Journey Review

So I've been meaning to actually review this for a long time. It feels like its been quite a while since Journey released as well, though it was really just 3 years ago. I remember back when all there was were just two trailers for it, and a distant release window, and I just thought to myself upon seeing it for the first time "wow, this is going to be something special." This was before the main hype built up for it, before the massive critic acclaim, before Journey stayed on top of PSN's digital sales for half a year, and before it was well regarded as basically an instant classic. My original idea that this was simply going to be a fantastic special little game to look forward to, was an understatement. I still remember the excitement of downloading this game on the night of its release, waiting patiently on it, brewing a special cup of tea to suit a good mood, and then making sure nothing would bother me as I loaded it up, and 2 hours later it proved itself well beyond my expectations and left me in emotional tears. The high praise was a shared opinion with the majority of other players, as countless other wonderful stories, and high recommendations came pouring in from gamers on the internet. Well that, and it was the first thing my friend at school was all hyped up about the next day. With discussions on it lasting, and it seemingly being marked as a classic, its no wonder if feels like its been so long. The game quickly got the sort of recognition most old genre defining classics got lucky with. Now with the PlayStation 4 re-release out, its time to assess and see how if it still is that good... or of course, if the port does its job.

Core experience:

So first lets just talk about what Journey does in general. Journey is made by That Game Company, a small indie-like (indie now, but was contracted by sony for the bulk of their career) team that has always aimed at producing small emotional games. You could call their work around the unconventional art game genre, like say Gone Home, Dear Esther, The Path, Proteus, etc. Before Journey they're most known for the small hit PSN game Flower. So right off the bat, you kind of know this isn't going to be a heavily mechanic driven or typical game. Its short, should be accomplished in one sitting, and you can't lose nor compete. However don't turn away quite yet if you're fearing of a game where you just press move to win. There's more at work here than that.

You play as a mysterious robed figure who is just in the middle of the desert for whatever reason. Its like he/she was simply dropped or woke up there. All you have surrounding you at first is sand, and the sight of a distant surreal mountain which has a beacon of light coming out of it. It becomes pretty clear by instinct that that mountain is your ultimate goal. The game's control methods are simplified down to the point where they could work on an NES controller. You have a button that lets you jump/float around, and a button that lets out a little chirp sound. The chirp can be built up or just spammed, and it works kind of like a "use" command letting you trigger certain things around you. Very few tutorials are necessary to instruct you on how it all works. You can even use the camera by motion controls rather than the right analogue stick, if you wish for a more gentle motion control based feeling of looking (but stock camera controls are there to just to be clear). There's also a meditate button as sort of a "pause" function, but that isn't necessary for gameplay.

Once you pass a certain early point, there's a hidden element to the game which is activated behind the scenes, and one you typically wouldn't expect within this kind of game: multiplayer. A person at random, from who knows where, will eventually get dropped into your game and look exactly like you (with the exception of maybe one major variable, but I wont spoil it). There's no name tag, no cosmetics, and no voice chat. You could mistake them for an NPC with a serious case of ADD if you didn't know about the online ahead of time. They will pose no threat to you as you're both working on the same goal, and with the same controls and mechanics. You can only communicate by chirping or maybe wacky movements. This system creates a space in which you both empathize with each other's goals and feel sense of camaraderie as you both try to work with each other to make it to the mountain. Of course you can also ignore and ditch each other if you wish, and the game will find some other time to reconnect with a different guy if you find yourself getting separated by so much. One of the biggest mysteries of this game is how it manages to pull off everything so smoothly. I don't think I've ever once noticed any lagging, and disconnects work with meditation animations rather than total vanishing. So TGC has managed to pull some kind of wizardry and make the most perfect and secretive online handling I've ever seen, despite the fact that there's no options existing to help fine tune things. Maybe I've been just lucky. Also for the record,  the online isn't actually mandatory (though you've got to manually disconnect to turn it off), but it does come highly recommended.

