It very much is a game, because it simulates an alternate world that you play in. The only videogames that might not be videogames are ones that match reality so closely it's almost pointless to distinguish the two-- like playing solitaire on a computer versus using real cards.
I really liked how Journey controlled. Gliding around and surfing down sand dunes was fantastic. That last sequence? So much fun. But no-one ever seems to mention that.
The basic controls -do- have a great feel to them, I'll give you that. They just don't give you much to do with them. More sand-surfing and more hills to slide down (and less to climb) would've helped. The air draft "platforming" was meh, though. So was the "stealth."
It was the emotional connection I got to my partner in the game that made the experience for me. Someone I never spoke to or knew personally. It showed how travel/journeying with someone can bring you together, even in a videogame. I could tell my partner was afraid at times, and when we'd get separated then find our way back to one another, I knew they were relieved as I was.
Also, Journey is very much a game. It's no more on-rails than recent CoD games and you are in control of your character at every point in the game. It is basic as far as mechanics go, but that does not make it less of a game than any other.
I really liked how Journey controlled. Gliding around and surfing down sand dunes was fantastic. That last sequence? So much fun. But no-one ever seems to mention that.
My biggest problem with it is that there's no way to really fail in the game. It presents you with the illusion of danger, but the worst that can happen is you take forever to progress.
In a way, you might argue that the game does have gameplay since you have to actually stop jumping around and gliding to prove to yourself that all of the obstacles are harmless.
What other games ar similarly minimal, with that atmosphere and setting? I'm not being argumentative, just curious.
I went in expecting to be unimpressed with this (given how things are hyped round these parts...) and was quite the opposite.
I found this experience really refreshing, after overhyped AAA bore #1029930 didn't manage to hold my attention. it was impressively focused, with a great soundtrack and immersive world. I'd absolutely stop short of calling it life changing or overly spiritual or anything like that, but I did find it quite moving.
I guess if you're going to be restrictive like that, then there aren't many. I'd argue that Team ICO's games have been similarly minimal, while being rooted in sounder gameplay mechanics (though I'm not really a fan of ICO). There are others (Dear Esther) that go for largely the same feeling as well, as well as other games that have more effective periods of melancholy, even if they don't comprise the whole game.
Hell, I'd liken Journey to MGS3's ladder climb segment stretched to two hours: pressing forward to move while emotional music played. And I liked it in MGS3 more, because it was in the context of something that had mechanics that advanced and changed as time went on.
Don't get me wrong; I'm sick of AAA blockbuster #1029930 too. That's what I voted for X-Com and Kid Icarus in my GOTY thread. I'm just not sure if Journey's the place to make a stand on what "gaming" is all about, especially for this year, or in comparison to the sterile, dumbed-down gameplay of AAA games.
EDIT: Sorry if I'm coming across as a dick. I guess I'm just really bothered by this game's reception and what it means.
The main theme behind Dear Esther is "the collapse of meaning/symbols". The audio is pseudo-random, and contradictory. Everything you hear could be true, false, both at the same time, or neither. Try to write down what you think happened based on the text/audio that you got, and see if it makes sense. By the way, was that a ghost you saw out of the corner of your eye? *walks closer* Oh, I guess not. I could swear it was, though... hmm... It's about ambiguity and contradiction and fantasy and reality. Where is the island? Where does it feel like it is to you? When is the island? What century? Who do you play as? Is the player character the narrator or someone else? Who is he writing to, and who is she to him? What happens at the very end?
Besides that, there are recurring themes
- Kidney stones
- Drunk driving
- Religious faith and evangelism
- Circuits
- Seagulls
- An injury to your leg
- (Biblical) Paul
- Paper boats
And then there's the big one--how do you feel about what you heard? Presumably you feel uncomfortable and a little sad, lonely, confused...
Something that really irked me in Journey were the cutscenes. I get how they're "minimalist" on paper but in a game like this it just feels like they shouldn't be there, period. Like put the hierogylphics and shit on very visible walls and monuments you see along your journey. It just feels... preachy, or pretentious, or something, seeing my guy and God/his ancestor/whatever staring at him. Just fragmented the game's flow a lot more than necessary.
