I am usually not a fan of games that value aesthetics over everything else. I felt that a bit with RiME before it actually turned into a good game. But Journey has changed my positions a bit, because this game is SO beautiful. It is not a hard game at all, nor is it probably meant to be. It's simply you, the player, travelling through a desert to a mountain in the distance. And the journey there is actually a lot of fun. I played it with my girlfriend, and she was absolutely wowed by it, and it was hard not to be influenced by that. I liked the game because of how cool the sand gliding and flying mechanics were. I liked how you could stay in the air indefinitely if you just had enough skill (and luck) to be able to consistently fly into the carpet creatures that refill your fly meter. I liked how intensely focused the game was on delivering a fully immersive experience to the point that you can't even pause the game. The character just sits down, and no menu shows up. However, what made me love the game was the aesthetics and the soundtrack. The aesthetics are amazing! The game constantly shifts colour pallet throughout its runtime and plays around with different kinds of surfaces where you leave a trace. First it is sand, then it is snow. And the sand changes colour as well, at one point being blue and green when you are in a tunnel. But the soundtrack was definitely my favourite part! Because there is a pitfall that these aesthetic-valuing games sometimes fall in, and that is that the soundtrack focuses on beauty above everything else. Journey's soundtrack isn't like that at all! It has varied instrumentation based on where in the game you are, it is usually melodic but turns somewhat dissonant whenever something dangerous happens (I especially liked how it sounded when you were heading through a blizzard towards the mountain), and it even uses my absolute weakness, which is the key of B Minor. I just think it sounds melancholic and beautiful in a way that no other key manages for me. And the end section where you go to the mountain is triumphant and entirely in the key of B Minor with my favourite chords in that key playing throughout the section. The only parts where I felt that the game was somewhat lacking was some parts of the snow section, where it slowed down by blowing wind in your face. It didn't have to do that to convey the hopelessness in my opinion, that feeling was already there. Overall a great game though!