Of course what would the game be if there was no adventure? The adventure you're undertaking is a well designed one, despite its short length. You go from crossing desert hills, saving trapped cloth creatures, climbing up ancient industrial mechanisms, slide down covered remains of a lost society, explore a haunting cave, and more as you make your way ever closer to the mysterious mountain with a buddy. Whether you're able to notice or not, the game's adventure is broken into chapter pieces. Each time you complete one, you're treated to a small voice-less scene depicting a message through pictures before being reminded about your quest to get to the mountain. The gameplay around this adventure are mostly about working with your environment at the given time. You'll be flying around with cloth creatures you've freed at one point, but maybe the next will have you activating switches that slowly flood a facility allowing you to swim up it. Those are just two examples, but in both cases you're exploring, finding something new, and interacting with the chirp. Each moment in which something interesting is happening, the music is there perfectly translating the mood your riding on into an audio effect. I especially love the desert part where you're freeing cloth creatures (The 3rd chapter, I think?). Its probably the most open area of the game, where you're just able to roam across sand hills and find creatures to free or ruins to climb around. Once they're free, you can kind of sing with them using your chirp and just sort of run around, or even get them to pick you up and fly up in the air. Its got that sort of innocent exploration fun I used to enjoy so much from back when I first experienced 3D gaming as a little kid.

One area where I'll have to disagree with a lot of people on is the idea that the game is only artsy, and is somehow robbed of actual gameplay. Sure I did say and stand by the fact that as a whole this is an unconventional art game, but one of the things that makes Journey so amazing is it doesn't ironically tie itself to the genre trope of excluding gameplay for over-oppressive minimalism. It knows its a game, and it accommodates itself with clever extras and interesting moments tied to its simple mechanics. Along the adventure you'll be on the look out for two extra bits: Shining power-ups (no official better name), and glyph walls. The power-ups are actually essential to a certain degree, but enough of them will be in plain sight for you to not worry about that. Each piece adds on to an ever-growing magical scarf your character has. That scarf has magic symbols on it that, when lit, allow you to almost fly. Without it you can't even actually do a basic jump. Each collectible power-up lets your scarf go even longer. When you spend some of the magic, it easily regenerates back with the touch of almost anything. Another player, a cloth creature, water, or another power-up all regenerate that magic to let you fly off again. The more scarf you have (from collectibles), the longer you can jump around or fly. So its darn fun to run around and look for as much as you can. Glyph walls on the other hand are just extra bits there to be atmospheric and give you a trophy. You find them off to the side of places, and trigger them to light up with a chirp to get glyph type writing. Both of these elements add to the exploration, and teamwork. On top of that there are even easter eggs to look for, and obstacles that can actually... frighten you. The less spoiled on that, the better. If you're really hardcore about it and decide to be a completionist, there's even a little cheat code type of reward.

This is clearly a game through the whole way, its just that mechanical things are downplayed compared to emotional draw. However you still have incentive to explore, you still have the connections and reasons to interact, you still have multiplayer, and you also still have a small threat to face within your adventure. This isn't another "look, but don't touch" type of art project. TGC didn't hold back the gameplay for the sake of the art. Instead, Journey gives you both because it respects you as a player, and gaming for what it is. If you want a strong contrast, go see something like Proteus.

Porting, visuals, and presentation:

So how does Journey hold up on the PlayStation 4? Well nearly identical to what I had before on PS3, which is a good thing. Nothing noticeably bad happened with the PS4 version. There was a fresh batch of trophies for this port to work on all over again, and naturally things like the resolution and framerate are buffed up. Online still seems to work fairly good, although I think I got stuck with a guy who kept on checking a walkthrough. They would stop for a good minute or so at a time, and then spring back up and start backtracking to seek some collectible we missed. No real errors to really bring up, and the graphics look better than ever. Its kind of funny to think of it, but honestly this is actually one of the best looking games on the PS4, and it really didn't need to do much to achieve that considering how well done the graphics are. It made an easy transition to better hardware, and is a natural fit on the system. Journey always has simply looked beautiful, and I'm glad they could give it just a little more room to show that off. Now it can also be recorded and pictured from any system as well, thanks to the share button.