I really liked how Journey controlled. Gliding around and surfing down sand dunes was fantastic. That last sequence? So much fun. But no-one ever seems to mention that.
I'll mention it. Those sequences were fun and were the only sequences of the game I liked. I would have gladly taken a game comprised entirely of that (gradually increasing in difficulty/speed/intensity as you get closer, until it slows down as you "die" in the snow). But we didn't get that. Instead we got a game where you spend 70% of its runtime trudging around (unless you had a smart partner).
Something that really irked me were the cutscenes. I get how they're "minimalist" on paper but in a game like this it just feels like they shouldn't be there, period. Like put the hierogylphics and shit on very visible walls and monuments you see along your journey. It just feels... preachy, or pretentious, or something, seeing my guy and God/his ancestor/whatever staring at him. Just fragmented the game's flow a lot more than necessary.
Yeah, I agree. They actually betray the minimalism by actually beating you over the head with what's going on. It's super intrusive, just so people would "get it."
I'll mention it. Those sequences were fun and were the only sequences of the game I liked. I would have gladly taken a game comprised entirely of that (gradually increasing in difficulty/speed/intensity as you get closer, until it slows down as you "die" in the snow). But we didn't get that. Instead we got a game where you spend 70% of its runtime trudging around (unless you had a smart partner).
Semi-related, the sand-surfing bits made me realize how cool a fusion of 1080* and Wave Race would be. Sand-surfing controlled like a snowboarding game but on terrain that undulated like water -- really neat and not quite like anything I'd played before.
It has nothing to do with those, Journey isn't really the desert the whole time and the themes are totally different.
It's just a really great telling of the classic hero's journey in a unique way with another human player, which is why it resonated with people that it can do a whole story's arc in just 2 hours while most games flail around for much longer.
If the multiplayer aspect wasn't there, that bond of friendship, then it wouldn't have quite the impact.
Semi-related, the sand-surfing bits made me realize how cool a fusion of 1080* and Wave Race would be. Sand-surfing controlled like a snowboarding game but on terrain that undulated like water -- really neat and not quite like anything I'd played before.
I'll mention it. Those sequences were fun and were the only sequences of the game I liked. I would have gladly taken a game comprised entirely of that (gradually increasing in difficulty/speed/intensity as you get closer, until it slows down as you "die" in the snow). But we didn't get that. Instead we got a game where you spend 70% of its runtime trudging around (unless you had a smart partner).
I'll admit I did have a "juiced-up" partner for a lot of it who I could sorta just bounce off of, which made it more fun, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy the mountain sequences where you have to brave the snowstorm, or the stealth sequences (just for the stress of these enormous beasts and the loss of your scarf).
Enjoyable for different reasons than blasting through the air like Cole McGrath or something, of course, and thus perfectly understandable why one wouldn't like them. I found the balance between this sort of oppression of movement, and the euphoria of aerial movement, well, it made the former engaging in service of how satisfying the latter was. It gave me a goal- I wanted to fly again, and that's what drove me forward when the game was almost throwing me around.
But Steve... I don't like Journey? Nor that(non-)gamecompany's "games."
They're trying to be arty but they bore me to tears because there's so little going on that it wants to put me to sleep.
I mean if people enjoy it, hey, more power to them. But like Journey was just "walking in sand simulator: the movie: the game" for me and I'm completely burned out on hype for any of their "games." I just don't get the appeal. *shrug*
I'll admit I did have a "juiced-up" partner for a lot of it who I could sorta just bounce off of, which made it more fun, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy the mountain sequences where you have to brave the snowstorm, or the stealth sequences (just for the stress of these enormous beasts and the loss of your scarf).
Enjoyable for different reasons than blasting through the air like Cole McGrath or something, of course.
I'm not saying that the mountain sequences or the stealth bits aren't enjoyable because they're slogs. They're meant to be.
But I do think those sequences would have been more effective had it come off a game where you spent most of it floating/sliding/swimming around. Because suddenly your decrease in movement is sharply contrasted by what came before.
Instead, you spend a good portion of the game just slogging around in sand and it's super boring. So it's not like there's much of a difference between the mountain levels and the sand ones at the beginning. The levels really aren't designed to take advantage of the games' strengths.
