Those of you who know me will not be surprised when I say this, but I am a big supporter of independent video games and their creators. I think they've been coming up with some spectacular work recently and I always take the opportunity to support them in any way that I can. Because of this, I recently purchased and played a game strongly recommended by those closest to me. Taking their word for it ,I played the game and was not disappointed.
The game, as you can tell from the title, is Journey, a Playstation Network game released earlier this year and was produced by Thatgamecompany, the minds behind such other fine PSN games such as Flow and Flower.
The story, such as it is, starts with the player character, a silent robed character of ambiguous gender that I will refer to as "the wanderer". Wanderer wakes in the middle of a vast desert and whose attention is drawn to a star that falls from the sky. The star in question falls to the summit of a far away mountain peak, and Wanderer journeys across the vast land to reach it.
I know I've taken it upon myself to usually describe a story's plot in full recently, but if I were to do that here, it would be unforgiveable. Not because of some big plot twist or anything, but because of the fact that this is a story that can only be appreciated by experiencing it. Hearing it from someone else, like me, would not come anywhere near to doing it justice.
Now as you can probably tell already, I have a great deal of respect for this game. And there are many reason for that.
The gameplay, though simple, does everything it needs to do and does it well. There were no big issues that made me frustrated the way other game mechanics might do. There were no noticeable glitches that distracted from the immersion of the environment and the whole thing felt very intuitive. Basically, if you've played any big expansive world game before, then chances are that you'll have very little difficulty in playing the game. The most notable aspect of the gameplay is the scarf, the magical item of clothing granted to you during the tutorial level. It allows you to reach previously unreachable places and it extends in length after collecting hidden icons scattered throughout the world.
There is also the online player feature of the game, and to me this was very clever. Although not officially an MMO, this game allows other players who are online at the time to interact with you during play. They can accompany you during your journey and although they cannot offer "help" per se aside from occasionally regenerating health, in a strange way their mere presence makes it feel as though they ARE helping you.
Your character has the ability to communicate, either with the strange cloth creatures that inhabit this world or with the other player avatars. But this communication is limited to a few musical notes. But despite this, it work. There is simply so much conveyed in just a few brief musical notes than what I would get in hearing the other player speak. In many ways it actually feels more sociable. We are reduced to understanding each other on an almost basic level. Language is removed so we're left to understand each other by way of interpreting each other's movement and music.
Just a brief description of one of my playthroughs to help illustrate this point. I was travelling through some desert with another player, we'd been spending a couple of levels together and generally having a good time of it. Then, after the next area loaded, I found that they must have logged off. Suddenly, I felt very alone here and I was greatly missing their company. No other game involving multiplayer or co-op has ever made me feel bad that a player has left, and I didn't even know their name or even if they were male or female. So that truly is a testament to just how alone this game can make you feel.
In fact, atmosphere is something the game as a whole pulls off spectacularly. Aside from general loneliness, this game, right from the start, makes you the player feel very small. You are an insignificant speck on a vast world, travelling through it and hoping not to be swept aside. So good is this game at making me feel this way that I'd actually go so far as to put it up there with Silent Hill 2 among the games that pulls of atmosphere this well.
The game's story also helps. I know I gave a brief description of it earlier and said I wouldn't spoil things, and I won't. But I think I'm safe in saying that this game pulls off exactly what I've been hoping a game might pull off one day, "show don't tell". There is not a single line of dialogue in this game, there isn't even any text aside from the brief appearance of the game's title. And yet despite that, it is able to get across not only the story and the characters' feelings, but also the history of this world and it's people. I have never seen a game, or any other medium for that matter, pull this off as well as Journey has.
And speaking of the story, is seems to draw heavily from the works of writer Joseph Campbell, particulalrly his famous book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". Every one of the stages in this game seems to be based on the ideas and themes that Campbell wrote about, the notion of the "hero's journey". In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the game's creators had a copy of that book on hand when they were making it. I'd go into more detail on this but frankly, this has been discussed by other far more qualified to discuss these themes than me. Daniel Floyd and the crew of "Extra Credits" have recently done a two-part episode on this very subject and I highly recommend watching it once you play the game.
I spoke of the gameplay earlier and despite the impression that this is a by-the-numbers platformer, nothing could be further from the truth. This game, despite it's simple controls, lacks many of the tropes of other platforming games. There are no collectables aside from the previously mentioned floating icons, and even then, not collecting them doesn't seem to affect the ending in any negative way. There are no bosses save for one brief encounter in the middle of the game, and even then you don't fight the monster, but rather evade and avoid it, simply trying to survive. In fact, fighting doesn't happen once in this game, and I don't mean to sound preachy here, but that's actually a breath of fresh air for me to not have to kill people in a game for once.
