Journey

I've never really thought in terms of "best games" when I look back through my gaming history. It's better characterized as remembering my best moments in gaming. Those times where you got out of your gaming shell, got goosebumps, became choked up, and really connected with a game.

Whether through story, music and visuals, such as the final sequence of Shadow of the Colossus, Frog recovering the Masamune in Chrono Trigger, or Shepard leading his suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. Through cooperative play, when you took down VanCleef with your friends or executed a perfect strategy with a group online. Or through gameplay itself, when the control of a character feels perfect and the play itself is an absolute joy, such as pretty much every Mario game out there. Journey takes the best of those sort of moments, distills and refines them until it creates a perfect two hour experience that contains more memorable moments than a dozen full-priced games each ten times the length.

The visuals, sound, and story are weaved together perfectly to accentuate every piece. The environments are varied and without exception breathtaking. You'll find yourself pausing to appreciate every new place you go and explore, and all work with the story. The main theme swells and retreats appropriately with the journey. And the story itself is perfectly told with no actual dialog to speak of, both understated and easily understood, while at the same time remaining deep in a way few games are. All of these elements are amazing on their own and near their tops in gaming, but together they create a singular experience that simply absorbs you from start to finish. I recommend you play it start to finish in one sitting, and I imagine you'll find you have trouble setting the controller down once the journey gets going.

The gameplay itself is simplistic but perfectly tuned. For a game that only has mechanics of movement, jumping, and a sing which can activate environmental pieces, the gameplay is extremely varied for your two hour journey. Your jump is limited in quantity, but easily recharged by the environment. You'll find parts that are fast, and some that are contemplative. You'll explore environments, solve puzzles, avoid dangers, and sometimes just work to survive in your journey. Nothing is all that challenging for those who've played platformers before, but it's interactive and challenging enough to make you feel a part of what's going on. The gameplay is unobtrusive and natural enough to let you fall into the character, which is exactly what you want.

While all this would come together to create an amazing single player experience, the co-op is what makes this game nothing short of revolutionary. The co-op is again defined by the game's simplistic and singular focus. You'll find yourself suddenly with an identical companion alongside you. There's no way to communicate, beyond the aforementioned singing - no voice chat, no PSN ids, and none of the normal trappings of a multiplayer experience. You can sing to get your companion's attention and recharge their jump, or simply huddle together to recharge your jumps together. The result is a surprising closeness to your companion, and none of the usual random co-op pitfalls that put people off through voice chat or messy online interaction.

To describe how this works, I can do nothing but relate my own experience. I came into expecting to hate the co-op and thinking about unplugging my console from the Internet. I avoided my first few companions. I finally came upon someone who was solving a puzzle that I was about to start. I at first was annoyed - he was taking my gameplay from me! - but ended up following him and solving puzzles together. We spent the next hour and a half of the game together.

Excitedly singing when we found secrets, restoring each other's jump ability as we walked, moving together for safety as we worked through the game's more dire areas. When I was knocked off the path, my companion ran down towards me singing with concern (or at least as best I can surmise). The result was a final sequence that will stay with me forever. For the last 15 minutes I fought back tears and had a smile that wouldn't leave my face. And when the game ended and we said goodbye, it stayed with me for hours afterwards. I had a deeper connection experiencing this journey with this random person I'll never see again than I've had with almost anyone else I've played games with in two decades.

If it's hard to tell, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. A single player journey through the game, its story and its environments is amazing to go through. Even alone, you'll probably find more to appreciate and think about in this game than almost any other game you've played in the last few years. But the co-op is what has a chance to raise this up to a gaming experience you'll never forget. The emergent nature of the co-op means no-one's journey will be the same, but I have no doubt that everyone's journey will stay with them for years to come, as a reminder of what gaming can be.