Be Excellent To Each Other

Will be updated when this system update has finished. Maybe.

Oh it looks awesome but probably won't finish downloading tonight. This will be something special - I can just feel it.

If anyone doesn't know it's from the makers of Flower and has been in development for a wee while. Ive no idea what it's about other than you wander about in the desert. Anyone without a PS3 will surely be missing out. Probably. I better play it first.

Another one of those games, eh?

Shush you. This promises to be something different. Get back to your football-update 20.

Oh it's lovely and somewhat haunting.

"From the creators of Not Really A Game and Not Really A Game 2..."

Livin' in a lonely world!

Took a midnight train

Going aaaaaanywherrrrrrre!

Noby Noby Boy = PS3's killer app.

GIRL's skin is lovely and soft.

I adored Flower and was totally captivated it by it, possibly because depite all the hype I wasn't sure how much to actually expect from it. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to Journey and have purposely been only skimming the reviews so as no to find out too much about it.

The only thing I really did learn was about the bizarre sounding 'multiplayer'; basically if you're online while playing it you can be (automatically, I think) paired up with a random player to work through bits of the game with. It really is random though and you can't communicate with each other via any normal method (voice chat or whatever) and you won't even be told each other's name at any point.

I'll definitely be picking this up but I'm not sure when as I'm currently playing through LA Noire. Even after that I should really move onto something else from the backlog pile but I strongly suspect I'll break and buy this, even if I need to use the multiplayer thing as an excuse to get it while people will definitely still be playing it.

Dark Souls.

This is great. It really is. It's amazing how the developers can evoke so many emotions with the simplest of tools. The third level is a real Disney/Pixar-esq master class:

You start off looking into a sea of pink rolling desert going on for miles. This distant mountain with a ray of light shooting out of the top can be seen dead ahead and is visible on every level. It's a mount doom esq picture. You walk and walk and crest a dune and on the other side there's the remains of a settlement. It's just fabulously done. Hidden from view; beneath the dunes. There follows this playful gaggle of creatures who lead you through the dunes to this jaunty tune until you finally reach a larger structure amidst the towering sand. The music subtly changes and before you know what has happened you've just stumbled across some kind of prison. The change from playful exploration to haunting discovery is awesomely done.

Plus it looks freaking fantastic.

Just met my first partner.

We dabbled in a spot of collecting, then we had an impromptu slalom through the sand and a race to the bottom, only to battle it out in a game of Simon when we reached the finish.

I've no idea who the person was but I was sad to see him/her go so I trekked along alone.

Finished. Although it was very short it was filled with masses of awesome.

Absolutely outstanding it was. Gorgeous, tugged on the old heart strings and with an ending that was bittersweet. It ain't much of a typical game but it's well worth playing once in your life.

Stunningly beautiful environments and some of the best weather conditions I've seen done on a pooter.

The Dark Souls esq companion is both unnecessary and prerequisite. The last level is so brilliantly done that you can't help do what the developers want you to do even though I don't think there's a fail state in the game.

I can see some people saying it's boring. Those people are sociopaths without a heart. This is an absolute must play once game.

9/10.

Played this through at the weekend and it is very good...but not as good as Flower, and a bit too short I felt. I do agree with most everything Ian has said in terms of how gorgeous it is, how excellent the music is and how subtly done the various changes in tone are.

The 'multiplayer' is an odd mechanic because it's so dependant on whether the person you meet is willing to work with you. The first guy I met just walked off without waiting for me to explore even slightly, so fuck him. The second guy and I worked through the majority of the game together and he showed me a couple of secrets so it felt like a more coherent experience. It ended badly though because, during the final trudge up the mountain, he stopped and sat down right near the end and just never got up again. I waited through five agonising minutes but eventually decided to press on without him; which was surprisingly affecting, it was like leaving a friend to die in the snow. I can only assume that he disconnected for some reason and that's how the game manifests it which is a nice design detail. The real downside to playing with someone else is that you feel pressured to move on without being able to freely explore so I'm going to play through it again offline to look for secrets and whatnot.

The atmosphere effects are excellent and it really does feel like you're swishing through a sandy desert or battling the freezing elements up a mountain which really adds to the overall experience. The instant you realise that the game has suddenly changed temporarily into a snowboarding simulator without you even noticing made me laugh out loud as well.

So all good stuff, but something about it just didn't grab me in the same way Flower did. Flower engendered a genuine feeling of wonder in me; the tonal changes of each level as you moved forward were much better executed and the progression through the 'story' just felt more engaging. The last level of Flower felt like a genuine conclusion to everything that had come before it as it smoothly accelerated you through to the end; whereas Journey's final act just flew by in a messy minutes-long corkscrew up the mountain. I really did expect something more to happen and was surprised to see the credits come up when they did.

Overall, I'm more than happy with it and would pay for it all over again, but I am left slightly disappointed because it was too short and lacked some of the subtle genius that underpinned Flower.

"Finished"

Well at least got to the end with a companion (met 8 people during my journey) but



I'm sure i'll have another go now i know how things work

Bit of a shame that if you bought the Collector's Edition on PS3 you don't get the PS4 version for free, you only get it if you bought the standard edition.

If you bought a physical copy of any other game that had cross-play would you get the other platform versions for free as well? I'm guessing not, and it makes sense as there's no way for the system to know whether you still own your original copy of the game (without having some kind of cross-platform disc checking which is just horrible). I agree it's a bit of a shame but it's entirely expected and just an inherent consequence of buying physical vs digital.

Most other crossbuy games haven't had a physical release.

Also there was that thing where you did get a free upgrade for a handful of games, just had to have the old disc in the console to play the PS4 version.

Maybe he wanted you to sit down and meditate with him for a while, since that would give you an achievement, if I remember correctly.

..........................................

Yeah, in hindsight I did wonder about that myself, although he picked a bloody weird time to do it.

Yeah but that was a real arcade cabinet with an audio cassette in it to get the music working since they couldn't just digitize it !