Journey (PS4): A Brisk Walk.

This is one of those games I always heard about for being exceptionally good. It came out on PS3 a good while back and I vaguely recall playing a demo but I never really got around to trying. It's one of those games heralded as an indie darling, there have been web comics about it, and for the most part I haven't really heard any negatives about the game. Lucky for me, a few months back it was one of the monthly playstation plus freebies so I finally got an opportunity to try....

JOURNEY:(PS3/4)

Journey is one of those games that weaves its tale without actually telling anything. The entirety of the game has no words, no dialog. Just an handful of cutscenes that explain a little about what comes next and how to proceed, and you decipher a bit of the story as you go on. As the game begins, we view a landscape shot of a somewhat ominous looking mountain in the distance, as and when the game starts the camera pans back to show the player, a humanoid character in a red robe, standing alone in a seemingly vast and endless desert. We are alone. So with nothing more to guide us than what we've seen, all we have to left is to approach the mountain.

Journey is a very chill game. It's designed to be atmospheric and beautiful, so if you are coming into this game expecting it to be a heart pounding exciting adventure you will probably be a little disappointed. At the game's bare bones, how it breaks down is you are basically traveling to different areas of levels and trying to find the specific area that will allow you to proceed to the next area. It's more or less a 3d platformer. And as is with most platformers, your character really only has one major function and that is to jump.

It's clearly going to be a long walk.

Typically you will enter a new area and explore your surroundings, finding remnants of a long forgotten civilization, jumping around from ledge to ledge, building to building. Usually your only signifying markers that you are on the right path are strips of red fabric floating around. These clothes bear a striking resemblance to the scarf your character wears around their neck. If you approach one not much happens. But you hit a button near by, your character will make a little chime noise with an unreadable symbol over their head. You can hold it longer for a slightly larger area effect, and this will cause fabrics to glow and react to you.

This can have multiple different effects depending on the shape of the cloth. Sometimes they flutter around you like papers in the wind, causing you to be carried up into the air allowing you to reach a new ledge. Some of them are large and become carried by the wind, allow you to walk along them like bridges, some of them activate and open cages and fences allowing more little shreds of cloth out into the wild to guide you along your way.

There are some beasts and collectibles, so it is possible to be killed and unlock secrets, but it doesn't appear to be a major focus of the game and doesn't appear to greatly affect the outcome. I was able to complete it only dying once from a stupid mistake, and the only finding a few collectibles.

Eventually your jump will also allow you to double jump and hover, and this is essentially the majority of the games mechanics. As you progress through each well designed area you basically will be lead to find a series of temples with one last big chime activation, the screen will go white and you will seemingly be transported or have a vision with a much larger version of your character in shining white, and they will unveil a little more of a mural to show you where to go next and what to expect. All of this is done without spoken word so it's a nifty little way to get fragments of the games story as you progress.

Since Journey doesn't have a lot in the way of differing game mechanics, it makes itself more immersive by really playing with how the character interacts with the environment. It's actual pretty impressive how they do so much with a desert sandscape. In one stage after you've gotten the hover you are taken to these tower ruins where you are launched up the sides of it to reach the top. In another, you are taken to these massive dunes with fabric fluttering around you like paper in the wind allowing you to catch air and hover with them for great distances. Another has a very rapid descent as you ski down the sands flying past some cool environment. It does a lot with a little, and it never really felt boring a repetitive to me.

There is one last very cool mechanic that in all honesty made the game for me, and surprisingly it's Journey's multiplayer. How it works is as you play through the game, without fanfare or notification you might come across another robed figure not unlike yourself. These are not NPCs, they are other people playing the game. And like I previously said the is no words or communication in this game. There is no mics or PSN names so all you can do to interact with each other is jump or make your little chime

But somehow, this does more to engage me with the other player better than most multiplayer experiences tend to do with me. After one or two choreographed chimes and a hop, my new cohort and would leap from ruin to ruin, spamming our little chime effect to let each other now if we found a collectible, or something to help us progress with the game. We'd solve that area and then go to the next big cutscene in the game. Maybe they'd continue the journey with me, maybe they'd go their separate way.  But ultimately, it worked.

