Journey is one of the few downloadable treasures the PSN has to offer it's gamer's. With it's simplistic yet addicting gameplay it can honestly be called art.The game starts you off in this widely spacious and bare wasteland of sand. The game begins by telling your red robed character to move the camera by tilting the PS3 controller utilizing it's Sixaxis controls (Though you can still use the right analog stick). After moving your character around you can see the artistic beauty in the aesthetic view alone. The colors are ripe. The setting richly designed to give you the feeling of actually being there. The PS3 renders the quality of these graphics superbly.
I soon realized that the controls were extremely simple, move the analog to walk and a very interesting communication feature. By pressing circle on the controller the character releases a form of "chirp" and a design appears overhead. I'll get to what this is used for shortly. Sliding down a sand dune the music becomes more present and is phenomenal. It captures the feeling of loneliness perfectly, pushing the overall feeling of you are a small person in this huge world. Walking to a dilapidated structure a tattered ribbon could be seen fluttering in the sandy wind. The game prompts you to hold circle and lo and behold the aura emanating from the call restores the ribbon to its former glory. A small gate opens releasing a substantial amount of smaller ribbons into the air allowing you the hold circle once more and collect their "essence" and use that to actually levitate yourself into the sky. A key component to this games play style.
Moving on further I noticed some other red blur in the background. It was another character that looks exactly like me, thinking it was a CPU I decided to ignore it for now and move on to do my task. After finished releasing the large amount of trapped ribbons the character I thought was a CPU behaved too weird to actually BE a CPU. I soon found out that it was an actual player! Your journey can sport up to two people crossing the land together. Though what makes this so special from a regular co-op game is you cannot choose who you play with. It is selected at random. There is no voice chat. No text chat. No PSN username in the corner or above their head. NOTHING. The only way to communicate is to chirp with circle. It creates an emotional bond to this person you don't know. They help you through your journey, show you secrets, teach you little tricks and you feel so connected with them. With fear of spoilers I will not exploit the ending but by the end of the game (which is only about 2 hours or so long) you feel an overwhelming punch of emotions to the face. Sadness, happiness, shock, wonder. All these different emotions you could never think to find from a game.
Journey is truly a masterpiece of art and animation fluxed into a video game and creates such a beautiful experience I would hate for anyone to miss. If you haven't already pick up Journey on the PSN Store for $14.99. Despite the shortness the overall value of the game is unmistakable.
10/10
