Friends were dangling Journey incentives in my face through Twitter the other day: and get the music credit, and and told me of the super short average game time (1-2hrs).  I was also snow-stormed in, so it was perfect really.

Ultimate conclusion: if videogames could be considered a form of art, Journey would be one of them.  It really perfects the minimalist and interactive approach to storytelling.  You can unveil as much or as little of the world as you want, and I'm sure there are multiple interpretations to what exactly happened... my instinctive interpretation was a rather sad one, so after the game returned to the start screen I kinda needed a moment to let everything sink in and fully digest.  This game is personally right up there with Shadow of the Colossus; minimalist storytelling, interactivity, gorgeous graphics, music, everything.  Apparently, the soundtrack is up for a (well-deserved) Grammy nomination?  Insane. EDIT: Aww, it didn't win...

The co-op feature of this game... is it unique to this game?  I'd think most games would let you easily identify and pick your friends...  Either way, I've never played anything with this co-op system before, so I was honestly afraid of how this was going to work out.  In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by the emotional journey this feature took me through, and all with random strangers that I'll likely never play with again!

I ended up meeting 2 people through my run; the first person ditched me early on as I struggled through controls, but I stuck with the second person 'till the end.  I was under the impression that we both didn't know what we were doing, so that may have helped keep us together, who knows.  But I was amazed that by the end of it all, we were running back for each other whenever a guardian snatched us up, called out to each other through the snow storm (also snow-storming right outside my window real time, go figure ), and we huddled up against each other through the cold gusts of wind.  And the beauty of this all is that it's with a complete random stranger and you don't utter a single comprehensible word to each throughout the entire game, and yet you can forge such a sense of companionship if you so choose!

I've kept hearing that the popularity of Japanese games have been going downhill; if other countries are making innovative games like this, I can see why.  In an age where most games involve some degree of actively going out to kill things (even though I own and do enjoy my fair share of violent games), Journey was very unique and refreshing.  Personally, even spiritual, but only because of things I noticed and freely interpreted on my own through gameplay.

Really looking forward to what thatgamecompany comes up with next!