Journey

/76

I've just finished playing Journey. I'd heard lots of good things about it and decided to give it a go. I don't have a lot of time to invest in a new game at the moment so I liked that this one took less than a couple of hours to complete, playing relatively slowly.

Image from the game Journey

I don't want to spoil the game for anyone who hasn't played it, so I'm not going to give anything away here. The best experience to be had from playing it is to be thrown straight in without reading anything about it first (which is why I haven't linked to it – even the description on the PS3 website has bits that would spoil a few nice surprises).

One of the things I liked at the start was the way it introduces the user to the controls with diagrams. You can turn round by tilting the controller – that's something I've not experienced in a Playstation game before, I wasn't even aware the controllers had tilt sensors in them. There's also no screen clutter. No health bars, no flashing icons, just the landscape.

The graphics, oh wow the graphics. There are these gorgeous landscapes and structures, and the way the lighting behaves makes it feel magical. I like that it tries to do something completely different. This didn't feel like a game, it felt like an experience. Right throughout there were things that I couldn't understand how they worked so well, and it wasn't until I'd played all the way through that they made sense.

It's not a particularly challenging game, but feels like something special whether you're an experienced gamer or someone who isn't into gaming at all, and I'm not just talking about the pretty graphics and interesting storyline. It's something much bigger than that.

So, if you've got a couple of hours free this weekend:

  1. Buy or borrow a PS3 if you don't have one already (it's only available as a download on the PS3 store).
  2. Download and play Journey.
  3. Listen to 5by5's The Incomparable, episode 108 which is a great conversation about the game.

Oh, and when you've done that, don't spoil it for anyone who hasn't played!