The level design in general blows a lot of opportunities with what limited mechanics it brings to the table. That's why I can't say this was a GOTY for me; it barely even accomplishes adequately what it was capable of.
Its a very introspective game; part of the beauty of the design is the way it gives the player so much space to project themselves "into" the experience.
Obviously because so much of the impact is derived from your own "self", as in your personality, state of mind, circumstances in life and whatnot, different people are going to have stronger or weaker responses to it.
I'm not sure if I was more impressed by the way playing the game made me feel, or my feelings (as an ex-designer) of amazement that something so high-minded could ever be bankrolled in the current climate! On a technical and artistic level Journey is a simply phenomenal piece of work in my opinion, its incredibly rare to see something so accomplished yet so left-field.
But Steve... I don't like Journey? Nor that(non-)gamecompany's "games."
They're trying to be arty but they bore me to tears because there's so little going on that it wants to put me to sleep.
I mean if people enjoy it, hey, more power to them. But like Journey was just "walking in sand simulator: the movie: the game" for me and I'm completely burned out on hype for any of their "games." I just don't get the appeal. *shrug*
I don't know, to begin with I found it underwhelming. But then halfway through the game something clicked and I lost myself in the world completely. I just started to feel emotions, joy and sadness simultaneously. The music and visuals were fantastic and it just left a lasting impression. I think the multiplayer really helped because Flower was just 'nice' while this was and 'experience' .
Journey is primarily an aesthetic experience, if you count the kineticism as aesthetic(and I do, since it's not 'fun' in the way we typically define it in a general sense). As that, I think it's pretty successful. In addition it has some supremely elegant multiplayer elements and a couple of really emotive scenes at the end, and for me was one of my favorites of the year. Not my very favorite, but probably in my top 10.
EDIT: I don't think Journey is 'arty', in the sense that something like Braid or Passage or Dear Esther is arty. It's not trying to say any specific or make any grand statement, and it is better for it.
I did... I'll quote some posts if you want. Generally I saw about how it's amazing (but why?) and it's minimalist (great but how does that effect how you enjoy it?) and it's pretty (that's great for a movie, and great for a game, but if it doesn't play well why is it one of the top games? I'm not saying all games have to "play" well, but it definitely helps right?).
Now, I didn't participate in GAF's goty thread, and Journey wouldn't be my pick if I had, but I did enjoy the game seemingly more than you.
Most other games out there, we've played. Maybe a new system was added here and there, but nothing ground breaking.
Journey introduced a seamless cooperative experience that relied on its own form of communication and promoted teamwork. No deathmatches, no race for high scores etc. All of that is accomplished WITHOUT EVEN TELLING YOU TO. Players learned of the coop perks by experimentation. Players bonded with their fellow journeymen and go through every range of emotion. Happy when your partner shows you a secret, sad when you lose them, frustrated when they can't reach you, panic when you think they'll abandon you... I can go on.
It may not have the robust structure of *YOUR favorite game, but it probably showed more promise of where games can go from here.
There was no need for teamwork at all in the game. Having another player just made the stretches where nothing happened less boring and made the parts where you had to activate multiple things across vast distances go faster.
There was no need for teamwork at all in the game. Having another player just made the stretches where nothing happened less boring and made the parts where you had to activate multiple things across vast distances go faster.
The fact that it is difficult to articulate what is so great about Journey is a large part of the appeal. It's not as simple as saying the individual components were well done as much as it is an appreciation of the cohesiveness between said components which created a fantastic experience. If I were to list my favorite movies or books, it would be the same situation; sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
TBQH, my GOTY '12 is Faster Than Light, followed by the Deponia games for reasons I cannot really put into words (especially for the latter, I have problems with enduring Rufus' character - which is by design, I guess).
Still, I tremendously enjoyed Journey, and I played through it in one session, which is really rare for me nowadays - even if the game can be played through in two hours or so. Took me far longer, anyway.
I think it's like the first Endless Ocean on the Wii. Undeniably a game, since you have a whole smattering of "glue" between you and the content. Still, most of the enjoyment of the game comes from soaking in the atmosphere, since playing badly isn't really punished heavily - or at all, sometimes.