The music is very calming a lot of the time. There's no grand scale orchestra or big action piece themes anywhere to be found here. instead, most of the music is accomplished by simply wind instruments such a flutes. It's simple music to be sure but despite that it fits the tone very well. After all, this is not an action game, nor can I really call it an adventure game. It's more of an exploration, and simple music such as this fits this game like a glove.
And finally, we come to the visuals, and here, Thatgamecompany have struck absolute gold. For the most part, I found the game's look and art style to be simple, as befitting a game like this. It was good but it wasn't spectacular at firs, with me having become more used to the detailed graphics of bigger titles. But my turning point came during a moment when Wanderer was sliding down some soft sand and travelled through a hallway, with the light of the setting sun filtering through the arches as he travelled past it. My jaw hit the ground when I saw that and from that point on, I gained a new appreciation.
In fact, I'm not going to beat around the bush here people. Journey is without a doubt the single most beautiful game I have ever laid eyes on. It's cell-shaded look may put you in the mind of "Zelda - The Wind Waker" but the combination of simple colours, detailed sand and spectacular lighting all come together to provide an aesthetic that I have never experienced before. It is simply staggering.
The game is obviously a fantasy of some sort and it's look fits in with that. There is not a single recognisable place or person in this game's story that we would see as something from our own world. At first glance you night think the game has a Middle-Eastern look to it. But look closer and you'll find that this is a very uniquely-looking game which, while it may have been influenced by such places, has a style all of it's own.
I've heard from many others who've played this game that it's too short. While I agree that it's much shorter than some of the other games I've played recently, saying it's too short is an odd criticism for me. It's as long as it needs to be to get across what it needs to get across. This is a game that does not overstay it's welcome. The pacing, the story, the writing, everything is, as Yahtzee once said of Portal, "as tight as a drum, with not an inch wasted". So is it short? Yes. But to me, that's no criticism.
All-in-all this is easily one of the most impressive games I've experienced in a long time. And really, that's the best way to describe it, an experience. You feel so much while playing this game. By the time it's over I felt richer for the experience, like I've just read a ground-breaking book or movie. Very few games have ever made me feel that way and fewer still have done so with so in such an artistic way.
This is a game that everyone needs to play, and I give this game a higher recommendation than any other game I have ever played. Trust me, you won't be disappointed by this one.
The game, as you can tell from the title, is Journey, a Playstation Network game released earlier this year and was produced by Thatgamecompany, the minds behind such other fine PSN games such as Flow and Flower.
The story, such as it is, starts with the player character, a silent robed character of ambiguous gender that I will refer to as "the wanderer". Wanderer wakes in the middle of a vast desert and whose attention is drawn to a star that falls from the sky. The star in question falls to the summit of a far away mountain peak, and Wanderer journeys across the vast land to reach it.
I know I've taken it upon myself to usually describe a story's plot in full recently, but if I were to do that here, it would be unforgiveable. Not because of some big plot twist or anything, but because of the fact that this is a story that can only be appreciated by experiencing it. Hearing it from someone else, like me, would not come anywhere near to doing it justice.
Now as you can probably tell already, I have a great deal of respect for this game. And there are many reason for that.
The gameplay, though simple, does everything it needs to do and does it well. There were no big issues that made me frustrated the way other game mechanics might do. There were no noticeable glitches that distracted from the immersion of the environment and the whole thing felt very intuitive. Basically, if you've played any big expansive world game before, then chances are that you'll have very little difficulty in playing the game. The most notable aspect of the gameplay is the scarf, the magical item of clothing granted to you during the tutorial level. It allows you to reach previously unreachable places and it extends in length after collecting hidden icons scattered throughout the world.
There is also the online player feature of the game, and to me this was very clever. Although not officially an MMO, this game allows other players who are online at the time to interact with you during play. They can accompany you during your journey and although they cannot offer "help" per se aside from occasionally regenerating health, in a strange way their mere presence makes it feel as though they ARE helping you.
Your character has the ability to communicate, either with the strange cloth creatures that inhabit this world or with the other player avatars. But this communication is limited to a few musical notes. But despite this, it work. There is simply so much conveyed in just a few brief musical notes than what I would get in hearing the other player speak. In many ways it actually feels more sociable. We are reduced to understanding each other on an almost basic level. Language is removed so we're left to understand each other by way of interpreting each other's movement and music.
