I got to explore an area in what is probably my most anticipated game this year, Journey. I almost didn’t want to play it without audio and in the middle of the noisy Eurogamer Expo show floor. The game was unfortunately placed beside Uncharted 3 being played by guys wearing 3D glasses and with the television sets turned up to maximum. But still, I sat down and started to play, quite soon all the noise and aggression surrounding me dulled into a murmur and it was just me, the game and a bunch of guys standing behind me eagerly wanting to play it…I took my time.

Journey is an incredibly beautiful videogame – not just in the same way you could say that Crysis 2 ‘looks’ beautiful, Journey is beautiful. It’s subtle, graceful, colourful and drematic. The sandy dunes and endless landscapes portray a scale and sense of place rarely seen outside of Shadow of the Colossus and Samurai Jack, the environment is begging to be explored and that’s a good thing becuase exploration is the meat of this game.

Journey is a quirky and subtle synergy of mechanics, it plays with traversal, observation and ability management. The character you control has no arms but can run, surf waves of sand, sing, jump and glide. When surfing on the dunes it’s a little like controlling a boat, the more wind that’s behind you guides you quicker in that direction and the slope of the hill you’re surfing down dictates your momentum. It’s automatic too and it feels very pleasant and flowing, you just ‘catch’ these little pockets of movement and I imagine after practice a skill full surfer could traverse the vast landscapes with good haste.

Aside from surfing you can also jump but only when you have enough power to do so. Walking into a small whirlwind of fabric grants you one jump, once you’ve jumped you cannot jump again until you hit another little whirlwind of fabric. It’s an interesting ability to restrict because it’s a joy to jump, it’s a generous jump with a lot of sustain for being able to glide and cover great distances. The restriction of it I imagine is essential for the environmental puzzles that reveal themselves through exploration and an observation of the world. In the distance there is an ever-present behemoth of a mountain with a great light shooting into the sky from its peak. This mountain serves as your waypoint and very gently guides the player to relevant locations.

Of course none of this is explained and is there to be discovered, there’s still a lot I don’t know about the game. Singing for example seems to be a basic ‘interact’ button, I used singing to transform tatty, loose pieces of grey cloth into brilliantly red and patterned platforms to run across. But I found no other use of it.

I also unfortunatly didn’t find any other players to play with, a large part of this game is wandering the dessolate landscape and randomly joining with another annoymous player. In a way I’m glad I didn’t bump into anyone because I imagine it would have probably someone sitting beside me, which would ruin the point of the cooperative feature where players cannot communicate other than by singing – there you go, there’s another use for it!

I’m ridiculously looking forward to this game, you can shove your Skyrims, Rages, Batmans and Guild Wars up your nethers, this is my game this year and I know I’m not alone in feeling that.

About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com