Journey — Don’t Stop Believing

“A finer experience you’ll not be able to easily find, this generation.” –Flower review

Of course, leave it to thatgamecompany to come up with a game that tops their own previous effort.  Journey, released earlier this year on the PlayStation Network, reaches for the envelope that Flower pushed and pushes it even further.  Journey takes the control scheme of Flower and puts it to use controlling the movement of an actual character rather than an abstract concept such as an invisible force of nature.  It excels in the same ways that Flower did and still raises the bar for their future games.

Journey tells a story, presented using an abstract narrative, about a character’s journey of discovery as he (or she) sees a tall peak in the distance and becomes curious as to what’s on it.  The game doesn’t need anything other than that, for the instinct to explore is a powerful one.  Who among us wouldn’t want to go on a journey and possibly discover themselves along the way?  How many gamers wish they were born during the age of exploration, when new lands stretched before us and when a distant peak just begged to be climbed because it was there and no one else had tried it before?  How many of us wish we could live long enough to experience the future age of exploration?  Outer space is just another journey, after all.

Journey may not feature an entire new planet to explore, and the path you follow is sort of linear, but that’s not the point of the game.  Often, the destination is the final goal of the journey, but not the reason for the journey.  Usually, the reason for the journey is the journey itself, hence the title.

And what fun is a brand new journey that you can’t share with someone?  When I first visited Walt Disney World, I met up with three friends there, one of which knew the park like the back of her hand.  When I climbed Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park, I was with a friend who had made the climb many times before.  I went geocaching in Michigan with a friend who was experienced in geocaching.  And even getting lost is more fun with a friend, as I learned during a winter trip to Colorado.

In Journey, after you start out alone, you find yourself meeting another traveller on their way to the same higher place that you are.  Although it’s not immediately apparent when you begin, Journey is a strictly multiplayer experience and the realization that this character you meet is another real player like yourself may come as a surprise.  Journey doesn’t immediately seem like your typical multiplayer game.  You aren’t asked to join a specific server or to invite friends.  It’s the Chatroulette of multiplayer games.  Trust me, though, when I say that the multiplayer aspect easily makes the game worth it.  That’s a sentence that I never thought I would ever use in a review, and War, Death, Pestilence and Famine will appear on the horizon if ever I even think of typing that sentence again.

In a typical multiplayer game, you’ll have the ability to type or speak to your teammates and/or your enemies.  Generally, most multiplayer games these days involve you trying to kill or compete against other players.  Sometimes you’ll be part of a team, but that just means that there’ll be some players you are encouraged to kill and some you’re not.  Multiplayer modes of first person shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield outright encourage you to kill, kill, kill (although it should be noted that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 took Killstreak mode from the previous game and changed it to Pointstreak mode in an effort to encourage strategies other than shooting at someone until they lie down).  Fighter games like Capcom vs. DC or Persona 4 Arena are, by definition, competitive and rarely cooperative.  Even sports games can be played this way; despite the presence of modes like Online Team Play, the focus is still on competition in the midst of cooperation.  Many MMORPGs also feature competitive multiplayer (known as “player vs. player”), where you’re encouraged to pursue the destruction of your fellow man.

Journey is notable in that you can play the game with someone who might not know a single word of your language, nor you theirs.  Just like Ariel in the latter half of The Little Mermaid, your main method of communication is through body language.  You do have one more option than Ariel did, though: with the press of a button, you can make a kind of a musical tone that you can use to directly communicate with your friend.  I bet Ariel wishes she’d had that message of love to work with.

So with the possibility of profane communication cut off (unless you and your partner happen to share the same native language and know Morse Code), an interesting thing happens while playing the game.  Both players feel this odd desire to help each other out with open arms rather than tear each other down with closed fists.  And if one of the players has never journeyed before, the other willingly acts as a guide.  There’s no expectation of co-operation either, it’s just left open as an option for the player, and the player takes it.  In my first game, I remember one of my partners walking ahead and chirping at me to let me know where he (or she) was at all times, in case I got lost exploring the level, and I chirped back to let him (or her) know where I was so that he (or… yeah, you know) knew I wasn’t too far behind.

I wonder if this means that there’s a kind of uncanny valley for human behaviour just like there is for the quality of an artificial being’s facial expression.  If two people meet face to face and exchange names, the chances are low that they’re going to try to kill each other unless they’re psychopaths.  In fact, it’s recommended that you exchange names with someone who takes you hostage, so that you can maximize your chances of survival.  But let’s say you take away the ability for these two people to see each other.  Sit them in front of a computer and they enter a sort of an asshole zone where if you take away players’ faces but keep their names displayed on the screen (like in MMOs), the compulsion to spread grief and discord to Tom or Suzanne or Sanjiv is hard to resist.  However, if you also take away their names and voices and prevent both players from identifying each other during the game, you’ll end up fostering co-operation once again like it’s a natural thing.

Then again, there isn’t really any way to grief a player in Journey.  Enemies don’t do permanent damage, nor do they outright kill you.  All that happens is that your scarf is shortened and your PS3 controller shakes a little; there is absolutely no way to kill yourself or others in the game.  And if your partner runs ahead and abandons you, it doesn’t matter because you’ll be too busy exploring the beautiful landscape you find yourself in, and you’ll meet up with someone else in the next level anyway.  Although you’re mostly exploring deserts and r
uins left behind after the fall of a civilization, they are beautiful deserts and ruins.  I’d be inclined to believe that you’re in the same world as you were in Flower, considering that game also involved the ruins of a city of hope.  But in Journey, it appears that an entire civilization fell.  Then again, maybe it’s too late to restore an area with a gust of wind when it’s desertified.  It certainly seems like it’ll take more than a few flowers to restore it to its former glory.

And just like with Flower, Journey demonstrates that an ambient soundtrack is far better than a soundtrack that is trying to carry a tune.  Not everyone can come up with a good, catchy tune that won’t get irritating when it loops, and Austin Wintory didn’t even try.  Instead, he chose to go with an ambient soundtrack that fit well with the setting and the gameplay.  As someone who was raised on radio, I’ve become rather sensitive to poorly-constructed tunes, but fortunately you’ll find none of that in this game.

With Journey, thatgamecompany demonstrates that a multiplayer experience doesn’t have to include profane ten-year-olds, griefers or cheaters.  It doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience, and it doesn’t have to require subscription fees or a never-ending wait for other players to join.  I’m tired of not getting around to a game until after it’s been out for a while and then finding out that everyone’s already abandoned the multiplayer features and rendered them unplayable.  Or better yet: everyone’s already so much better than you and act like the game’s their own exclusive country club, no newbies allowed.

Do I recommend Journey?  Yes, very much so.  I would consider Journey to be the best PSN game of the year.  The PS3 has been out for seven years now, and after all these years, it’s great to see that there are still new and beautiful experiences to be had on it.  If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t played Journey yet, they should do so now.  Like, right now, as soon as you finish reading this.  I imagine that most people who were going to play it has played it already, so to all of those gamers, play Flower.  At any rate, whether you play Flower or Journey (or both), thatgamecompany delivers two amazing experiences that will be hard to match.  I can’t imagine how they’re going to top this one, but I suppose anything is possible.

Screen shots taken from thatgamecompany’s official site