RF Generation Message Board

PARTICIPANTS:
Grayghost81
singlebanana
Pam
Addicted
Crabmaster2000
zophar53
douglie007
CartridgeBrosP1

Looking forward to it!

Short game, and very affordable.  Would like to see some good participation this month from RF Generation members, since we are playing it with The Cartridge Club.  Be sure to log your thoughts on the game here and also tag them on Twitter for @RFGPlayCast and @CartridgeClubNA.

I will play this again. I'm hoping to play with people this time, as my first playthrough I was mostly alone.

I just requested it from the local library. I hope to be done with Shining Fore 2 by then.

I am very unfamiliar with this game Pam.  Are you saying that you can actually play along with people online?

You can, but only randomly. You can't play the game co-op, as it were. You will just encounter another player from time to time. If I remember correctly, you don't even see his/her name until you finish the game. It's a pretty neat feature.

I'm in!

Love this game. Sign me up!

I got the game now so I'm in.  I bought it on the ps3 physical, then I seen it was  a free game on the ps4 a while ago... is there any difference?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

so should we only post updates when we are playing on twitter? or both on the forum and twitter?

Good question!  You can post on the forum and Twitter if you want. That might be a nice way to tag the Cartridge Club and the Playcast in your thoughts on the game. However, don't start until August please. :D

I'm a member on their forums, so I will be checking in over there from time to time.

After more than a year of telling me I had to give this game another shot my brother has managed to convince me to play it again. I tried it a couple years ago and hated it, I'm hoping that my attitude towards it will change based on my newfound love for exploration style games.

Also PUMPED to play with you guys!

Hey Hey!!! Welcome P1.  Let me know when the thread for the game goes up on your forums. :D

Sat down with the game yesterday... and beat it, I guess its setup for a one shot play and beat type game.  So is this a Trophy hunt game?

Hey there guys!  Just saying hello on y'alls forum.  I don't have a SonyBox so I'll live vicariously through all your playthroughs.  It sure looks pretty and fun.

Welcome good sir. Enjoy your stay and hopefully you'll get some good use out of our database.

So anyone else playing this? What's the weekly goal... I'm so confused on such a short game, what to do after finishing it once

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

This isn't official, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say checkpoints wouldn't make sense for this one.

Don't spoil the ending yet. ;)

I'm back home after a family trip.  Will pop in some Journey either today or tomorrow

I played through today. I don't really consider this game spoilable, but I'll go ahead and put this all in spoiler tags anyway. I have cross-posted this here and on the CC forums.

Spoiler (hover to show)

I don't really get the emotional component of this. It's just not there for me, so I will sadly have to talk about this mechanically. For me, the game works best when you're free to fly and soar and surf as you like. My favourite part was surfing down the sand for an extended amount of time and then having the camera flip around to a more side-scrolling view as the sunset glinted off the sand. I also enjoyed the lead up to the very end. In the beginning, where your ability to fly is very limited, I often found myself frustrated. I wanted to soar around more, not do it for 3 seconds and then have to walk on to the next bits of cloth that would let me do it again. Where the game lost me was the snow part. I did not find slowly trudging through the snow with wind pushing against me at all appealing. I'm sure that adversity is an important part of this Journey, but since it didn't engage me on an emotional level this was just slow and frustrating. And I hate snow.  So my feelings on the game haven't really changed since my first playthrough.

I can understand the appeal of occasionally playing with a stranger online who has no ability to act like garbage, and I liked how running alongside someone charged up the scarf.

I gotta echo Pam. Journey didn't do much for me. Just seemed like a game about growing and shrinking scarves. I met two other players during my run and didn't even know you could recharge your scarf powers until Pam mentioned it. One player I just noticed leaving an area before I was able to so we didn't get to interact and the second player I met when we were climbing the frozen mountain. In the frozen mountain area the cold sapped your ability to gain any scarf powers and also made it so my speaking function didn't work. So basically my one chance to interact with another player was squandered. We trekked up the mountain together, but as soon as we passed out in the snow and the next area loaded he was gone and I never saw him again. Is two a low number of players to see during a playthrough? Can you meet multiple players in the same areas? Can a player you meet in one area progress to the next area with you? I don't get it.

Journey really felt like it was trying to be a game like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, but didn't have the emotion, impact or intelligence of either of those. There never felt like there were any stakes or any real reason to push towards your goal. I like how they tried to tell the story by having you find things off the beaten path like the murals or some old ruins, but I think it really failed in actually telling any story. I have no idea what the game was about, why this world was in ruin, who the other characters are, why is a dragon eating my scarf, is the cloth stuff a power source and if so why does cold affect it so easily, why my character needed to get to the light on the mountain or even who my character was. So many questions and no answers.


