Not every gamer is looking for the same thing
when he/she plays a game. Of course, most of us are just looking to have fun
and/or kill some time. After all, video games are an entertainment medium like
TV shows or movies at the theater. However, when you play enough games, you
start to look beyond the whole « entertainment » value of a game,
which never entirely disappears, but seems to take a back seat to something
else.
That’s when you might start looking for a game
that will test some skills in a very specific way, like Real-Time Strategy if
you’re the armchair general type, online shooters if you’re the competitive
soldier with an all-world K/D ratio, deep Role-Playing games if you’re a mad completionist, Puzzle games if you
want to work your brains out, Racing games if you think you’re the second
coming of Ayrton Senna, Fighting games for the combo-loving, leaderboard-topping
digital master etc.
Or you might be looking for a specific trait
in a game. An intense atmosphere like in Bioshock or most Resident Evil
games ? Non-stop action à la Call of
Duty ? Emotional attachment as in Ico or Enslaved ? Infinite replayability
as in LittleBigPlanet ? Nostalgia in Sonic Generations ? The feeling
of freedom of GTA IV ? Hollywood script and action like in Uncharted
2 ? Exquisite graphics like in The Witcher II : Assassins of Kings ?
The list goes on.
When I bought, then played, PSN-exclusive
Journey, one word came to mind. Experience. Journey is unique, like nothing
I’ve ever played before or will ever play again. I don’t think we’ll see a
Journey-clone like we see gazillions or GTA-clones and CoD-clones. You play through
the whole game, likely in a single sitting since it’s pretty short, without
hearing or reading a single word. The objective, seen through a gamer’s eye, is
to reach the summit of a omnipresent mountain, although it’s hard to pinpoint
the exact motivation to do so. You encounter allies and enemies, but not in the
usual « video game » sense. And the artistic design is unreal, the
places you get to visit - be it desert, cave, snowy moutain - are all a sight
to behold. You get the feeling you’re living a unique experience, and that’s
what makes the game superb, borderline legendary.
It’s a game I can’t rate properly because most
of the usual criterias I use to rate a game (gameplay, storyline, presentation,
etc.) don’t really matter. It can’t be compared with « mainstream »
games that I usually play and rate, like Portal 2, Skyrim, DiRT 3, Battlefield
3, etc. It certainly wouldn’t get lower than a 9, and probably much higher if I
looked at which games got a 9 this generation.
Anyway, it is a great game that you just have
to experience, not play.
