Journey reviews on Playstation 3 games

Game Revolution

03/2012

Journey

Never before have I felt so weighed down with the responsibility of a review. In this moment, I feel conflicted. How could I possibly impart upon you the impact Journey has had on me, not just as a critic, but as someone who has grown up with video games and seen them in so many differnet ways? Journey, a downloadable PS3 game by thatgamecompany, developers of Flower and fl0w, manages to remain absolutely silent, and yet speaks directly to the player like no other. I suppose if I had to draw comparisons, you could say that Journey's presentation is quite a bit like Limbo's. Except that it's not. It's not like Limbo at all. Yes, the player is dropped into the game's world and given little to no indication as to what's going on or where they should head next. And that's the way I like it. If a developer can pull it off, letting players discover things for themselves will always be better than spelling it all out. "Press Y to do this" or "follow the compass at the top of the screen" will always be stupid, and Journey will always be fantastic. Still, continuing this critique of thatgamecompany's work remains difficult. Journey is the best game I've played this year, but I don't want to ruin the experience for anyone.

GameInformer

03/2012

9.0/10

Journey

One of the chief creative voices at thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen, once described his earlier game, Flower, in an intriguing way. He said it was to big disc-based games what poems are to novels. I can find no better description to apply to his follow-up, except to say that if Flower was an abstract haiku about the fragility of nature, Journey is a narrative ballad defined by discrete images and places. Journey offers players a brief but memorable glimpse into another world, and through the confluence of music, images, and play, a quiet meditation on solitude and the interconnection of people. As you might expect, a lot of what makes a game called Journey so engaging is the slow unraveling of mystery as you learn more about where you are and what you're doing. To that end, I'd be spoiling things to describe too much. It's enough to say that you play an unnamed red-cloaked figure who finds him or herself in a vast desert as the game begins. The only landmark in sight is a distant glowing mountain peak that serves as your destination. Along the way, you'll uncover secrets and slowly increase your ability to navigate freely through semi-permanent pick-ups in the world. Simplistic puzzles bar forward progress, mostly built around learning the properties of the world and the creatures that live within it.

GameSpot

03/2012

9.0/10

Journey Review

In simplest terms, Journey is a third-person, sporadically two-player adventure in which you travel through a desert towards a mountain. By the alchemy of developer thatgamecompany's skill and vision, it is also unique, exciting, mysterious, and utterly lovely, with mesmerising landscapes and stirring music. It deploys more 'gamey' elements than any of the developer's works before it, and does so successfully, while maintaining the feel of an evocative, interactive art piece. Three hours long at most, it's concise but not overly short, its cycle of emotional highs and lows best experienced in a single sitting. You begin without context, a red-robed figure in a desert, and set out hiking towards the mountain on the horizon. Why? Initially, at least, just because it's there; instinctively you seek an objective and the mountain, topped with an unexplained bright light, is your only option. It's a straightforward but elegant kind of signposting, making the mountain a near-constant, towering waypoint. Elsewhere, Journey's signposting is lighter-touch but similarly deft, suggesting objectives so subtly as to feel like you're always exploring on instinct--as though while being drawn onwards to that distant peak, every reveal is your own discovery.

1UP

03/2012

Journey Review

At its simplest level, Journey is a game about walking. You start in a desert, controlling a character without a name or a backstory or even knowing if you're human. Your only objective comes from the camera angle pointing towards a mountain in the distance. So you walk up a small hill and start to learn this is how it's going to work. The game isn't going to tell you anything. It's going to give you a vague sense of direction and let you go there when you're ready. There's no challenge. You move slowly. And your only abilities are to jump and shout, or whatever you call it when your character emits a sonar bubble to interact with the world. If what I've just described sounds more like a nature walk than a game, I'm doing this right. But I assure you, it's more exciting than it sounds. Initially, the desert just seems like a beautiful place, so you don't mind wandering and sliding around the sand dunes. But you soon notice that because you have limited abilities and forgiving controls, you tend to think about the game differently than most others -- I'm not even sure it's possible to be a "talented" Journey player. It's less about how to accomplish tasks or solve puzzles, and more about deciding where you want to go and running into interesting things along the way.

