The Right Trigger: "Journey" Review

And now, it is time for another Reagan Wilkins videogame review. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS ONE, but the thing about this game is that you know the ending right from the beginning, so nothing I say will really spoil anything.
"Journey" is a two-hour downloadable ps3 exclusive, in other words it is the kind of thing that I would typically scoff at and scroll right past. It is the product of a company known for making small platform games that I normally wouldn't even give a second glance to. But Journey is so much more than that.
This two-hour game was a game of the year contender (and winner in some cases), as well as the winner of multiple "Best Ps3 exclusive" awards, and its soundtrack was the first ever videogame soundtrack to be nominated for a grammy award. So, needless to say, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and for a meager $15 I could do just that, so I did.
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The hooded creature you play as (1)

In Journey, you play as a gender-less, voice-less, seemingly religiously-hooded creature traveling in a desert with one goal: make it to the top of the mountain that looms over you for the entirety of the game. One of the things that I really loved about the game is that, along the way, it tells the story of the rise and fall of your people...without a single word being spoken or written down. The character meditates and the story of the hooded people is told in an El Dorado wall drawing style that unfolds as you reach different checkpoints in the Journey. But there isn't a single thing saying "and this happened." The story of the people is what you make out of the drawings.
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The co-op factor is amazing (2)

Indeed, it is this lack of words that makes the multiplayer aspect of the game so amazing as well. It is a seamless thing: nobody asks to join you, instead, one random person who happens to be playing at the same point as you pops into your game. there is no name box, no headset communication at all. It is just two people, traveling in this beautiful world together. I read a comment about the game talking about how a woman who was playing had to hold back tears as the total stranger who she was traveling with drew a heart in the sand for her. It is this kind of wordless communication that makes playing with another person (which I DESPISE the idea of doing) so beautiful in this game. All you know about the person traveling with you is that they are headed the same way, and whatever they want you to know. In my experience, I had a friend who traveled with me for about half the game. In that time, this person understood I was new to the game because of how poorly I was handling the controls, so they would wait up for me at the exit of the area when they reached it, and if I was struggling with figuring something out, they would come down and demonstrate what to do. There are three functions in this game: move, jump, and speak. The first two are self-explanatory, but speak is just the character sounding out a musical note as a menas to signal to other players or gain power from the environment. This persona I traveled with would play half a tune, and I would finish it, then I would start and they would finish. This had no bearing on the plot or gameplay, it was an entirely optional thing. These things continued until my friend vanished after luring one of the giant Atlantis-esque monsters away from me. No matter how hard I try, I will not be able to adequately convey just how amazing the co-op factor of this game is. Each friend you meet is a different experience, and therefore you will just have to experience it for yourself.
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Yep. This is directly from the game. Be amazed. (3)

The first thing that I noticed about the world of Journey was that it was the most beautiful world I had ever seen. The graphics are not realistic in the slightest, in fact they are sort of a throwback to the fantasia-esque, make my music/melody time-esque cartoonily musical style. But it is this Disney magic style that makes the watery look of the sand that you glide on so beautiful, that makes the looming mountain so foreboding, that makes the bright orange sun in the distance so captivating as it radiates over the ruins of your civilization. Like the multiplayer aspect, no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to capture the entirety of the beauty of the artwork of this game. You will just need to go experience it for yourself.
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I'm not crying...there is just something in my eye (4)

The soundtrack to Journey was the first ever videogame soundtrack to be nominated for a grammy award, and it is a well-deserved nomination. It is used so effectively that it makes the ending, the character walking into a white light slowly, into a tear-jerking experience. It is not a sad or happy ending, but it is handled so beautifully because of the use of sound that I had to struggle to keep a few stray tears from leaking out. The fact that it is followed by the credits song, "I was born for this," in which Lisbeth Scott sings in a foreign language with the Lord of the Rings vocal riff thing and with a few impassioned breaks into falsetto that are sung with enough passion behind them that you can hear her voice nearly break only serves to keep your heart strung up until the final note that she holds as the orchestra glides gracefully around it. Let me put it to you this way: My younger brother never gets emotionally touched by anything, ever. But he was watching me play the entire game, and afterwards he was nearly speechless, but he managed to slowly say "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." If this game's beauty can touch somebody like him, then we are all toast. But the real point of the game is to serve as a discussion of the meaning of life. And all of these things help to drive the point home. The end is constantly looming over us, but it isn't reaching this end that is important. It is the people we meet, the experiences we share, the beauty that we find, that matter...on our Journey.

10/10