November Of Shame: The Shame of Michael

Shamevember at OmniGamer continues with Michael's confession about the PSN exclusive Journey

[NukaCola]

What a sh*tty blog. You sir are an idiot. Journey is about the experience of your own adventure. You clearly didn't get the point of the game. I pity you.

[uneasiest]

Woah there buddy. I know you do not like his opinion, but there is no need to make personal attacks. There is an old saying that goes "Opinions are like a**holes. Everybody's got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks." Just keep that in mind.

[NukaCola]

Personal Attacks are for N4G users. We can bash the articles and the writers if we want. Also, it isn't that he didn't like it, it's that he clearly bashed something he didn't understand.

[M_Mosley_JR]

I can see my post upsets you, while I'm sorry you and I didn't see eye to eye on the game at least I actually played the game before I wrote this article.

Also I don't see why you would call me an idiot, using your knowledge I can safely say that according to you people who bash on CoD are idiots as well correct?

I understood the game, like I said in the article I was excited to play the game but, that doesn't stop my opinion of the game being disappointing to me.

I can tell you liked the game and I'm glad but I, unfortunately, did not find the same amount of enjoyment as you and many others.

[lashes2ashes]

What he was trying to say is it sounded like you were bashing the game when it clearly went over you're head lol. That's perfectly okay but I'm wondering what you were expecting? Journey is just like flower and flow its abstract thatgamecompany made it pretty clear what this game was. What were you're expectations going into playing the game? And how much did you know before hand the gameplay style of the makers of the game?

[Capt-FuzzyPants]

I feel the same as you. i bought the game and was excited to play it because of all the hype it got on this site. But once I played I did enjoy it a bit, but the only good part about it was the graphics and the music wasn't bad. It was a beautiful game, but I didn't enjoy the gameplay and there was no story. There was no point to the adventure, to the beautiful world. That's all it was, basically 3 hours of scenery music. If they added some sort of story more than what they had, and some more challenging gameplay I think it would deserve all the praise it got.

I know some people love this kind of thing, but it just wasn't for me. Personally in my own opinion it did what it set out to do, but it doesn't deserve as high of scores that a game with more complex gameplay, stories, and still good scenery gets.

[DigitalRaptor]

@ Captain-FuzzyPants and everyone else who didn't get it.

The point of Journey was your take on it. The game has beautiful symbolism (religion, civilization, a spiritual connection to both life, death and what might happen beyond that), and a subtle reversal of many of the tropes behind video games, that forms the meaning behind the game, the narrative and emotions felt throughout, so if you didn't understand or interpret those feelings based on TGS's gameplay and art design, I guess it's too bad, but that's fine. Not all games are for everybody, or to be completely understood and you shouldn't be able to completely understand the messages that Journey feeds you on your first playthrough, which is where its beauty lies. The fact that Journey was nominated as Spike GOTY speaks volumes though. The silent "co-op" in this game was just beautiul and if you missed the sanctity in that, then too bad.

BUT you cannot say this game has no substance just because you didn't understand the deeper meaning behind it. When you can analyse and extract such messages from an experience, it's certainly not style over substance.

[Hicken]

The bottom line is that, while you claim to have known what the game was about, everything you say indicates you expected something out of Journey that was never intended to be there. At the same time(and, perhaps, BECAUSE of that), you missed out on what WAS in the game.

The story is there and it's simple. And it's really not the story of your journey to the mountain; it's all in the history you're shown. It even, after a fashion, gets to the reason why you're on your journey in the first place. Within that history is the reason why you work with someone else, too. It's all pretty obvious, honestly.

It IS a beautiful game, and that's a lot of what the game is about: making you FEEL that beauty. But it's also desolate: everything is ruins and empty. When you're alone, it feels very different from when you have a partner, if only because you're not experiencing it alone.

Like Flower and Flow, Journey is more abstract than 99% of games. As other commenters have said, they don't spell everything out for you. It seems like therein lies your problem with the game.

For all your claims of excitement and such, the truth is that Journey never stood a chance with you. It lost to your preconceived notions.

[blue55]

'The game was all looks and no substance, I left with more questions that I’m sure I shouldn’t have like, what exactly is this thing I’m playing or why am I going to this mountain again or what was the story and why am I wasting my time with this?'

I thought this part was the best. The substance is conveyed in the subtlety of the experience. Query the experience, query what it means to play the game (and the meta-narrative) and look at it as the antithesis of games which dictate to you exactly who you are, what you are doing and how you should feel. It went over his head I guess but it does worry me that somebody with a lack of judgement about what a video game 'experience' is is writing about video games with authority.

[M_Mosley_JR]

A video game experience depends on the players, that's the great thing about video games, being able to have some kind of hand at the narrative rather than reading it or watching it.

I understand why a lot of people think that the game went "over my head" but honestly I knew what I was getting into before I bought the game.

I read interviews, reviews and watched a couple of videos. When I say it has no substance I meant gameplay wise, I felt there was more to the game but the developers held it back so gameplay took a backseat in order for the players to focus on the actual game instead of goals and points and bosses.

[MysticStrummer]

People think you missed the point of the game because of what you wrote.

"the game wasn’t what it was all hyped up to be."

Yes, it really was. To think otherwise means you didn't pay much attention to what was written about it, or pay much attention to Flow and Flower. You should have known exactly what to expect in terms of gameplay, concept, and artistic presentation.

"The game was all looks and no substance"
"why am I going to this mountain again or what was the story"

Journey is obviously a depiction of a spiritual pilgrimage. How can you possibly not see that??? As such, it has more substance than the majority of games, and you don't have to be religious ( I'm not ) to see that. The story wasn't hand fed to you, which I guess is a problem for you, but there is a story.

"I hate the idea of video games being art"

This is the bottom line.

[fucadastates]

you missed the point off this game

[OmniSlashPT]

There are two type of games. The ones that like and get Journey, and the ones who don't. This one is clearly the second type, which is used to linear cliche clunky plots which have no substance at all. Journey is supposed to make you think, reflect what you've just played. It's an experience. No one that played Journey has the same opinions and thinks the same about the game. The cloth, the mountain, the desert, everyone has their own thinking about it, its not an objective point of view.

Just recently I understood how Journey can be related to Buddhism (Nirvana and Apotheosis, the circle of life). I never thought about it before. And that's brilliant.

I compare Journey to Evangelion, everytime I think about it, I discover new things. The only difference is that Evangelion is a bit more fucked up than Journey :P

[M_Mosley_JR]

I agree that Journey will be different for everyone and the point of the game is reflection, as I said in the post I thought about the game I played and reflected what I saw.

I liked the look and the music, it was a well designed game but the way I broke it down was a matter of gameplay mechanics.

I also gave an example in what artistic games could be like, Bastion and Dust are both wonderful and beautiful games without giving up gameplay or story.

[Yehshuah]

the writer said:

" I like Civilization, Halo, Alan Wake, Advent Rising, Psychonauts, Dishonored, Company of Heroes, Street Fighters, Dance Central, Kirby’s Dreamland and plenty of other games in diverse genres."

anyone noticed most these games are either on xbox or multi plat games? he listed no ps3 exclusives.

I SMELL XBOX FANBOY

[M_Mosley_JR]

Civ is PC, Kirby is Nintendo, Company of Heros is another PC game.

As you can tell I play on more than just Xbox and I didn't even say which system I played some of the multi plat games on.

[Yehshuah]

i didn't say all games you mentioned were xbox or multi. i said most.