Just a brief description of one of my playthroughs to help illustrate this point. I was travelling through some desert with another player, we'd been spending a couple of levels together and generally having a good time of it. Then, after the next area loaded, I found that they must have logged off. Suddenly, I felt very alone here and I was greatly missing their company. No other game involving multiplayer or co-op has ever made me feel bad that a player has left, and I didn't even know their name or even if they were male or female. So that truly is a testament to just how alone this game can make you feel.
In fact, atmosphere is something the game as a whole pulls off spectacularly. Aside from general loneliness, this game, right from the start, makes you the player feel very small. You are an insignificant speck on a vast world, travelling through it and hoping not to be swept aside. So good is this game at making me feel this way that I'd actually go so far as to put it up there with Silent Hill 2 among the games that pulls of atmosphere this well.
The game's story also helps. I know I gave a brief description of it earlier and said I wouldn't spoil things, and I won't. But I think I'm safe in saying that this game pulls off exactly what I've been hoping a game might pull off one day, "show don't tell". There is not a single line of dialogue in this game, there isn't even any text aside from the brief appearance of the game's title. And yet despite that, it is able to get across not only the story and the characters' feelings, but also the history of this world and it's people. I have never seen a game, or any other medium for that matter, pull this off as well as Journey has.
And speaking of the story, is seems to draw heavily from the works of writer Joseph Campbell, particulalrly his famous book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". Every one of the stages in this game seems to be based on the ideas and themes that Campbell wrote about, the notion of the "hero's journey". In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the game's creators had a copy of that book on hand when they were making it. I'd go into more detail on this but frankly, this has been discussed by other far more qualified to discuss these themes than me. Daniel Floyd and the crew of "Extra Credits" have recently done a two-part episode on this very subject and I highly recommend watching it once you play the game.
I spoke of the gameplay earlier and despite the impression that this is a by-the-numbers platformer, nothing could be further from the truth. This game, despite it's simple controls, lacks many of the tropes of other platforming games. There are no collectables aside from the previously mentioned floating icons, and even then, not collecting them doesn't seem to affect the ending in any negative way. There are no bosses save for one brief encounter in the middle of the game, and even then you don't fight the monster, but rather evade and avoid it, simply trying to survive. In fact, fighting doesn't happen once in this game, and I don't mean to sound preachy here, but that's actually a breath of fresh air for me to not have to kill people in a game for once.
The music is very calming a lot of the time. There's no grand scale orchestra or big action piece themes anywhere to be found here. instead, most of the music is accomplished by simply wind instruments such a flutes. It's simple music to be sure but despite that it fits the tone very well. After all, this is not an action game, nor can I really call it an adventure game. It's more of an exploration, and simple music such as this fits this game like a glove.
And finally, we come to the visuals, and here, Thatgamecompany have struck absolute gold. For the most part, I found the game's look and art style to be simple, as befitting a game like this. It was good but it wasn't spectacular at firs, with me having become more used to the detailed graphics of bigger titles. But my turning point came during a moment when Wanderer was sliding down some soft sand and travelled through a hallway, with the light of the setting sun filtering through the arches as he travelled past it. My jaw hit the ground when I saw that and from that point on, I gained a new appreciation.
In fact, I'm not going to beat around the bush here people. Journey is without a doubt the single most beautiful game I have ever laid eyes on. It's cell-shaded look may put you in the mind of "Zelda - The Wind Waker" but the combination of simple colours, detailed sand and spectacular lighting all come together to provide an aesthetic that I have never experienced before. It is simply staggering.
The game is obviously a fantasy of some sort and it's look fits in with that. There is not a single recognisable place or person in this game's story that we would see as something from our own world. At first glance you night think the game has a Middle-Eastern look to it. But look closer and you'll find that this is a very uniquely-looking game which, while it may have been influenced by such places, has a style all of it's own.
I've heard from many others who've played this game that it's too short. While I agree that it's much shorter than some of the other games I've played recently, saying it's too short is an odd criticism for me. It's as long as it needs to be to get across what it needs to get across. This is a game that does not overstay it's welcome. The pacing, the story, the writing, everything is, as Yahtzee once said of Portal, "as tight as a drum, with not an inch wasted". So is it short? Yes. But to me, that's no criticism.
All-in-all this is easily one of the most impressive games I've experienced in a long time. And really, that's the best way to describe it, an experience. You feel so much while playing this game. By the time it's over I felt richer for the experience, like I've just read a ground-breaking book or movie. Very few games have ever made me feel that way and fewer still have done so with so in such an artistic way.
This is a game that everyone needs to play, and I give this game a higher recommendation than any other game I have ever played. Trust me, you won't be disappointed by this one.
