I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to anyone who’s played Journey to hear that it holds up incredibly well. The wonderful art design, the gorgeous soundtrack, and the joyous, minimalist gameplay are just as impactful to me now as they were when I first played it over a decade ago. In my eyes, this game sets the standard for what an “art game” should strive to be.

That being said, I do have two nitpicks. First, having the camera be controlled by motion controls is a terrible idea, one born in an era where everyone thought motion controls were going to be the future of video games. Second, I feel like the online aspect kind of diminishes the experience a bit. The story, scant as it is, feels very personal, and having some other schmuck in the frame having the exact same personal experience as you at the same time just lessens the impact to me a bit.

But overall, a must-play in my opinion.

It is pretty astounding how effortless Nintendo made it look to transition from 2D to 3D. This game feels almost exactly like playing a 2D Metroid game despite all the extra design and gameplay considerations that come with a 3D, first-person experience. There are so many amazing little touches, like Samus’s face reflecting off her visor when there are bright flashes of light (definitely startled me the first time it happened) or the x-ray visor showing Samus shifting her hand in her gun to select the different beams. Just very cool, very immersive, very engaging.

I will say, I think the back half of the game loses its shine just a bit. The scavenger hunt for the Chozo Artifacts just feels like unnecessary padding, especially because traversing the map never really stops being a little slow and clunky. If you’re going to have us scour the entire world for the last few of these artifacts, I would have appreciated some kind of limited fast travel a la Symphony of the Night, or even just something like the space jump / screw attack combo you get at the end of Super Metroid that simultaneously eases the monotony of traversal and makes you feel immensely powerful.

I know there’s an argument to be made that having no fast travel makes it a more immersive experience, but personally I don’t think trudging through those first few rooms of the Chozo Ruins or Magmoor Caverns 40 times is any more immersive than doing them 20 times. You reach a point where you’re just slowly walking through a dozen huge rooms with basically no threats, which I just found to be pretty tedious, and tedium generally ruins immersion for me.

I feel like I’m being really down on this game, so I’m gonna try to end on a positive note. The exploration is some of the finest that I’ve seen in the series. For the first few hours, the game feels absolutely bottomless, and the rate at which you acquire new items sets a pretty much perfect pace of drip-feeding you new ways to open up more and more of these giant areas. Going through the Phazon Mines for the first time was a highlight, as the jump up in combat difficulty made me actually desperate to find a checkpoint, a pretty rare feeling in an age of autosaves and scripted near-death experiences.

So yeah, maybe unsurprising, but the game did in fact pretty much live up to the hype. It really reminds you why there’s a whole genre named after this series. Check it out if it passed you by like it did for me.