Which is not to say my heart didn't race when I barely escaped two (?) enemies by entering a force field of sorts in one part of the game. I remember it being hellishly close, and even if the punishment for getting caught is pretty much nonexistent it adds to the flair tremendously. The ending is another part that has a good amount of emotional impact - if you allow it to.
Basically, it boils down to:
Do you have the time to sit your ass down and relax?
Or, to list a few aspects:
Can you spend a non-trivial amount of money for a pretty short "borderline" game just to soak in the atmosphere?
Can you lean back and watch another player fly around in the wind, blooping and pinging, interacting with weird flying carpet creatures that bloop and ping back?
Can you bloop and ping each other upwards in perfect harmony, communicate without using a single spoken word, just to get the other guy or gal to the one shiny thingy he or she missed - and derive enjoyment from that?
Can you just sit down at times and watch the world around you leisurely, completely and utterly alone? ... even if you're sitting in a humongous graveyard, or rather, the remnants of an ancient civilization?
Can you see the minimalistic punishment from failing a task as receiving a small dose of "negative feedback", and not as "lacking in challenge"?
Can you muster the curiosity of exploring an area just for the sake of exploring it?
Obligatory complaint: I didn't like how the surfing parts made it very easy to lose your partner.
I'm a good chunk of the way through the game and it isn't impressive at all. The art direction is nice but really that's it. Also some of the reviews feel like they're written by PR, they're just so hyperbolic.
I just beat journey for the first time today. Absolutely loved it. Wife and I were basically in tears as it all came together near the end.
My experience was greatly enhanced by spending the entire second half of the game with another player. He was really helpful, too. The communication constraint was brilliant.
I just beat journey for the first time today. Absolutely loved it. Wife and I were basically in tears as it all came together near the end.
My experience was greatly enhanced by spending the entire second half of the game with another player. He was really helpful, too. The communication constraint was brilliant.
Congrats. You did it correctly. It's not a game that can really be put into words. It's something you need to experience. And then you just understand.
I chalk it up to most gamers not getting out enough. I remember when Flower came out I thought it was the kind of neat little thing you would find in the Audio/Visual section of a contemporary art museum. Something you would play at the exhibit for 3 minutes, say "neat" and move on to the next installation. But to call either a game and then charge people money seems like some cruel joke.
Congrats. You did it correctly. It's not a game that can really be put into words. It's something you need to experience. And then you just understand.
but, no, i'm not personally prepared to attempt to 'explain' why journey worked for me. why do certain games have the ability to move certain people, & not others? very likely because we're all somewhat different, & what 'means' something to me won't necessarily 'mean' shit to someone else. & so it goes ...
For people who say "it's not a game" or "the gameplay sucks"...
Boil down a game into 'controlling a character'.
The lot of us who love Journey would not have the same experience if it was in a movie or book form because we wouldn't be the character.
It doesn't matter what perspective the book is written in or how the movie represents us, we are the character when it comes to the game.
Journey became each one of our journey in life.
We start out in a mysterious world, being curious at every out-of-place object.
We find a friend, who become our life partners.
We struggle through adversity, pain, and suffering together.
We lived together, died together, and went into the afterlife together.
Words can't summarize the feelings, but that is the crux of my Journey experience.
I wouldn't have experienced anything like that if I wasn't controlling my actions.
And I still can't understand that because that description feels so hyperbolic and forced, like you deliberately immersed yourself and made yourself believe this game was deep to the exclusion of a million other games where you could have done the same thing.
It's like some people have never experienced minimalism in a medium before.
Gotta agree here. All of that feels so forced and made up to me. The world is only a mystery to us because they told us nothing about it. Nothing feels "out-of-place" because we don't understand the world enough to know what that even means. There was no adversity or pain. There was no challenge. There was no suffering. I'm not even sure what that means.
The mistake I made was playing this game after I listened to my friends discuss it with a very high amount of passion and elation. I went through the game trying to force myself to "feel" the things they described. I will say that the feeling of isolation was spot on. Whenever I saw someone off in the distance, I ran toward them and when they went away I definitely did kind of just stand there. But everything outside of that was a complete miss to me.