So why did this make the game for me? It's one little series of events really. Near the end of the game, the level had taken us to ascend a very craggy mountain. There was heavy winds, moving was slow, ledges were precarious and steep. It was a very slow paced level, but through it all myself and my partner worked through the stages of the climb and showed each other how to proceed the whole way. near the end, we had a long strip of bridge like fabric we activated to proceed on. We both chimed, the path opened up, and we hovered along. My friend was above and clear, I came up short. I hung on for as long as the wind carried me and I fell ALL THE WAY back to the very beginning of the mountain. I was mad.

But then a chime was heard, and my partner fluttered down from the top of my screen and landed next to me, happily chiming a little rhythm they had done a few times before. My friend who I never met and couldn't speak to came back for me. They didn't want to finish Journey alone, they wanted to finish it with me. I wasn't playing Journey in my living room at that point, I was ON a Journey with my colleague. I felt genuinely moved that they would have rather come back to do the level with me all over again than just finish without me. And it made the next few moments of the game (as we were near the end) that much more emotionally involving because I had this memory to put to it. It was fantastic. This person was my friend.

One cool last that the this game does is when you do eventually complete the game past its credit roll, you are rewarded with the the list of all the names of the other players who went on the journey with you. Sadly, I don't know if they appeared in the order that they joined me, so I have no way to really know who my friend was that came back for me, because I would have sent them a PSN message to thank them.

Little moments like that are why I give Journey a recommendation. It's probably not a PS+ freebie anymore at this point, but it cant be more than 5-15 bucks to pick up. If you like indie games with cool visual experiences this is certainly one that will deliver for you. It's not a very long experience and I can't really attest to its replay value, but it was very chill and I enjoyed it very much. I even would sit down and play it again even though I've beaten it more than once. It's a wonderful title to relax with. Journey was very good, and I'm sorry I missed it back in 2012.

Wherever you are Friend, I'm thinking of you.....

DOOM (PS4): I'll be Damned.

I can't deny what the first person shooter genre did to the video game industry. The first one I ever played, probably like most people, was Wolfenstein 3D. It was new and interesting, but one of the games that has heralded as one of the most iconic of the entire genre is the Doom series. Like most people, I feel this is one of the games that really defined what made a great FPS. Fast paced, interesting weapons, fun monsters to kill. I specifically have childhood memories of Doom 2 being exceptionally good.

But as well all know, FPS games and I have a very/love hate relationship. There aren't a lot of them that I really love, and many of them seem to be carbon copies of each other. Very few rise to the top. That being said, the recently reviewed Overwatch has kinda softened me on FPS games lately, and I found myself curious about this newest installment. Thankfully due to one of my local libraries, they had a shiny new copy waiting for me to check out. 

DOOM{2016}(PS4)

I honestly went into this not caring what the Doom story was. I just wanted to go in and shoot some demons. Thankfully, the game obliges. The game opens with you seeing a red mark appear on the screen and you waking up chained to a stone sarcophagus with a demon fast approaching. You break one of the chains and quickly smash its skull against the stone. After freeing yourself you quickly find a handgun and dispatch a few more enemies. When you enter the next room to find the famous Doom Marine armor waiting for you.

Upon touching it you have series of flashbacks of hell and demons. When you come back you are armored and checking the PC screen next to you, all of the information about what has gone wrong is blocked off and receive a message from one of the scientists. He goes to explain that he has plans for how you can mutually help each other, but the Marine pretty much trashes the screen immediately, grabs a nearby shotgun and heads out into Mars to raise hell.... again.

Hello again, old friend.

So right out the gate I have to appreciate this. Doom for a lot of people is really just one thing: Man with guns shooting demons from hell on Mars. The people at ID software clearly realized that people did not like the direction that Doom 3 had taken, and realized they just want what they had before, just newer. And that is exactly what they did. They framed the story, gave you a gun, and put you out there to start shooting everything in your path. This was smart of them, because pretty much from the first level I was locked in a ready to go. 

To be fair, there is a story. The long and short of it is a Mars base owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation is here to solve the earth energy crisis. Dr. Samuel Hayden heads this project and has learned not only how to siphon energy but also can travel to hell to steal and research artifacts they've found there. One of his subordinates however, Olivia Pearce, makes a pact with one of the demons from hell and opens a portal allowing their release. Hayden is forced to release the "Doom Slayer" trapped in one of the artifacts, to try to take the fight back to the demons and send them back. As you play through the game it fleshes out the context of this story.

