In my complete naivety and arrogance, I went into this game expecting some pretentious artsy "all visuals and no substance" experience that I was going to forget soon after completing it. You can imagine how stupid and naive I felt when I rolled credits, having experienced one of the most unique and wholesome experiences I've ever had in gaming in a long while.

Journey, appropriately titled, is all about the journey. It'll clock you a very short 2 and a half hours, but it makes very good use of every minute of those 2 hours with gorgeous visuals, engagingly fun Transversal and an overall incredibly wholesome experience that will leave a mark on you long after the credits roll. But by far my favourite part of this game that made it all so special is the subtle inclusion of multiplayer.

You see, this game matches you with another stranger during your gameplay. When I saw mine for the first time, not knowing this game even had a multiplayer feature, I had assumed it was an AI. But no, this was a complete stranger that was also playing this game around the same time I was and had been connected to my session automatically. And because this game has no medium of communication, it essentially forces you to continue moving forward, sharing the journey and experience with another player without ever directly communicating with them. It's this little spin on the gameplay that i think really made journey special to me.

It made it special because despite no real method of communication, me and this stranger really formed a bond. Before you think I’m crazy, let me explain. Every time one of us would fall behind, the other would patiently wait until they caught up. We would try to communicate with the little light flashes our characters are able to create. We would always try to be right next to each other as we glided and flied through the skies and onto ledges. Whenever we would lose each other, we would spam pings to help locate each other. We did all of this and so much more without having uttered a single world to each other. It was incredibly wholesome.

Eventually, we entered a storm section towards the end of the game. It was a level filled with high winds and fog that filled the space, inhibiting our vision and rendering it incredibly difficult to see off the distance. We eventually got too far from each other, and because the fog completely stopped us from seeing each other, we began to use our little light pings to communicate that we're still alive and where our location was.

As the storm got worse, and we got farther, their flashing light slowly began to get harder to see. Slowly fading until eventually disappearing into the distance, and I never saw them again... ):

It’s this journey, being experienced with another complete stranger, that I think makes this game so special and so unique of an experience. It's this shared gameplay, mixed with incredible sound design, gorgeous visuals, and fun traversal that I think makes this game a one of a kind.

This game might be short, but it's filled to the brim with soul and heart. And because of that, I recommend Journey.

8/10