I understood the story on a very base level but at the end of the day I still didn't quite care or understand what it was I was doing. I was just running around in a diorama for two hours. A very pretty one but that's all it was. Felt no attachment to the world or what was going on around me... fuck it feels like I'm describing my experience with Dark Souls. But at least Dark Souls was "fun". I guess that's my main issue with Journey. It wasn't "fun". It was a thing I did for two hours.
I chalk it up to most gamers not getting out enough. I remember when Flower came out I thought it was the kind of neat little thing you would find in the Audio/Visual section of a contemporary art museum. Something you would play at the exhibit for 3 minutes, say "neat" and move on to the next installation. But to call either a game and then charge people money seems like some cruel joke.
Sony had a pretty bad year for exclusives. Journey was an exception to that, and I think that lead the fans to rally around it for the awards. Still a very deserving game.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but this thread is sounding mysteriously like the MGS4 thread where everybody tried to understand why Journey got GotY. To me, Journey is a game that encompasses an overall experience. Everything I did felt like added to the journey and wasn't just put in to stretch out the length of the game.
Sony had a pretty bad year for exclusives. Journey was an exception to that, and I think that lead the fans to rally around it for the awards. Still a very deserving game.
I didn't go into it looking for subtext and despite finding it, it fell completely flat. The game isn't particularly vague about what it is and every attempt that it made to make me feel something was met with an acknowledgement and a subsequent dissipation from thought
In the credits I concluded that it was pretty, had clever co-op implementation and gliding was kind enjoyable. The only genuine emotional response if you can call it that was a mild state of euphoria during the 'heaven' segment at the end. Could have just been how agreeable I found the aesthetics. I don't know
Anyway, the game is what it is. I doubt that I'm a heartless monster so I'm thinking that it does require a bit of reading into to in order to appreciate. Even then, its hook still might not work.
Which makes me wonder, if someone is willing to read into this, why not do the same with Super Mario Bros or any other game on the market?
Basically the combination of the artstyle, the companion system, and the flexibility within the gameplay made Journey for me.
As a first timer, you can go through Journey and experience it on your own for what it is and admire the artstyle or whatever.
On your second playthrough, you could hook up the PS3 to the interwebs and find a companion. They'll probably feel obliged to help out with finding secrets in the game. Completing a Journey with a companion is also very rewarding, especially if they stay for the whole time (and if they draw a heart in the snow at the end ) I feel a true sense of loss if they leave.
Once you don a white cloak, a whole different style of gameplay is opened up to you. Interestingly, this style is not created by the game, but by the community, and this is why I love the game so much. Two white cloaks activities could include practicing fast flying, exploring the glitch world and sequence breaking.
See Journey doesn't standalone is a great experience, but the community turns it into a very replayable and memorable game.
Sony had a pretty bad year for exclusives. Journey was an exception to that, and I think that lead the fans to rally around it for the awards. Still a very deserving game.
Like I said in my GOTY comments, Journey is the first mp game I've ever played that effectively evokes empathy when you play it and, to me, the kind of experience I had was something that would only work in a videogame.
I only just played it around Christmas. Despite everyone gushing about it, I still had little to no idea what kind of a game it was. The mechanics seemed simple at first, but the game doesn't really explain to you how they work at first. Sure you can jump and chirp, but it takes a little while for the mechanics to sink in. For me that was when I came across the first person I was playing with in the world. I'm assuming the guy played it before, so, and here's the interesting part, he was able to communicate with me through gameplay. I think if they allowed you to talk to each other, it would be a much, much less interesting experience. So there we are, forced to communicate with each other through gameplay.
Fast forward to a part where we are traversing one of those large scarves in the sky during the early desert part of the game. I make a misguided jump and fall all the way to the bottom
Think back to your earliest or fondest expereince in a co-op game. For me it was Contra. Remember the vertical scrolling stages? Did anyone's co-op partner ever wait for you? No, they jumped to the top and laughed if you died.
So when I got back up to top of the scarf, I fully expected the guy I had been playing with to be long gone. To my suprise he was waiting there for me and chirping chirps of encouragement when we reunited. Fast forward to the sand skiing section. By then me and him are breezing through the game, but I make a wrong turn. When I come out at the bottom he's nowhere to be found. I'm ovecome with a palpable sense of loss. I hang around at the bottom, but he still doesn't show up. I chirp and chirp, but nothing. I believe this is the part where Gerstman stopped playing. In roughly 20 minutes this game made me care about a random stranger online I had never spoken to and I had lost him.
