• Publisher: SCEA
  • Release Date: Mar 13, 2012
Metascore

Universal acclaim - based on 77 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 614 Ratings

  • Summary: Enter the world of Journey, the third game from indie developers thatgamecompany (creators of "flOw" and "Flower"). Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person’s life passage and their intersections with other’s. You wake alone and surrounded by miles of burning, sprawling desert, and soon discover the looming mountaintop which is your goal. Faced with rolling sand dunes, age-old ruins, caves and howling winds, your passage will not be an easy one. The goal is to get to the mountaintop, but the experience is discovering who you are, what this place is, and what is your purpose. Travel and explore this ancient, mysterious world alone, or with a stranger you meet along the way. Soar above ruins and glide across sands as you discover the secrets of a forgotten civilization. [thatgamecompany] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 76 out of 77
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 77
  3. Negative: 1 out of 77
  1. Mar 21, 2012
    100
    Journey is really an amazing journey from start to finish.
  2. Mar 21, 2012
    100
    Journey is incredibly short - you'll finish in about two hours - and it's not really all that challenging in the traditional gameplay sense. But it will be meaningful to you in a way that a bigger, louder, flashier game won't.
  3. Mar 19, 2012
    40
    It mostly reminded me of some of the dull and barely interactive bits of Uncharted 3. I think the lesson here is that deserts are often poorly suited to games without dune buggies...There's no challenge and no real gameplay, which isn't necessarily a criticism. It's sort of like Shadow of the Colossus without any colossi, or Ico without the little girl.

See all 77 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 21 out of 270
  1. You probably already have heard that Journey is a bit short. And that it's also a fantastic experience. What else is there to add? Well, there is one thing that truly fascinates me. As you slide down sand dunes and glide smoothly in air, and as you solve the (not too difficult) obstacles you encounter other players (if you're online). So what, you say? The beauty of other players in journey is that there is no way to communicate with them. Everyone's anonymous so you can't write to your "partner", there's no voice communication available and you can't decide to invite friends. The only way you communicate is through your actions and an additional "blip" feature (which is acctually a "loading feature", i.e you use it to activate certain environmental objects and/or load up your partners ability to jump and fly further). Togheter you can make the game even more amusing and find new ways to conquer the journey. It's also essential to cooperate in order to attain certain trophies. This means Journey makes the trophy system a bit more interesting than your average game. But are there no cons? Journey is beautiful, relaxing and I've been playing it over and over, as I've already said but it can't be emphasized enough. The only con is that it should've been just a little longer. I want more! Expand
  2. I can understand (kind of) why someone would give this a 10, but I am not one of those people. And i might be being a little generous. I just can't quite get the whole 'omg this is an EXPERIENCE'. Yeah, you're an nondescript thing walking around an empy land, and some passive stuff happens. Oh and it has really deep music. I'm upping it a bit because it did have a couple cool moments and I like the last few minutes. Otherwise. Otherwise I don't even know if this would get a passing grade. This game is for emo people to claim it a god. Expand
  3. Journey is not bad game, it's not fun, yet still has an appeal to it, but the whole time I played it there was that niggle in the back of my mind saying "I only like this because I've been told how good it is." In truth journey is a fairly linear and boring, and my initial perception was altered by what I had heard of the game. Twenty minutes into the game this wore off and I began to see what Journey really was; a obsessed with it's own self importance that it can't be bothered to tell a coherant story but instead uses pseudoistic imagery to cover up for the non-existant story. Towards the end I did garner something from the game as me and my fellow adventurer which the game had seamlessly connected me too slowly trudged through the snow. It was to say the least brilliant. It was the only real moment me and my companion shared and we'd been together since the start of the game. Marching onward close to death until we fell into the snow unable to continue. It was raw, it was powerful, no thought is as colloasal as that of failure. However in the game industry there is a misconception that for a game to be good it must have a happy ending and suddenly the raw emotion and loss I felt from me and my companion dying evaporated as we were miraculously revived and finished out journey. Regardless of how good a game is if that satasfaction only occurs for 15 minutes towards the end of a two hour game and that moment is then stripped away and may as welll never occured then I'm sorry but it's not worth my time or money. Expand

See all 270 User Reviews

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