Journey

[mikewesthad]

Hope it doesn't have a cheesy "message" like Flower.

That one was a bit hard to stomach.  But worse than that, I felt like the game never took off the training wheels - just constantly telling me how to solve the puzzles.

But I rather enjoyed Journey.  It was a tight package centered around the beautiful feeling of flying in a fantasy world.  There wasn't anything deeper there message-wise, but I appreciate it for nailing that experience.  Did that part of the experience fail for people?

[God at play]

Finally played through this for the first time yesterday. I thought it was an awesome experience. I felt very refreshed after playing it.

My favorite part was definitely the co-op part; I thought it was genuinely intimate (in the companionship sense of the word) when my partner and I touched each other to charge up our scarves.

It's very easy for me to suspend my disbelief and allow myself to go on an escapist ride, so the hand-holding nature of the design and storytelling didn't bother me.