VideoGamer

03/2012

9.0/10

Journey Review

Wonder: that's what we've been missing. This console generation has been defined by technological horsepower driving digital worlds of increasing verisimilitude. Yet these approximations of realism offer little but empty spectacle, sights that provoke admiration rather than astonishment. Our eyes widen at the latest tech demos and target renders, but rarely do they make our jaws drop and our synapses fire with genuine delight. That Journey – a downloadable release, no less, costing less than ten pounds – should regularly provide moments of genuine, dumbstruck awe is quite the achievement.Such instances aren't merely reserved for its beautiful setting, but this breathtaking world is a remarkable feat of engineering. At times you consider that Journey may have been delayed so as not to embarrass Naughty Dog: many said ten minutes wandering through the desert as Drake was a brave move, yet Journey proves this to be hollow hyperbole. For starters, its sand effects are significantly more convincing. Its billions of particles form a fluid surface, endlessly shifting, undulating, grains gently splashing up and out with every step you take.

GameInformer

03/2012

9.0/10

Journey

One of the chief creative voices at thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen, once described his earlier game, Flower, in an intriguing way. He said it was to big disc-based games what poems are to novels. I can find no better description to apply to his follow-up, except to say that if Flower was an abstract haiku about the fragility of nature, Journey is a narrative ballad defined by discrete images and places. Journey offers players a brief but memorable glimpse into another world, and through the confluence of music, images, and play, a quiet meditation on solitude and the interconnection of people. As you might expect, a lot of what makes a game called Journey so engaging is the slow unraveling of mystery as you learn more about where you are and what you're doing. To that end, I'd be spoiling things to describe too much. It's enough to say that you play an unnamed red-cloaked figure who finds him or herself in a vast desert as the game begins. The only landmark in sight is a distant glowing mountain peak that serves as your destination. Along the way, you'll uncover secrets and slowly increase your ability to navigate freely through semi-permanent pick-ups in the world. Simplistic puzzles bar forward progress, mostly built around learning the properties of the world and the creatures that live within it.

IGN

03/2012

9.0/10

Journey Review

Journeys span all of Earth's landscapes and resonate within the human heart, regardless of sex, age, and origin. The latest project from the developers at thatgamecompany tells the tale of a traveler and that traveler's journey. Through remarkable beauty and terrible danger, this short downloadable experience marks one of gaming's most beautiful, most touching achievements. Knowing the vision and intention of thatgamecompany will help prepare you for the unique nature of Journey. Unlike its peers, Journey ignores many conventional gaming traditions like scorekeeping, lives, and statistics. As a nameless, cloaked traveler, you only have one goal: walk towards the shining mountain in the distance. Along the way you'll uncover the secrets of the barren world at your feet and perhaps meet other travelers. Like thatgamecompany's other works, Journey is more an emotional investment than a game. Journey Review Magic and cloth shimmer at the heart of Journey and represent the life of the world. Creatures made of this cloth help boost the traveler into the air, and finding glowing symbols elongates the scarf wrapped about the traveler's cloak. This scarf enables the traveler to jump and glide to new areas. Few interface barriers exist between you and your emotional attachment to Journey.

VideoGamer

02/2011

Journey (Preview)

It might only have three games to its name, but since the mid-00's thatgamecompany's output has been the bread and butter of armchair Game Studies enthusiasts hungry for intelligent discourse. flOw began as Jenova Chen's graduation thesis, as a game which sought to find a way to elicit complex emotions from its players, and in doing so helped make a name for the studio as a thinking man's developer when the game came to PS3. Flower, the next title, was a kind of meditative piece where players directed petals by controlling the wind. The game was considered to be the studio's first step out of the safety of academia, but was still slotted into the makeshift category of "first-person thinker" by the TGC team.Now the studio has come out with their third title. Journey is a game where players, cast as robed nomads, can meet with strangers and travel freely through a vast desert landscape. With no mini-map, or hint system, and only a vague objective that nudges you toward a distant mountain, you (and your possible acquaintance) explore old, possibly mystical ruins and odd, sometimes baffling magical objects.Floating cloths can be collected and used to fly for short periods.