While we're discussion the graphics from the port, why not just say how well designed the game has been from the very start? Everything about the game was built with a lovely art style, from the choice in scenery, to the technical graphics. It oddly accomplishes this with a style that feels neither catoonish, nor realistic. Things just feel... well its tough to explain. It has a softly cell shaded look to the way its colors feel, but textures and models that surpass what you'd usually see from a cell shaded game. Everything else is just best explained by moods, like mysterious, happy, sad, haunting, etc. There's a moment where you're sliding down and go into an open tunnel with the camera aiming towards the sunset coming through large gaps in between pillar walls. At one point the sun's bright burning orange color mixes with the sand you're sliding on in a way that looks like the ground is turning into liquid gold. I think that's one of the most graphically beautiful and mesmerizing things I've ever seen through a television screen. I tried tried to take a picture (now that I can on PS4), but there's still no way a screenshot does it justice.

Still amazing though

This too!

Meanwhile the environments, story telling, and actions sort of center around a spiritual vibe. You've got this eastern culture feel to things, but nothing quite too specific to finger point at a specific religion or mythology. Its the sort of thing that instantly clicked with me even back when I was just excited from the trailers, I loved this idea of a travel focused game with a vague spiritual theme presented in a minimalist tone. Journey pulls it off perfectly. It fits very universally as well. The lack of language, physical character features, or specific references justify the emotional experience as one of pure feeling and intuition with no distractions. Its an accessible game to pretty much anybody, with no pop-culture, language barriers, or pre-existing knowledge or social expectations necessary. Its just another one of many feats Journey has accomplished in how it gets its goal across.

Verdict & Closing notes:

Yup, proudly the first Legendary score I give out goes to Journey, and its well earned. It might be short, and unconventional, and that'll always possibly turn some people away. However recognizing it for what it is within that medium, and how moving it was to me personally, I find it to not only be amazing in its field but in-fact so groundbreaking for the artsy minimalist genre that I'd say its the best highest standard it'll have for a very long time. It should be what Final Fantasy 7 is to the JRPG genre, Mario to sidescrollers, or Doom to FPS games. Its such a well-crafted masterpiece for such a weird previously unproven area of gaming, that it aught to be thought of as one of the best games in video game's history, and a modern classic. No other emotional focused game experience has had the same effort, effect, and value as I've found in Journey. Its a game I've come back to again and again for what it does, and every time its managed to deliver a compelling and entertaining experience, even if the ending always has me in tears of mixed delight.

There's a lot of reasons to summarize on why its just that amazing. Its a living embodiment of the idea that the Journey is the real thrill, and not the destination. The unique one of a kind multiplayer interactions are revolutionary and perfectly handled. The harmonized audio effects not only set a tone (like normal music in mediums) but manage to speak it with you, as if the music is an invisible companion there for the ride. The story is compelling and well done enough to give you a good story, but cryptic enough to always keep you curious and making you question your own adventure in the right ways. The visuals feel uniquely stylized in a way that sits at an unrecognizable, yet always comforting depiction of a mysterious world. However unlike most of its companions in the genre, Journey is more than just a pretty picture telling a one trip emotional story. It manages to also incorporate familiar gameplay elements that make full use of its fantastic world, and gets the player excited to come back for more than just a single run. It respects the fact that its still a game; after-all its only in video games that you could accomplish an experience this moving, this well crafted, and this unique. It uses the very best the medium has to offer, and taps into the things that only games can do. The only possible negative I can come up with for this game, is that you simply can't rewind and have your first experience or the original sense of wonder come back again. For a game this emotionally investing, that's a sad downside that may slowly dampen the experience over time. Though you will always have a unique online buddy if that helps to shake the surprise up a bit.

Back-up written review card:

Score: Legendary

Pros:

+ Incredible emotional experience, with amazing atmosphere expressed without need of words or typical mechanics

+ Subtle but perfect multiplayer implementation that builds companionship fit for the journey

+ Perfect presentation with incredible visuals, and a soundtrack that always speaks for your mood.

+ Perfect mix of gameplay elements in an otherwise unconventional game experience.

Cons:
-You only get one first journey.