I've heard a lot of incredible things about this games in the past months. Great soundtrack, fantastic visuals, beautiful story, and since I recently acquired a PS3 (don't judge me), I decided to baptize it with a game that received such high praise. Journey, made by thatgamecompany who also made Flower, is more than just a game, it's an experience. No dialogue, no speech just sights and music. You start as a small cloaked figure confused and scared, traversing the vast and empty spaces of the world you're in, and you come out something better. You gain a deeper understanding of what it really means to be this little red figure hopping along the sand.
Game mechanics are pretty straight forward. You have a scarf that dictates how high and how far you can jump depending on how long and how much charge it has. You can make the scarf longer by finding floating symbols in the environment, that's all there is to it really. It's like a Mario game without having to hunt down your pink, kidnap prone wench. You jump along from gorgeously rendered location to the next, wondering what you're doing in such a place.
I wont touch on the story since it's very much worth the playthrough. Plus it's a bit open ended and very subjective.
Honestly I didn't want to write about this game because it's pretty flawless which is very surprising. Though I will say this game isn't for everyone but then again, isn't any other game? The reason I wanted to write about this game in particular was because of something I noticed when I put down the controller and reflected. This game conveys so much with so little and it doesn't fit into any genre, not entirely.
I'll walkthrough what I felt when I first picked it up. I was expecting a few things: dialogue of some kind, monsters to fight, boss battles, a really weepy story. When I first got control I nearly stopped playing. I was thinking "Is this it? This game is boring as hell!" I tried jumping, I tried attacking but all I could do was walk. I felt trapped and useless, I actually started to fidget because I couldn't do anything. I finally reached the point where you receive your scarf and though "fantastic now I can at least jump!" a little hop and that was it. The game was trying my patience but I pushed on regardless. As the game progressed the frustration started to dissipate. I started enjoying the limited jumping, the scenery and everything around me. It was unlike anything I've ever played. I had no idea I could feel such things from a game that offered no words. I was taken aback by it all.
This game showed me something going on within our gaming world. Most of the games out have at least one of three tropes in them: heavy dialogue, PvE, or guns. Go ahead, go look at your game pile and find one other game that doesn't have at least one if not all of those tropes. I'll wait. ... Saw it? See what I mean? Our games are so drench with hand holding and ricocheting bullets that I'm surprised we even have game genres. We are making games and not experiences. Sure there are a few games that have one if not all of those tropes that have managed to move you emotionally, but the thing that remains is that Journey is the only game I've come across that pulls at all your emotions with nothing more than a music note and a grain of sand. It also showed me how impatient I've become. I was trained to seeing some giant set piece explode or a giant monster appearing or everything going to hell within the first five minutes. I've been trained by past games to expect some cliched intro to keep me playing. I didn't realize I was going through the motions until after I finished Journey and picked up Far Cry 3. Sure enough, everything turns to shit after the first few minutes of game intro.
Another thing that really left me reeling was the co-op in Journey. You gain a partner after you get out of the tutorial levels and you expect to be able to communicate whether it be voice or text chat. The only way you can communicate is by using the music tone you usually use to activate switches in the game world. This take on co-op showed me something I seldom see playing on a console with strangers, cooperation. Every time I played, my partner would always hang by me, we would fly around in unison, show each other secret passages and hidden scarf pieces. It was like playing with someone you knew and not some stranger miles away. This showed me that people do have the capability of playing with others without resorting to name calling or being obnoxious jerks. I wish there were more games like Journey to show us that games don't always have to follow a strict set of linear, unspoken rules. That games can be more than gun simulators or textbooks of dialogue and gore.
It's a distressing thing that a game that causes such an emotional response is put on such high regard instead of being the norm.
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