About fifteen minutes into my hands-on with thatgamecompany's Journey, I realized that the odd sense of déjà vu I was getting was a feeling I hadn't experienced since I was about seven years old. The Super Nintendo was the very first console I owned, and it opened up whole new worlds I never could have imagined. Games like Super Mario World felt like grand adventures that blew my young mind and left me in such a sense of awe.
I think the same goes for everyone when they first experience a videogame at a young age. Now that I'm older, games rarely, if ever, leave me with similar feelings. That's not to say I don't get immersed or don't have fun with games -- far from it. It's that growing up surrounded by games (and even having multiple jobs to do with gaming) has gotten me used to the basic formula everyone uses. There's a standard for every game, whether it's obvious or not.
Journey, however, made me feel like I was exploring something completely fresh again. You're put into such a big, beautiful world with no direction or understanding of what's going on, yet you're compelled to press forward.
