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.....