The interesting part came later when I paired up with another guy near the mid-way to end point. The guy obviously didn't know much about the game, wasn't collecting scarf power-ups and was just powering his way through it. Here I was completely lost for the first half of the game myelf, all of sudden shepherding this guy through the rest of the game.
There's a point in the game where you have evade lke a flying dragon thingy. Imagine avoiding search lights in any stealth game that has come out in the last 20 years. This guy apparenty had never played a stealth game, because he didn't know what to do. Communicating through chirping, I kind of guiding him along to safe spots. Chirped when it was safe to go/stop, etc.
So there you have it for me. It's a game where I was able to make connections with random people on a basic level just through communicating through gameplay and random chirping. You start out a complete novice, but by the end you want to be the guy helping the other guy. When so much of our games these days, even co-op games, are about competing and outdoing one another, this is the first mp experience where it truly is fun and rewarding to help other people and ensure their safety. Hope that explains my love for it.
I think that when a game like this has such a big positive reaction, it risks turning it from a smaller, simple game that isn't trying to 'say' anything as such but simply capture a mood or emotion; into a huge grandiose statement that can border on pretentious because of the expectations involved.
When I played, i was going into the game without the weight of any expectation, positive or negative - I think it was better for it.
The dragon sequence was quite tense for me - it reminded me of the same feeling I had hiding from that attack helicopter in Half Life 1. Hiding from searchlights, etc. The same reason those flying things in T2 used to scare me as a kid.
As an escape, and a lonely, otherworldly environment, Journey totally drew me in. And there was something moving about that final sequence. The whole
(spoilered just in case) companions staying close for warmth when they're clearly heading to their deaths.
I found it touching in light of some events in my life around that time which I won't really go into.
The game is kind of a victim of its own reaction, I think. It's like anything - when everyone around you is going 'omg, amazing' it's easy to feel like you should enjoy it or something's wrong with you. If you didn't, it doesn't matter. Just move onto the next thing.
I feel like the reasons everyone seems to hate Journey ("It's not a game, you don't do anything!") are the reasons I liked it.
It does interesting, unique things with the experience by imposing limitations on itself.
That does not jive with everyone. You're not required to like it or even understand it much like you're not required to like or understand any given piece of media presented before you. But don't take so much pride that your definition of "game" is steeped in your limitations.
It turns out, I guess, that you may understand Journey better than you think.
What I liked about Journey is what I like about a good novel. It really nails atmosphere and because of that creates a canvas where the player is allowed the "freedom" to discover a world.
In a time when our interactive medium is more closely tied to cinema, it is refreshing to play a game that exemplifies player choice via emotion very much in the same way great reads do.
My journey, although I've gone through similar paces as other gamers is my own because I've been given the emotional freedom to understand, fear, create, ignore every part of the journey. This is not dissimilar to reading a great book where I create the voice of the protagonist, fear the mental images constructed through the guidance of the author, or understand certain characters while I hate others. The difference being that Journey is interactive whereas the book is static. Also, adding in the co-op element takes that even further.
I'm not saying other games don't do this. It was just done in a very elegant and almost pure manner. No extra stuff, just a clear cut emotional experience. And not necessarily intense or high adrenaline ones, but pensive ones and light ones too.
It's one of those games that didn't do anything necessarily new, but exposed it to a wider audience. This game won't be remembered for anything other than the soundtrack and that people thought it was "artsy" like Braid.
I chalk it up to most gamers not getting out enough. I remember when Flower came out I thought it was the kind of neat little thing you would find in the Audio/Visual section of a contemporary art museum. Something you would play at the exhibit for 3 minutes, say "neat" and move on to the next installation. But to call either a game and then charge people money seems like some cruel joke.
Interesting you would try to paint people who are receptive to a significantly different experience from most other video games (many of which are extremely similar) as "not getting out enough." When in almost all other things human beings take interest in "not getting it" is usually a sign that maybe you haven't experienced enough yet. Interesting reversal going on here.
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