Ending related:

Spoiler (hover to show)

The ending was super silly too. The first thing that popped up after completing my quest was "Thanks for Playing Journey!". For something trying to be artsy it went out of it's way at that moment to remind me I was playing a video game. Reminded me of cheesy endings on NES games like Dynowarz

[img width=475 height=350]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4332/35627020974_54aecca915.jpg[/img] (https://flic.kr/p/WheN7j)

I saw 3 people on my playthrough, so 2 doesn't seem especially low. I don't believe you can run into more than one person per area, but I'm not positive. You can transition into new areas with someone though.

I played through this last night. If I were playing this in 2013 I would have been amazed but it's 2017 and I've already played Rime. I highly recommend Rime as narrative has more lasting impact.

This quote does a good job of summarizing what's going on in Journey:

Spoiler (hover to show)

The entire game is a metaphor for life. Since their is no tutorial, you are lead only by curiosity and help from strangers. You go through a wide range of human emotions (happiness, fear, companionship) until ultimately it ends. The game seems ambiguous about what that means. I think this is largely because the developer was not trying to impose a specific ideology about what happens at the end of life. Everything turns white and the essence of your character is reborn again as someone else. It says a lot about death and rebirth, but not specifically what either of those mean.

It's pretty daming that a game from 5 years ago that got SO MUCH critical praise and tons of word of mouth already feels so dated. Instead of the instant classic and must play that many people pegged it as it's already become almost throw away in just a few short years. Is that because games have really progressed so much in such a short time? Are indie games not held to the same standards? Is it being a mainly digital game that we view/judge it differently? Since it's short/cheap does it get a pass?

Games that explore the human condition garner more critical praise and their more open ended nature will lead to a diverse set of opinions.

Think about games like:

Rime
Syberia
Abzu

Syberia.......*shutter*

I finished Journey last night in one sitting.  I enjoyed my time with it and my only regret is not exploring a little more.  Beautiful game and an incredible soundtrack.  There's just something about playing a game this beautiful. I understand the gameplay criticisms, but with a 2 hour game, I could care less.  Beautiful, haunting, life affirming.... shut off what you know about games and just enjoy the ride.

@singlebanana: Try Abzu.

Seconded.

I have a super hard time shutting of "game mode". For example I'm sure for a casual player when you encounter the flying dragon things for the first time they may feel quite tense when trying to hide or outrun them. For me it was painfully obvious that I was n't going to "die" or have much in the realm of consequences so I could just casually stroll along and once and a while get knocked back a bit.

At least 37 years of gaming, so I wouldn't call myself a "casual" gamer. Having said that and not knowing what was in store, that moment really shook me. In what seemed to be a peaceful world, an element of danger presents itself. That was pretty startling.

 I think people have different ways of ingesting media. Some always have in their mind that they are playing a game, while others get more drawn into the world presented to them. I'm not saying that one is wrong and one is right, just saying that we're all affected in different ways. Consider the way people view horror films. I have little, to no affect when it comes to being afraid while viewing them, while my wife covers her eyes during most scenes. It's just a difference in emotional states.

Horror movies scare the bejesus out of me. I tend to avoid them at all costs. I get really lost in some games, most recently Persona 5. I guess Journey was just so short it didn't have enough time perhaps to draw me into its world.

I just played through the game on PS4. I had played it for the first time when the special edition came out a few years back on the PS3. After reading the commentary here, I was legitimately curious how well this game "holds up," as I was definitely affected in a positive way on my first playthrough of this game.

I also played Abzu a few weeks ago. Oh no! Journey is going to suck by comparison.  ::)

I honestly couldn't disagree more with the concept that this game is "dated" or hasn't "aged well." It is a standalone, singular experience that stands up independent of anything that has come since. It controls perfectly well and I predict that the art-style, if a little muted, will age quite well due to the use of solid color textures on environmental objects and character models.

The complaints about not knowing what to do are confounding to me. Have you no sense of curiosity? Do you need a tutorial, maybe? We complain about modern games being over hand-holdy so it's kind of weird to complain when one isn't. I actually love the way the devs give you only the most basic of prompts to let you know which buttons are used.

I don't know, I think maybe a difference in tastes and preferences is affecting the difference in my opinion of Journey versus some of you. Call me casual, but I play games 100% for relaxation and entertainment. I've said this before, but real life is stressful enough that I have no desire to test my skills or bang my head against a twitchy, controller chucking frustration generator. So indeed, this game is right in my wheelhouse. I adore this game for its relaxed, meditative tone and a few times I found myself standing still while the game's amazing music washed over me as I took a few nice, deep breaths. I completely understand if that's not what someone wants in a video game. I happen to love it, and I wish there were even more games like this out there. The entire history of the medium is filled with twitchy tests of skill for players to challenge themselves with. Games like this are relatively few and far between in comparison.