GameSpot

02/2011

Journey (Preview)

It's fair to say that thatgamecompany's titles flOw and Flower eschewed traditional gameplay mechanics in favor of a more artistic approach. It's the developer's aim to create different emotional responses in each of its games, as cofounder and creative director Jenova Chen explained on a recent visit to London. He was on hand to demonstrate Journey, the developer's latest title, and in particular the co-op play that makes this its first-ever multiplayer game. If you've yet to hear about Journey, be sure to read our previous coverage on the game, as this preview focuses mostly on its co-op features. "A lot of co-op games give me a lot of frustrations," explained Chen. "Most games make you feel like a god. But when you focus on empowerment, players think about how they can use that power against each other." Chen pointed out observations that he'd made about cooperation in general life. He noticed that while people in the city go about their business never talking to each other, people in the wilderness are more inclined to communicate with passersby. "When you're hiking, you're vulnerable, so you're more likely to say hi," he said.

GamePro

12/2010

No longer available...

Journey (Preview)

We tour a mysterious, sand-consumed world in thatgamecompany's latest enigmatic entry, a title intent on engaging the senses as much as the thumbs. What we're talking about: Journey, the upcoming PSN title from thatgamecompany, the innovative team behind previous not-quite-games Fl0w and Flower. Where we saw it: Sony's New York City 2010/2011 press preview, where it stole the spotlight from some of the showier titles being demoed . What you need to know: Point in development cycle: While our demo was strictly hands-off, the game looks to be very far along. Sony would only reveal a release date of "2011." My take: The daunting task of discussing this developer's titles within the established videogame lexicon is made more difficult when you're only given eyes-only access. That said, Journey seems to be retaining the appealing and artistic aesthetic that compelled players to download fl0w and Flower. Its mysterious, curiosity-piquing gameplay is equally intriguing; I practically begged thagamecompany's president, Kellee Santiago, to let me feel what it was like to tread the sand, if only for a moment--she politely shot me down.

1UP

12/2010

Journey (Preview)

Batted by the sounds of gun-fire from the two booths beside them, thatgamecompany (the team behind introspective indie hits Flower and fl0w) spoke about their latest game Journey. Jacking up the volume, we leaned in close to a monitor to hear the game's ambient sounds. This was, perhaps, not the best environment to demo a game about wandering a desert. Or so it seemed. But as the demo continued, the beauty of Journey displayed itself. Wind whipped the dry landscape and sand that caked at the nubby feet of the protagonist, a flowing personified ribbon of cloth. This was unlike anything else -- not just in how it looked, but how it worked. See, Journey is designed for online play -- though that's not mandatory. There's no voice chat. There's no point driven competition. And players never know the true identity of those they meet on the journey, because there are no gamertags. An online multiplayer game that doesn't have to be played online and doesn't fit into any traditional online genre. To wrap our heads around the idea, we sat down with Creative Director Jenova Chen. 1UP: What inspires you and your developers to create?

GamePro

09/2010

No longer available...

Journey Preview (Preview)

Thatgamecompany Creative Director and Cofounder Jenova Chen isn't your normal video-game developer, and his company's next game, Journey, is leaps and bounds away from a "normal" adventure title. Filled with shifting desert dunes, colorful pieces of cloth with mystical properties, and an ominous mountain always on the horizon, Journey is Thatgamecompany's most ambitious title to date. Chen and his team don't begin a project by thinking in genres. The nine people that compose Thatgamecompany don't discuss how many weapons the game will have, how its heroes will overcome a villainous adversary, or what type of gamer they want to appease. The team thinks in emotions, and how they can best convey these feelings to the player. "When we finished Flower, we were thinking about what kind of game we wanted to make next," Chen tells me. "At Thatgamecompany, we have a very unique approach to developing games. When we start a game, we think about the experience we want players to have, what kind of emotion we want players to feel. For Flow and Flower, we had very specific feelings we wanted to tackle, but we also don't want to settle on just one feeling, we want to push the envelope of what emotions video games can communicate."