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dkirschner's Journey (PS4)

[March 21, 2024 12:57:31 PM]

I definitely think waiting like 12 years to play Journey made it less special than it would have been before I'd played other games that Journey reminded me of, like Abzu, Gris, or Playdead’s games. I mean, since then, there have been plenty of artistic, emotional, beautiful indies. It ticked all those boxes: artistic, great score, great visual style, emotional, some light platforming or puzzling, etc. But the thing Journey does have that the others don’t is the cooperative element. I’m surprised that no game I’ve encountered has ripped that off. Surely, there is a janky game out there somewhere called “Voyage” or “Trip.”

I was playing Journey, and I knew that I was supposed to have a partner, and after 10 minutes, there someone was! I couldn’t speak to them in any way, but it was cool how we ended up communicating and playing with the sounds we could make. When you make the chime sound, your partner’s scarf “fills up” and they can jump longer distances. So, there’s a practical element to staying with your partner and chiming: you both will be able to move farther and faster. At some point, I tried to see if my partner would recognize chime patterns, and lo and behold, they immediately did, and mimicked them! Chime chime chime…chime chime chime. Chimechime chimechime chiiiiiiime…chimechime chimechime chiiiiime. That was cool. But at some point, my partner disappeared! Then they came back. Then I realized at the end of the game, when it tells you who your partner was, that I had two different partners!

I’m not sure I felt a strong emotional connection or anything to my partner, but I did like knowing that there was someone else on the other side of the screen and that we were weathering the storm (see: snow level) together. My partner did have a tendency to get killed by the big bird enemy (well, one of my partners) and to take the long way around to get to places. I’ll assume that I had one fun partner (chime chime!) and one less good partner who got attacked and turned around a lot.

Anyway, definitely a cool experience, and I’ll file it away in the “classics” bin.