‘Journey’

Platform: Playstation 3 (Playstation Network download)

Price: $14.99

Rating:5/5 fireballs

If You Like: ‘Flower’ (the game), ‘The Alchemist’ (the book)

How much do endings matter to you?

Do you enjoy a shock or a sudden twist? Perhaps you believe that the story is in its telling, that it’s not the end that matters most but what happened on the journey along the way.

The third game by the team at thatgamecompany, ‘Journey’ is not a game about endings. It starts simply. In a vast and lonely desert, you assume the role of a robed figure. In the distance, there is a mountain. Your goal is to walk there. If by any chance someone told you the final destination is the mountain, it would not hamper the experience in the least. Whether you make it to the end doesn’t matter: ‘Journey’ doesn’t set out to give you narrative closure.

Game play is simple. The controls are purposefully minimal: only two buttons and a control stick used for navigation. Holding down the O button lets you sing wordlessly to trigger objects in the environment, allowing you to progress. As players travel, they encounter glowing symbols that add to an ever-growing scarf on their wanderer. The scarf, triggered by the X button, grants the power of flight. Don’t let the game’s simplicity turn you away, though. The ease of navigation gives the player that much more room to ponder.

There’s hardly any narrative at all. There are no words, spoken or written, no real puzzles to solve and almost no other characters. When you do reach the end, what it will mean to you depends largely on what you make of it.But the game doesn’t take place in an emotionless void. In less than two hours, ‘Journey’ covers a full spectrum of human emotion, from awe and wonder to sorrow and fear.

This is due in large part to the game’s absolutely stunning visuals. In the video game industry, a game’s visuals are often mistakenly used as an indication of how good it will be. Thus, there’s always a push for the latest games to have better visuals and more details. It creates visual apathy in those who regularly play video games – they expect games to be more graphically impressive.

‘Journey’ makes you forget that. Its deserts seem alive with sand that seem like grains of fire at one instant and flowing gold in another. It demands that you stop and wonder, both because there’s little else to do and because there’s little reason to do anything else. There are few games that are both visually impressive and aesthetically pleasing. ‘Journey’ easily accomplishes both.

If one is making a case for ‘Journey’ being a beautiful game, it would be criminal not to mention Austin Wintory’s sparse yet moving score. ‘Journey’ is about as introspective as video games get, and you’ll be robbed of a wonderful part of the experience playing with the sound off.

As meditative as the game is, it does have an option for online play. If enabled, other players can enter the game and join your pilgrimage. There will never be more than one, players never speak with each other and you won’t find out the person’s name until the credits roll. You can help each other or ignore each other, but there’s something remarkable about the feeling one gets from knowing there is another human pressing onward with you.

If this all comes across as frustratingly vague, there’s a reason for that. ‘Journey’ is brief. It does not waste your time. But more importantly, the talented developers at thatgamecompany set out to make an experience that can only be achieved through a video game. You need to discover on your own what lies between that desert and the mountain, and no one can explain what it all means; you have to discover that for yourself, too. Getting caught up in how it all ends will cause you to miss out on all that is beautiful around you.

jmrive02@syr.edu

Published on March 18, 2012 at 12:00 pm