE GOOD

• As with all humor, it depends on the person if you like it or not.  Personally I loved the funny direction from Maize and the well designed characters. I can’t help but smile when I think back to the cornfaces or mister-Ted-wannabe (a Russian bear) The story totally fails to give players a satisfactory feeling but the funny dialogue, jokes and charming animations make up for that.

MIXED FEELINGS

• Maize is a first person puzzle game that holds your hand throughout the game. Usable items are highlighted and when you pick something up the description will almost always tell you what to do with it. Most of the times you will be walking or running around to find items, that can be a little tedious after a while.
• Blocking pathways so everything stays clear is necessary in video games but I have my doubts about how Maize decided to do that. Blocking the path with a clumsy crates that magically disappear when you do a specific unrelated task. The game tries to fix that weirdness by giving it an explanation… it still remains stupid though.

THE BAD

• Terrible performance, I had to stop playing multiple times because the frame rate was all over the place. As a result, headache. (I do have an excuse though, migraine, so “normal” gamers will just be annoyed by the frame rate issues) Anyway, right from the beginning you notice how bad the game runs on Xbox, despite the first good overall visual impression.
• Despite the funny characters and successful jokes you are still left with quite a few boring moments while playing Maize. The danger with adventure games like this is that the “I walk around doing nothing” starts to pop up rather soon and frequently.

Maize isn’t what I thought it would be, it has a lot of potential but fails in many different ways. A videogame should never feel boring or unfinished and that’s the exact thing that happens when you play Maize. The characters and jokes are awesome but everything else is slightly above or below average. Lame joke or not, “pop”corn is more fitting than Maize because of the inexcusable performance.