Post
by jermm » Thu Apr 05, 2012 6:41 pm
I haven't done a 2nd playthough yet, but I'll type some more stuff about my first:
Journey did a good job at giving me an emotional experience, partly because the game was simple. Most games you are worrying about preforming the actions. Even something like HL2:EP2, for most of the time, I'm not really feeling anything. Most of the time I'm thinking about how to survive the gameplay. "Gotta shoot the combine, gotta reload, gotta watch my health, gotta use the log to kill the hunters."
In Journey, the gameplay is simple enough (two buttons, two sticks), that you don't really need to "think" about it. There isn't any "dying", there isn't any "failure".
It also wasn't very long. Keeping the length in single-sitting keeps you engaged. Other technical stuff helped; minimal load times didn't make me reach for my phone. Compared to something like Portal 2, which had very annoying load screens, Journey was able to keep me thinking about the game. Graphically, it's not amazing, but it had few major graphical issues. Only once or twice I noticed something "wrong" (some aliasing on one of the hills is the only example I remember). Compared to something like Uncharted, where level-of-detail and texture quality is something that I'm seeing the whole game.
Overall, in SP game experiences, Journey was one of my favorites. I like it more than Portal/HL2:Ep2, more than Uncharted 2/3, more than the GTA4 episodes. It's length and scope helped greatly; the devs did a limited game extremely well.
