Review: Journey

Journey is a hard to define game for the PlayStation 3. It was developed by thatgamecompany.

A traveller at the start of their journey to the mountain.

In Journey, you are a traveler, walking towards the light on top of a mountain in the distance. You start off in a desert, and then move through an old city, before climbing the mountain. The game is broken into several sections; at the end of each section is a statue the traveler has to reach before moving onto the next section. While each area is very big, it is a linear experience, and deviating off the implied path is discouraged with sandstorms and cliffs.

The only thing the traveler can do is walk around, jump, and glide for a limited time. The amount of time the traveler can glide is represented by the length of his/her scarf which increases in length by finding hidden glyphs. If you glide for too long you run out of power and lose your gliding abilities, but that can be easily replenished by finding groups of floating pieces of cloth in the area.

There is nothing that can harm the traveler, no difficult puzzles to overcome, or any serious challenge that will stall the player. The only other creatures the traveler runs into are sentient pieces of cloth shaped like animals, like birds and jellyfish, which give the traveler a temporary boost in gliding abilities.

Journey is a multiplayer game, though it is not immediately apparent. While you walk around you may run into another person playing the game, and you two can walk together to the statue at the end of the area. The only way you two can communicate is by making a chirping sound, the longer you hold down the button, the louder the chirp is.

Two travellers together.

It is kind of interesting to meet up with another person playing, in the same way that running into someone you know on the street is interesting, but, given how little to do there is in the game, the only thing that having another person along with you does is that it alleviates the monotony of some of the more boring stretches because you can spend all your time wondering what the other person is thinking. At the end of the game it tells you who you played with, my game told me I had played with six different people, which was a surprise to me since they did not act any different.

Journey is really short; it can be beaten in less than two hours.

Walking through and just staring at the levels and the game’s graphics is the biggest draw of Journey, and it is a mixed bag. The traveler is walking through a desert with ruins in it for the most part, just miles of what looks like orange powder. The graphics are not detailed enough to make it look like a real desert, and the ruins pretty generic. The game gets somewhat more interesting when the traveler enters the ruins, which are more surreal, but then loses it again when you start climbing the mountain, which replaces the orange dusty sand with blue dusty snow.

The appeal is more in how big and empty the levels appear, which makes them unsettling, but beautiful in their utter hugeness, and how insignificant that makes you feel. The slow orchestral soundtrack adds to the feeling that you are part of some vast experience that you do not fully understand, even if the story and the actions you undertake in the game are simple.

It cannot be stated enough how breathtaking the level design can be, at times. Initially, when you enter a new area, before you get used to it.

The other draw is finding out why your traveler is heading towards the mountain. Additional back story about the traveler and the ruins he/she goes through is revealed at the end of each section. The mystery surrounding the journey is interesting, but once you beat the game there is little point in replaying. You know what is going on, the traveler is barely a character, and the history of the once great civilization that is in ruins, is the same history of every great civilization that has fallen into ruins in every story ever written.

If Journey was sold at anything more than ten dollars it would be a rip-off; it’s short, it’s linear, it’s really easy, there is almost no replay value, and it’s somewhat monotonous. It would be better to describe it as a novelty to experience at least once. You should play it to see the giant levels and find out what is going on, just looking it up online will not have the same feeling, but do not expect long term enjoyment out of this.