Journey is a download-only game released on the PSN on the 14th of March, selling at £9.99. It was developed by thatgamecompany, who produced the acclaimed games flOw and Flower (grammar optional for this mob, clearly). I have both flOw and Flower, and I don't think much of them. flOw's a lot of... nothing really, though Flower is an improvement, but still lacks something to make it even worth recommending. Journey however is a step that's about a hundred places ahead of everything that's came before it and not just from thatgamecompany, but from all of gaming.
So, why is it so good? What has led to it having a 92/100 rating on Metacritic, with unanimous praise from everyone who's played it and reviewed it? Considering pretty much every review I've seen of Journey ended with something like "it's really good, but you kinda have to play it yourself to understand it and appreciate it," I was intrigued. What could be so good about a game costing a tenner that takes at most three hours to complete, with minimal action and no dialogue? Well, I hate to be like one of those reviewers I mentioned earlier, but it's kind of hard to describe...
I'll give it a go though. You are an un-named person in a red robe in a desert. There is a mountain in the distance. The object is to go towards this mountain. It's not just a plain desert however, there are the ruins of a civilisation you have to traverse, and at the end of each section, you get a history lesson on what you've just went through. The action you go through isn't particularly taxing, you can collect tokens that allow you to jump, and as you collect more you can jump for longer distances. Fairly simple. And it doesn't change the whole way through, so it's not a difficult game to play.
Looks-wise, Journey is nothing short of simple. Borrowing from the Mirror's Edge school of thought in that "less = more," the environments are all very bold and simple, with striking scenery throughout. There are times when it's just surreal, going from a desert to a section that still is the desert but is coloured to look like it's underwater (and which does so very convincingly) is a testament to the design team, being able to keep a consistent design all the way through but being able to manipulate it to look like something which is the complete opposite. It's the same when you get to the top of the mountain and the sand becomes snow. And the simplicity of the pictures through which the story is told is a nice compliment to this, balancing the grandeur of the world you're in. And speaking of the story...
I don't want to describe the story. Or how it is told, because I'm trying to think of how not to ruin it for you reading this. But a story which is so simple and laced with such bold and dramatic imagery/allusions doesn't suffer from the lack of dialogue. The genius here is that it benefits it tremendously. The visual clues combined with the score (which is superb, and was one of the highlights of Flower) tell a story in a way which is much more effective than conventional methods of story-telling. You could write novels with hundreds of thousands of words in them and they wouldn't compare to the way Journey combines sound and vision to put the message across. And that's what makes it so special.
Very rarely have I played a game that made me feel, and since I finished it (I've made it to the end twice) I've been wracking my brain to try and remember feeling the way I did about a video game ever before, and I've come up short. Probably because I've never played anything in the style of Journey, actually. Heavy Rain had me shouting at the telly and disconsolate for days, the story in Mirror's Edge still ranks up there for me as does BioShock (and probably BioShock 2, though I don't think I've touched that since I finished it). But can I say any of these games made me feel the way Journey did? I don't think I can. I know I said I hated all the reviews who said you need to play it to understand but that's the only thing that I can think of saying that would be enough to make you understand how I felt when I finished. Although it has to be said, that finishing the game the second time round was much more emotional for me, and for good reason (the next paragraph may feel a tad shoe-horned, but I forgot about it as I was going through).
Journey can be played on your own and I finished my first playthrough like this, but the game connects you with other players when it can. It's up to you whether or not you interact with them and at the second time, I did. I stuck with the same player for about half the game and if I'd thought this game was a touching experience on my own, there's something else when you're playing it with someone else. You don't have any way of contacting the person while playing (though you do see the names of the people you played with after the credits have finished), and this lack of communication certainly adds to the feeling of tension and emotional investment. Thankfully I was paired with someone who seemed to have a degree of sense about him, and this helped. But I was still desperate to get through the game with him, and it's a testament to how much Journey draws you in that you can find yourself so attached to someone who may as well not be a real person. Again, I'm loathe to say it, but it's something you can't really get unless you do it yourself.
At face value, Journey is a game which isn't appealling. £10 for something which took me no more than two and a half hours on my first go and which is sketchy in terms of replay value sounds like an awfully bad deal. But you can't think of Journey as a game. It could be called many things, a game, a story, an experience, art and indeed it is all of these things in some way, but the only way to fully judge it is to give it a go. Whatever you take from it, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
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