I'm feel extremely fulfilled having peacefully drifted through this journey a second time, and I am sure it won't be the last.     

So I started a new game and gave the controller to my 6 year old without any instructions. He figured it all out himself and has finished 6 stages so far with no guidance. He loves it!  If you can't figure out the controls in this game, take comfort in knowing that a 6 year old casual gamer can.  Honestly, I think that the lack of instruction and having only three gameplay options (move, float, and interact/speak) are great minimalistic qualities that make this game really special.

I'm not sure if this was directed at a comment I made or not, but I'm gonna respond anyway. It wasn't a problem on not know what to do in terms of how to play/control/where to go for me. It was a problem on not know why me character is motivated to do anything. That never got answered for me even at the end. I'm definitely a fan of just dropping a player in and having them figure out controls and keeping tutorials to a minimum or not have one at all (both are great options depending on the game).

I don't think the visuals look dated. Journey has a cool and identifiable art style for sure. I think the rest of the game feels "old" already though. Controls feel sloppy even for the time it was released and just seemed directionless to me. Also I really don't have much in the sense of curiosity. It's one of the big reasons I really dislike open world style games. I don't wanna see "what's over there" or "what happens if I try this". I really enjoy having a few simple parameters to play within.

The soundtrack I don't think I mentioned either. I honestly didn't remember a single tune from the game or a moment when it stood out to me. Just youtubed some tunes to refresh myself and it just doesn't do much for me.


Get that kid checked out. Sounds like a Savant!!!

Crabman, we'll have to agree to disagree here.

As far as needing some kind of motivation for the character, I think you'll find our discussion on the Cartridge Club interesting when it comes out. Some of the panelists were more in your camp than mine and it's really fascinating to me to hear the specific things other players noticed were missing (like character motivation), that I felt were unnecessary and further, would have hindered the experience.

I'm quite excited to hear the episode for this. It's always cool to hear different and opposing views on things like this. Pretty incredible that so many different experiences can come out of such a short game, which seems to be part of the point of it's existence.

Been on vacation and am just catching up on the discussion with this. I have to say I'm with GrayGhost and singlebanana on this game. I'm surprised at how few in this group were effected. Yes, the game is short and ambiguous, but I loved that. I have no trouble turning off my game brain and just going with an atmosphere if it's well-presented. I enjoyed that the story was more implied than explicitly stated, and the emotional moments were easy to let wash over me between the beautiful visuals and uplifting music.

I'm also surprised at how little discussion there was of the multiplayer in Journey. By its very randomness, it's literally and figuratively hit-and-miss as far as what your experience with another player will be like, but that's the beauty of it. With so many vile and vitriolic online multiplayer experiences out there these days, the anonymity and limited interaction was so refreshing. I've had fleeting interactions of only a few seconds, but I've also had people follow or lead me through a third of the game, only to feel an unexpected sense of loss when we lost each other in the sand surfing section. In my opinion it's a fantastic implementation of multiplayer interaction that transcends the usual hate and rage that has been 90% of my online gaming with randos.

I think you're going to love our podcast Travis. ;)

Sorry i missed this playthrough, i adore this game! i've played through it at least 4 or 5 times, so i remember enough to comment on it. i have to agree with Rich and Shawn, and i really don't understand how anyone could dislike this game. i will say that i have yet to play any of the other games that people have mentioned like Rime or Abzu, but i can't imagine those changing my appreciation for Journey.

Journey is one of those games that's more experience than game, and if you're willing to accept something very linear and with minimal challenge, then there's not much else to complain about. There's definitely a story there, but it's more interpretive than straightforward. I think it's a little too bad for those who didn't know, that were told about the multiplayer aspect before playing through. one of my big moments of awe with the game was when it listed the player names at the end, when the whole time i thought the other character was an AI that came and went. i think you can have multiple different players join you in the same section, because i've watched one disappear in front of me, then another appear not long after. you can definitely play through most of the game with the same player, i believe there's an achievement for it.

that quote about the game being a metaphor for life is how i see it too. At the end in the snow you do die, after slowing down and trudging uphill in a blizzard much like old age wears us all down. you ascend to a sort of heaven, where you finally achieve your goal that you couldn't reach in life. I think i read somewhere the idea that when you die at the end, you join the white clothed figures that are your ancestors who had made this journey before and who guide the next person on their journey through life.

did anyone find all of the scarf upgrades? if you do you can play through the game with a white outfit like the larger cloth people in the cutscenes (it lets you fly almost  infinitely with a full length scarf from the level select area).