Day 38, Game 38 - Journey

The DICE awards happened tonight in the fabulous city of Las Vegas, which is the official and most renown awards for the video game industry, presented by AIAS. It's your typical award-type show, tossing out trophies to many different category winners. The biggest winner of the night, however, was the downloadable games genre. TellTale's heart-wrenching game The Walking Dead and ThatGameCompany's emotionally powerful game Journey swept up at DICE, leaving most of the big-name, triple-A titles in the dust.

Journey, the little 2 hour, dialogue free game that is more of an experience than a standard game, won the overall Game Of The Year award, and stunning feet for a game of its kind, but no surprise to anyone lucky enough to experience the masterpiece. Because of this, and in honor of this, I played Journey tonight for my project of playing a different game each day, every day for an entire year.

Not only did I play Journey, and experience Journey, but I beat Journey as well. That is, if Journey can actually be beaten. It is my 4th or 5th time plaything through to the end, and each time I loved every minute of it, despite the length or lack of surprises. It is still a game I haven't tried at all for any of the trophies, and enjoy all the same. Each time I play I find myself drifting off mentally to a different place, thinking about different things and taking in different aspects of what I see the message of the Journey to be.

Tonight was no different. A lot of stuff going on in my personal life made me reflect a little bit while I maneuvered my silent wanderer through the desert to his ultimate destination. Still quite a powerful experience, even after making the journey so many times already.

And that is why this game is so powerful, and why I unequivocally agree with Journey receiving Game Of The Year from DICE. I said it when the game came out, and was met with crazy looks and arguments. Now? Looks like I wasn't so crazy after all. Either that, or everyone else became as crazy as me.

Congrats, ThatGameCompany. You earned it.

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