Journey

Date played: March 15th
Platform: PS3
Time played: 120 minutes
Session fun rating: 10/10

I went on a fabulous 90 minute Journey and all I got was this lousy blog post! Being a fan of Flower, Journey had been on my radar for a long time. I finished the entire game in one sitting and had a very memorable experience.

Journey is a simple game where your character has to reach the top of a distant mountain. That's pretty all the context there is for this. The game actually plays a whole lot like Flower in that you must gather scarf pieces (like petals) to increase your abilities and have to activate certain things like banners (flower clusters) to make changes to the environment so that the player can progress. I don't want to spoil details but let's just say that the game has more than the desert environment that was shown off before release.

To quote Jack Johnson : "It's always better when we're together"

Another interesting part to Journey is the weird multiplayer. At any time in the game, you might find yourself paired up with another player. There is no obligation to work together and there is no way to communicate except with one sound. It makes it really cool to just have a buddy playing with you throughout your Journey. I really enjoyed my time with Journey, enough that I even replayed a level or two after the credits. Sure it's a short game, but it's beautiful, has amazing music and really has a feel of it's own. In many ways, it's closer to a short story or short film than a typical video game.