Journey: A Revolutionary Gaming Experience in Cooperation and Exploration

Please do not read this week’s column if you have yet to play Journey and plan to do so in the future. A lot of the game's impact comes from discovering how it works for yourself.

Sometimes a game comes along that makes everything else you've played lately just seem lackluster by comparison. For me, last week, that game was Journey. Though I went into it with a bit of hesitation – finding thatgamecompany’s its developer previous release Flower more impressive than enjoyable – after only ten or fifteen minutes I was completely captivated. By the time the credits were rolling two hours later, which felt like a quarter of that time, most games would have fled to engross me for such an exted period.

It all begins with being introduced into a mysterious world covered in sand dunes and half-buried mechanical structures. A few moments of confusion later, nearly transparent button prompts appear on the screen explning how to jump, communicate and move the camera. From then on, you're left on your own, guided only by natural curiosity and a desire to explore this new landscape.

This is around the point when Journey truly begins to showcase its strengths. The protagonista figure in red cloak, black mask, and glowing scarfdiscovered the joy of movement. The next half hour was spent learning how to jump, glide, recharge the power of the scarf, and slide across the dunes. By then, all these mechanics felt so natural that the game shifted gears subtly introducing a level of challenge that wasn't present before. As this difficulty ramped up steadily and organically until the very when without noticing just how much their skills have improved, you've mastered the game and learned how to best enjoy the breathtaking ing sequence.

Journey's incredible design is coupled with another key concept: communication. Throughout the game, other players drop in, adding a cooperative element that enhances the experience even though it isn't required for progression. While exploring an environment, another red cloaked, black masked stranger will simply appear on the landscape, busy themselves with tasks similar to those you're engaged in. All of this interaction occurs anonymously. No PlayStation Network ID is displayed and most interestingly, the only way to communicate with one another is by pressing the circle button and emitting one or several chirping sounds.

Despite talking to one another through only a handful of tones and having no personal context to identify with, players form unique bonds in Journey that I'm convinced are only possible within this game's framework. That no known language was used makes it necessary to interpret communication on a personal level and because there’s no way to interact other than to find ways to move forward together, the game fosters a sense of companionship. I finished the game and discovered that I had played with four strangers I estimated two or three at first, two of whom were Japanese based on their PlayStation Network names.

Despite being separated by oceans, language, and culture, we played a video game together where helping one another was instrumental to our enjoyment of it. Nothing else has ever done that for me, making this experience unforgettable.

All these elements come together to make a videogame that is not only tremously fun to play through but also represents a bold step forward for the medium itself. Journey makes me excited not just to see what thatgamecompany does next, but how games in general will progress in the future.

Reid McCarter is a writer, editor, and musician based in Toronto. His work has been featured on Kill Screen, The Escapist, CGMagazine, among others. He founded digitallovechild.com, an indepent media channel focusing on indie video game content and reviews.

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