6 Tips on playing Journey, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and basically any short really REALLY emotional game.

Ok well the advice I'm gonna give here is inspired by, as you can probably guess by the title of this post, by my playthroughs of Journey and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Games which I intend to make a more thorough comparison in a later post so if you're interested you might wanna look out for that.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Journey

However the advice is in my opinion applicable to any game that has great emotional impact and requires a lot of immersion. It's pretty obvious advice but it's still that which I feel many people still choose to ignore and not fully understand how much of a difference it can make. Another thing to point out is that all this advice is really for the first playthrough for each of these games, since it's the first go that really has the most impact on you. Obviously these rules are subjective and don't apply to every single person out there but I still feel they do to most. Anyway lets crack on:

1. Play with nobody else present in the room.
You need to be fully immersed in the game so that means having no-one around to distract you. Try and make sure that you are able to play with no-one entering into the room later on, you really do need to be fully isolated for those 2-3 hours.

2. Play it all the way through in one sitting.
Pacing is really important when presenting a narrative and this really can't be properly experienced unless you play the whole game from start to finish in one go. Stopping and starting a session affects the immersion and therefore the pacing that you experience. If you know you don't have time to play through the whole game before you start then just wait until a later date before you play, trust me your patience will be rewarded.

3. Have no music (or any noise for that matter) playing outside of the game.
Similar to the first point, outside noises provide distraction whether it be music, construction out on the street. Try and quieten the room as much as possible turning off any possible source of sound and if there are sounds that can't be stopped, then maybe it might be better to wait until a later date to play it.

4. Wear noise proof headphones?
This one stems off from number three and is one which I'm not 100% sure on for everyone. For me headphones are perfect since they block out noise and provide me with clear sound. However for other people it depends on the quality of your headphones. You'll just have to be the judge on which source you own provides the clearest sound. I'm curious about surround sound vs headphones, because for me I imagine I would still choose headphones but I've never experienced surround sound in a home before so I can't really comment on that too much.

5. Darken your room as much as possible.
For the same reason that you don't want ambient sounds distracting you, you don't want ambient light distracting you either so closing the curtains and turning some of the lights off can make a big difference.

6. Only play the game when you feel like you want to play the game.
What I mean by this is that don't play the game just because you've got nothing else to do, but only play when you feel like you really want to get in this game. These sorts of games aren't for everyone and going in for the first time with a more positive attitude towards the game in my opinion can really affect the experience, hopefully ensuring that you're one of the people who can enjoy it.

Well that's my advice for playing Journey and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, remember though afterwards I would lax these rules a little since you've got to make sure it doesn't affect your health. So these are only definite for your initial play of each game. They're obvious and well known, but I still feel a little reminder of how to possibly enhance your gaming experience can't hurt. Well I'm off now so have fun playing. Cheerio!