Seriously, Do people who start cults not listen to how crazy they sound?

But who fucking cares, we aren't here for a new doom story. We are here because we want to kill some eff'n demons. Now as someone who was a fan of the original Doom and Doom 2, I only really had a couple of things I really wanted in this game. Are the iconic monsters there? Are the guns I enjoyed using still there, and is the game fast paced. This was pretty much the standard for me on the game being good.

The game starts you off with a pretty big and wide open area of mars terrain to get you going. There are handful of imps around and lots of infected humans. It felt like i had a pretty fast run speed but I didn't really have any sense of context for how fast I was moving due to the size of the map. That did not last long. Almost immediately I found myself in an area of tighter corners and I found myself strafing at a full sprint as imps dashed at me chucked fireballs at me, zig-zagging closer so I can pop a close range shotgun blast. Speed? Check.

The speed of the game feels just right. Fast and frantic without being too much.

As I played through the the game, I was very happy to see some familiar faces appear as a I played. The regular shambling dead were kind of new, and I kind of "hrrrrnnngg'd" at what appeared to be more than one variant of Imp walked by. But maybe not even a level goes by when see one of the newly modeled remnants appear, leaping around and firing from its shoulder mounted rocket launchers. The redesign was amazing that it looked new, modern, and terrifying while still exactly reminding me of what sprite it used to be.

And then I turned around to see a Cocademon I didn't notice before point blank range chomping me for an instant kill. Scared the living fuck out of me. But as I continued to play the game more and more of the original monsters started to appear, all with cool new designs, new tricks, and new behavioral patterns. Not only that though, they made sure to have specific demons appear in specific map layouts which forces your to adjust your attack strategies because the same tricks won't work with different combinations of enemies. Even that first encounter with the Cyberdemon my brain just went "Ooooh yeah.. I remember you. *cracks knuckles* Lets go." Iconic monsters? Check.

At this point you know of this third check point is going to go. I don't remember the specific order I picked the weapons up but you start with a shotgun. OK no big, the game always has a shotgun. Then you pick up an assault rifle. Yeah yeah, FPS I get it. Even when I picked up the rocket launcher I met with a un-enthused "meh"... But then I landed the double barreled shotgun, and all the memories of Doom came flooding back.. That "ooooooohhhh yeahhh, shit's about to serious now" feeling just hits you the moment you see those two shells get loaded into the gun. The pulse rifle shortly followed and of course the infamous BFG 9000. Doom Weapons? Check.

Another point about the weapons that I should note is that there is no reloading in this game. I don't specifically remember that there was reloading in the old Doom games, but apparently there was not. But because I was so conditioned by Overwatch and most of the modern shooters these days, I would constantly find myself hitting the square button to reload only to yank out the chainsaw instead. Fun note about that weapon: If you use that to kill a demon, they drop a shit ton of ammo. I did not realize this right away and it caused for me to have a lot of difficult and stressful moments of the game because I would be fighting very tough enemies with practically no ammo, because I'm an idiot who didn't know how to get more.

But wait! There's more! While I continued to play through the game there are areas where you have skirmishes with waves of enemies, typically while you are fighting your way to get blue yellow and green skulls or key cards (another throwback to classic Doom) while the fight is taking place I noticed that I was sort of head banging in place. I realized that I was REALLY enjoying the music in this game. In points of high tension and battle Doom delivers an unrelenting mechanical hybrid of industrial. Very sharp and hard repetitious riffs, with very punctuated drums.

I know this sound, I've definitely heard this before. And sure enough one google search showed me that behind the soundtrack was Mick Gordon, who you would know from the amazing remixes of the Killer Instinct OST from the updated release of that game. The music in this game absolutely rocks my ass off. I must have played a 4 hour stream of this on one day off and I couldn't help but constantly comment on how bad ass the soundtrack was. There is no official OST for the game available, but if you search the Internet hard enough, there is a 3 disc rip of the all the music from the game, and it is fucking bad ass. Mick Gordon is quickly becoming a member of my god tier of video game musicians with Akira Yamaoka, Richaad EB, Shoji Meguro, and Nobuo Uematsu.

