Journey vs Ori and the Blind Forest
Journey
Journey is literally a quintessential "artsy" adventure game. Why so? Well, the game puts you in the shoes of a mysterious robed figure who you will control throughout your adventure across beautiful, quiet and mostly desert landscapes. Each landscape provides players with a puzzle to solve that will allow them to move on to the next scene, though players can simply roam around the place and drink in the gorgeous visuals.There isn't a lot of buttons in the game and that's fine enough since you really don't need much to solve the puzzles, but personally, I'm incredibly intrigued by the Sing function. Although it is used to solve certain puzzles, most of the time you'll probably be using it idly while your character is travelling. Depending on how long you press the button and how fast you do so, you can actually create amazing little tunes that you'd love to have it recorded down and turned into perhaps a ringtone or something.
That said, Journey is a game that's so much more than composing music and solving puzzles. It is a journey (like its namesake) to help the robed figure discover who he/she is and to help you figure out what's happened in the game world, resulting in the sprawling desert that spans most of the game.
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Blind Forest is a rather unique action-platform game that doesn't only feature breathtaking graphics with a special hand-painted art style that could only be called "striking"; it also has a heartwarming story of courage as you join Ori, a young orphaned "guardian spirit", as he travels across the world in search of the creature responsible for destroying his homeland in hopes of possibly saving it. Ori is no mere ordinary spirit though - you'll need to learn and master a variety of abilities to help him overcome any obstacle in his way. There are plenty of secret locations, side stories, and a range of difficulty modes to keep you engaged and playing for hours on end!Complete with brilliant soundtrack to boot, Ori and the Blind Forest proves that a perfect blend of story, graphics and gameplay make a game; and not just big budgets or already established game franchises. Even if you're not into indie games, this is one game you may still want to try.