What is it?

Independent, 3rd Person, Open Level, Artistic, Platforming, Fantasy, Adventure

What’s good?

Without question one of gaming’s most beautiful works of art, it elicits a nearly impossible to describe sense of joy and wonderment, a pixelesque utopia of a game world, stunningly collaborative and creative yet completely optional online co-op gameplay, brilliantly abstract and emotionally resonant, a game that will linger in your mind long after you’ve put it away.

What’s bad?

The game is really short, just 2-3 hours depending on how much exploring you want to do. There really are no instructions so it can be frustrating until you figure out the main game mechanics, you’ll be left wanting more after it is all over.

Released 2012	Thatgamecompany	Sony Computer Entertainment
Completed: 2015-08-07	Completion: 95%	Highest Trophy: Gold

Full Review

Journey is a unique, exhilarating and soul inspiring experience. I have been playing video games for over 30 years. In that time games have matured into a narrative medium capable of making you laugh, to cry, to fear to hate and maybe most impressive of all to mourn and to love. The medium when used effectively can inspire great emotion and spur great philosophical debate. Through active immersion games can easily enchant you in ways traditional passive media simply can’t. In a wonderful and impactful game such as Journey those memories and those experiences will haunt you long after the credits roll.

Journey was originally released for the PS3 in 2012. It had gained critical and commercial success including dozens of game of the year awards by the time I eventually stumbled across it three years later. Independently developed games were never really my cup of tea. I didn’t much follow the news or the hype they generated. If it wasn’t a triple A title from a well-known studio and if it wasn’t going to allow me to kill or smash something, I wasn’t interested. So imagine my surprise when I decided to pick up Journey during a flash sale and ended up loving every minute of it.

The game was unlike anything else I had experienced up until that point. In 30+ years of gaming I had never, aside from typical sports and puzzle games, ever played a game where there wasn’t some villains to destroy or some challenge to win. Everything was a competition of sorts with winning being the ultimate goal. With Journey I didn’t have that. It was initially confusing and frustrating that the rigid little box I had in my mind that defined a game was unraveling around me. My mind was undergoing a paradigm shift and it was uncomfortable. My conceptualization of what a game is and what it should be was bleeding out of its rigid confines and becoming something else.

After the first hour or so with Journey my concept of a game was forever altered and I have sought after more and more abstract and artistic examples of gaming. As the initial discomfort subsided it was replaced by a freeing sense of delight and wonderment, like when a child experiences its first snowfall. Anywhere I traveled in Journey, mystery and intrigue lurked. There was something to discover over ever hill and around every corner. There were no real objectives, no competing, nothing but the pure enjoyment of exploration and unearthing the secrets of the game world. When I completed Journey I felt sad. Not that the game was sad or depressing. I suspect it would be like the sense of loss Bilbo Bagins had felt after he returned home to the Shire from the Lonely Mountain, a longing for more. The whole game took around three hours to complete but in that short amount of time it affected me in some deep and profound ways. It was such a powerful experience I just had to share it with someone. I called my cousin who like me never had much interest in a game if you couldn’t shoot someone in the face. He’s a bit of a redneck type, no fondness for emotions or art, to him that’s girly stuff. I bugged him for a couple weeks and eventually I convinced him to play the game.

From the start I let him know I wasn’t going to guide him. I would only help him with the simple mechanics needed to continue moving enough so he wouldn’t get bored and quit. The gameplay in Journey is very simple and aside from walking there are only two actions you can do, jump or shout. With those two simple actions Journey is able to deliver an experience that rivals the all-time greats and I really just wanted him to experience his own journey not mine. Watching his playthrough through his eyes was incredible. It was almost as if it were my first time experiencing it. He played it through to the end in one sitting and was totally captivated. His playthrough was so different from mine. Whereas I had wandered around the sand dunes and ruins all the way up the mountain completely alone, he made a friend. At the very beginning he bumped into a random companion. I told him about the shout button and how that’s the only way to communicate aside from jumping or moving around. Within a few moments they had perfected a short form language almost like a dance that enabled them to move through the game in tandem. It was so amazing to watch these two little hooded characters beeping and hoping and helping each other through the levels. It was endearing.

The game’s name is both literal and figurative as this truly is a journey. It’s a journey to a mysterious glowing mountain, it’s a journey of discovery for the player but it’s also a metaphor for the journey of life. There is no dialogue in the game and unless you are lucky enough to find someone to tag along with you are pretty much wandering alone for the entirety of the game. The emotional weight and cathartic payoff is almost completely driven by a combination of stunning visuals and one of the most beautiful and moving musical scores. I really don’t want to talk about any specifics as it would surly ruin it for anyone who has yet to play this true gift of a game. I tried to track down the sales figure on VGChartz but I’m having trouble finding the combined sales for all of the Journey release however I am sure they aren’t nearly high enough. I have no doubt the initial hesitations I had about this game are shared by many and I implore you to do yourself the favor and play this game. On PS4 Journey costs 15$ on the Playstation Store but I have seen it drop below 10$ during a few Flash sales. Even at 15$ it is worth the money.

How does it rate		Other games in that category...
3rd person game	A	Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider 2013, The Last Guardian
Open level game	A+	Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Metro 2033, Dishonored 2
Artistic game	A++	Flower, Abzu, Firewatch, Limbo
Fantasy game	A-	Child of Light, Inside, Lego: The Hobbit
Adventure game	A++	Unravel, Limbo, SOMA

* Note: These ratings are based on my personally rated games as of the time of this posting. Additions and Alterations made after this date will not be reflected in the written review. For anyone wondering why I include a link to my trophy profile the answer is simple enough, it's an easy way to verify how much of the game I have actually played whereas with most reviews it's unclear if the reviewer had only spent a handful of hours on a game they review.