For the most part, I love the level design. For a pretty large majority of the game I was able to navigate my way through level after level without finding myself getting lost too much. The game guides you only with a small HUD that points you in the general direction of where the objective is and most of the time so long as that is pointed the right way you will be able to march your way to the goal without getting too lost. It does a pretty good job of not being too linear in the maps because there are a number of areas where you can spread out and use various covers and launchers for some pretty wild firefights without using cover mechanics.

But the path indicators don't necessarily mean you are going the right way. Sometimes the only indicator your have is blocked by a locked door, which then forces you to explore your surroundings to try to find the appropriate colored key to move on. Normally this is a very good thing because the levels are designed to be complimentary to exploring. but when this happens, I am the type of player who will find himself completely lost with no idea how to backtrack back to where I needed to go. The in-game map is not very helpful when you have multiple levels all layered over the same spot.

There is one really specific section that annoyed the shit out of me because it was a map that had a series of teleporters that warped you all over the map. This was an incredibly frustrating segment and it showed while I live-streamed it. Because in order to proceed I needed to find a yellow key. It took me nearly an hour to constantly be warped from place to place trying to figure out what specific area would help me find they key. But then once I found the key, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the area with the door so I could continue on.

This is one of my primary gripes about FPS games. The moment I find myself lost and wandering to figure out where to go next, is the moment I start to lose interest in the game. What followed were a couple tortuous hours of constantly wandering the same areas to the same droning song with no monsters to fight. It forced me to close the live stream because it wasn't entertaining anymore. The game could have lost me at that segment. Thankfully not long after I called it a stream I stumbled on where I needed to go but it could have lost me there for good.

Fuck. You. Map. You were not helpful at all.

There is also a multiplayer section that for some bizarre reason requires several minutes of loading to get to from the main screen. Something I don't understand, and for a guy who is usually pretty against playing multiplayer giving me a more difficult barrier of entry just makes me less likely to try it, which is pretty much what happened here. I can't comment on how fun the multiplayer is because I didn't try it.

This iteration of Doom features something called the SnapMap editor. I suppose the most comparable comparison I can make would be something like Halo's forge mode. Essentially its a plug and play user generated content map builder for players to create and share. Since I just had the game checked out from the library and this seemed like a lot of work, this too is something that I didn't really try. But from what I have been reading some real wizards have come up with some clever uses for it.

Apparently there are whole bunch of hidden things to find in this game too. I found a couple of the Doom Solider dolls as I played through the game, but talking a friend about it apparently there are ways to unlock classic levels of Doom titles to play in the new system. They must be well hidden because I didn't find a single one of them but a quick google search proves that they do exist. So I guess that really layers some replay value to the game in addition to the series of challenge maps you come across in the game, as well as the multiple levels of difficulty.

One last little nitpick here. The install file for this game is fucking retarded. I get that we've reached an age where we can't just throw in a cartridge fire up a game. But I thought the whole point of the PS4 is that I could toss the disc in, and it would install just enough that I could start the game up while if finished downloading and installing the rest of it in the background. After the game was "ready" to start I was treated to another install screen, just like the bullshit Resistance 3 pulled. By the time the update file finally finished, the game was taking up a whopping 77GB of hard drive space. That's almost a 5th of the drive! Absolutely ridiculous and probably unnecessary. Download enough to let me start the game, then do the rest later. Yeesh.

I have to be totally honest here, I freak'n loved this game. Honestly I'm pretty surprised at how much I loved this game. For someone who is pretty lukewarm to the majority of the FPS genre as a whole, Doom pretty much managed to nail down every single thing I liked about an FPS game while managing to leave out almost everything I don't like about it.

I really cranked through Doom once I really knuckled down with it and I don't remember having this much fun with a FPS campaign for a long while now. And this is how I know it was a good game. Once I was I got through the whole campaign, I deleted the game data and moved on to a new title. Maybe less than hour later I found myself looking away from the game I was playing looking at the box for Doom. I wasn't ready to stop playing, so I put it back in, cranked up the difficulty, and started to play it again. That means something.

So If you still haven't played through this game yet, you are in luck as Doom is frequently reduced to 30$ these days, which motivated me to purchase a copy of it for myself even after beating the campaign. I enjoyed it that much. I look forward to going back and playing it on a harder setting. Surprisingly and highly recommended.

Seriously, the new design of the Cocademon terrifies the crap out of me.