Journey Appreciation Thread.*56k Warning*

Come one, come all, and let me tell you a story of the beauty that is Journey. PSN has brought to use this exclusive desert full of ruins, mystery, and emotion.

Simply put: "Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person's life passage and their intersections with other's. Experience the wonder. Discover the Journey."

Brought to you by the acclaimed indie developer "Thatgamecomplay" and presented by SCEA Santa Monica Studio.

This game of exploring is filled with a beauty and an atmosphere that is awe inspired. As a robed figure you cross the desert in search of your goal. No guidance, just the mountain. As you make your way to this goal you will find yourself exploring the mysteries and ruins of the desert, giving you subtle hints to your next event to come.

At the start, you find yourself alone with nothing more than desert as far as the eye can see, until finally your goal is presented to you. Off in the distance you see a looming mountain, this is your goal. The experience is the land you travel, your purpose in this world, and the discovery of self.

GameSpot Staff Discuss "Journey"

The music and artistry expressed in this game is the perfect argument that games are in fact an artform.

The Haunting Music

Videos:
Teaser, E3 2011 Demo, Comic-Con 2011, Gamescom

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This game is so great. Everything comes together so perfectly. Truly a masterpiece.

Anyone turned off by the $15 price tag for a 2-4 hour game do themselves disservice because Journey is much more than simply 4 hours playtime. There are plenty of reasons to why this game is so great, but to those people who are concerned about the playtime per dollar, there is incentive to replay the game and to only take a single journey through this beautiful adventure would be to miss the entire point of the game.

Journey is one of a kind in more ways than one, it was worth the wait ThatGameCompany, bravo.

Journey is about a 10 hour game minimum.  You want to explore it, play it multiple times and then.... help others play it by becoming "Transcendent".  It also fun to put a friend in front of it and wander away (or watch them explore).  I expect to revisit it in future and.... have it running down in the basement "theater" at the start most of the parties I host upstairs.

The headache and strange aversion to any sound other than the music in Journey after watching it played reinforces my insisting that the game should have been so much more than a mere platformer with primitive-but-stylish graphics and a haunting musical score to carry it out of mediocrity. It was clear after watching that this game NEEDED and really badly suffered from a lack of interactivity, since the only part of my brain working here was really my auditory and perhaps a bit of visual and memory. More parts should have been firing here, and to give examples there was definitely a missing element of suspense and perhaps urgency to get the adrenaline up just enough to wake players up from the hypnotic presentation. No, this game could have been more, and I feel cheated by what we have been left with.

These are developers that are bringing something completely different to the gaming world. It's interactive art that brings people closer together. You can't tell someone what should or shouldn't be in their art work. People like art because they can connect with it emotionally. This is the start of something new for gaming and not everyone is going to get it.