juv3nal

Journey (thatgamecompany's next thing)

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But how do you communicate? Just one action, I guess you can use it to say "come this way" but what else can you say?

Jep, that's pretty much the thing you do. Everybody I played with so far used the same method.

Anyway... I'm a level 3 white journey man now.

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Yup, I was floored too. What an experience.

Journey conveys more information with a single camera tilt than Skyward Sword does with a full hour of throwing words at you.

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I've been struggling putting into words how important this game is to me, but so far, the most concise thing I can say is : Journey is perfect and 'the real thing'.

Beware, superlatives laden brain dump follows.

First, the craft is perfect. Just this is already amazing. It's the first instance of a game in which the 3Cs are actually conveying aesthetic intents completely naturally. As for the rest, every single things converge naturally toward building this thing the game conveys and that word can't really describe.

Hence, my second point : it's my unshakable (for now) belief, that what's being carried out in this game couldn't have been embedded or even imagined in any other medium and it feels like the creator has the grammar, the conventions and toolset of the medium so fucking ingrained in his/her creative mind, that their complexity vanished during the creation process. Everything looks effortless. Actually, it's more than that, it feels like whoever did this sat down at a table with a computer and made the game. Just like anybody can sit down and put words on paper. No intermediates.

Probably not the case, but I'm amazed how much it feels like that.

To draw a comparison : I think Limbo is a perfect game too. But it still feels engineered and designed : even though the creators did a tremendous job at hiding the puzzly structure, you can still feel the sense of gameplay progression as well as growing difficulty and complexity.

Similarly, Passage - also perfect in its own way - was built to make a point and the creator conscioulsy picked the mechanics intrinsic to the medium to express best what he wanted to say. Here again, the emotionnal result is great, but feels engineered.

It's not bad - those games are damned great - but Journey is in a totally different league : everything is completely natural and organic.; as if it couldn't be any different. As if a creative vision had been splashed on a gaming system just by the power of the mind.

And it probably shows, but I've got a hell of a problem bending my mind around how this was possible and how, being in dev myself, I couldn't even fathom this coming out of a well known studio.

I'll probably change my mind in the future for a less radical appraisal - when I cool off from the experience - but for now, WOW.:eek:

PS: if you don't have a partner when you see snow, STOP. Wait for one before continuing.

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Just finished my first journey! It was amazing. Probably my goty.cx *

Sadly, I lost sight of the other player near the end

while frolicking in the waterfalls

.

* oh yeah, that's a given anyway for now because it's the first game of this year I've played for any length

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PS: if you don't have a partner when you see snow, STOP. Wait for one before continuing.

Yes, that.

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PS: if you don't have a partner when you see snow, STOP. Wait for one before continuing.

Why is that?

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Why is that?

Because it's at that point that the purely functionnal cooperation of "oh, it's handy to have someone to recharge my scarf quickly" turns into "emotional" cooperation in which I waited for the other guy, got near him/her to be 'warmer' and punched the 'boop' button every now and then to check everything's fine because it made me feel better as a player; not because it brought in-game rewards. To me, that's unique.

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Ah ok. I thought something would happen when you're out there alone (game logic wise). I never tried to see what would happen if you ran out of scarf energy.

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I finished my first journey and it was amazing!

Near the end of the game I pretending that the sound we were making were a real conversation, and it looked like the other player was playing alone, although it's a shame you can't say anything more that the note we make... Even though it felt like were saying more than that. :erm:

Do the scarf bit disappear when the other player gets them? It's strange that I didn't figure this out by the end, but I didn't...

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Just finished it and it was great. Being that I love that style of art, this might be my favorite looking game ever - style and fidelity.

For some reason that pan up at the first hill in the game is like my favorite thing ever. They could not have made it clearer what you should be doing nor made it look any better.

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Exceeded expectations. Possibly my favorite game of the last few years. Unquestionably the prettiest I've ever played.

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Journey was bar none one of the best multiplayer experiences I have ever had. I do believe that taking away direct communication from the players allowed for communication on a deeper level (yes I know that sounds silly). Also, no trash talk. :tup::tup:

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I have wanted to play this game since the very first snippet that I saw, but I've never owned a PS3. So I avoided threads and reviews for weeks, before finally saying "fuck it" and buying a PS3 literally JUST to play Journey.

Worth every penny.

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I have wanted to play this game since the very first snippet that I saw, but I've never owned a PS3. So I avoided threads and reviews for weeks, before finally saying "fuck it" and buying a PS3 literally JUST to play Journey.

Worth every penny.

You have chosen... wisely.

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Quoted from "Recently completed"

Journey. I fired that up tonight after registering for a PSN Plus account, as I finally decided that would be a thing I should check out. Plus looks goddamned awesome, but that's beside the point. I started playing Journey a little bit last month, in that I installed it, played the first level, and went to bed. I picked up a save tonight at the start of the second level, and after about five minutes of fucking around noticed that there was a dude with me. At first I was actually irritated by this. Who is this clown crowding my meditative sand-surfing experience? Turns out it made the game so much better. We played from the start of the second level through to the end credits as a duo. That last section with the climb up the snowy mountain was incredible with a partner, especially as the game has what is basically a "huddle for warmth" mechanic. When we started getting separated and I noticed that the wind and cold had made my chirp far quieter, I felt lost and legitimately scared that my friend had left me to freeze. When we re-met later in the level, it was completely joyous. Journey, man. That game is amazing.

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Played through Journey three times now (twice on release day, once tonight). More than any other game, I wish I could experience it for the first time again. Beautiful in every sense.

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Lets do this! Girlfriend gone out for her christmas party so I've blown the dust off my playstation and I'm going to play through journey in one sitting (stopping only for pizza). Although ill probably have to wait half an hour for all these updates and for it to download :/

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Lucky guess number 13! Now we're cooking with gas

I had a little hunt around upstairs for a scrap of paper with the password on but instead found that I still own a copy of earth defence force 2017! I could've sworn I sold that a year ago. So if journey doesn't turn out to be all that special I can fall back on that vastly superior game for tonight's entertainment

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Both options are awesome. Finished Journey in one sitting on Saturday. It was great.

2017 is also great, can't wait for 2025!

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So far so awesome. Just been doing some sweet sand surfing, unsurprisingly it feels alot like flower. I've already experienced best of both world in regards to the multiplayer, I've had a lord dragging me around to all the secret collectables in the sand dunes, which I kind of had mixed feelings about as I wanted to be able to explore and find these places myself. Then I bumped into a first time player like me and that's when the multiplayer really shone.

I love how noncommittal and withdrawn the multiplayer is I don't have to worry about hurting someone's feelings if I ditch them

Well back to it, that mountain ain't gonna climb itself

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Woowee

I take back my last statement

if I hadn't of ditched that guy and made the final climb up the snowy mountain alone would I still have froze to death? I realised my mistake too late (but seriously that guy was useless, and he fucking ditched my when I got hit by the flying snake robot )

So was that shooting star I watched early on someone completing the game. Very cool

Does this game have a day/night cycle? An area in the credits was night time but I'm pretty sure is was day light when I passed through

Anyway, celebration pizza time! With extra sausage

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Just played the last two levels again with a decent companion

friendship doesn't save you from freezing to death :)

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