The usual summer gaming lull hasn’t happened this year, between the equally fantastic Rocket League (PS4) and Splatoon (WiiU) i’ve had plenty of time to waste in video games, and thats without investing in the big AAA releases of the season. I did pick up the re-release of Journey (PS4) mostly to help me go cold turkey from the aforementioned Rocket League, it didn’t succeed in that but it was a splendid experience. I’d never played the original, so just knew it as a darling of the indie scene (along with Fez, which I never really got and The Unfinished Swan, which I loved) visually its amazing, i’m sure it looked good on the PS3 but its jaw dropping in places, seamlessly blending from deserts to caves and snowy tundra. It sounds great too, at first minimal but building up music throughout toward the moving ending. The gameplay in parts is Zelda and at other points 1080 Snowboarding, where it seemed unique though was the lack of fail state in the game, meaning the frustration of missing a platform or being found out in stealth was lessened, you just have to traipse back to that point again. The other hook to the game is the connectivity of it, real world players will appear in your world but with no form of communication apart from a simple musical note (sorry to the 3 people who entered my world and had me attempting the Mario theme) they can be helpful, as one was to me, showing me the solution to a puzzle but also it can be heartbreaking loosing them, as at one point near the end I did, I missed a simple jump and fell down the mountainside (about 10minutes hike back) I never expected my companion to follow suit and sacrifice his/her progression but I also never expected to find them waiting patiently at the top when I returned, in a world without communication it was a powerful message. The story in the game is a minimal way of telling what is a massive subject, death and that its told with such a gentle touch is all the more moving, I didn’t recognise the point where control was taken away from me at the end, the chapter before being such a joyous bound through every mechanic the game had shown me so the simple act of walking forward seemed simple. Its short, about two hours, but its tuned in such a way that not a minute is wasted, everything feels fresh and new and much like The Unfinished Swan original ideas enter as quickly as they leave the game, no concepts are overused. Its not a long game, probably about 2 hours, but the game is best played through in one sitting so that isn’t an issue, there are secrets dotted around the environment which would benefit another play-through of the game (at a more leisurely pace).
So yeah, I loved it, its a game well deserving of all the hype that surrounds it and i’d recommend playing it.
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