27. Journey (PS3)
Journey boasts absolutely gorgeous visuals and a Grammy-nominated score, but those are probably the least impressive things about it. What's really amazing about it is the emotions it evokes, and while those things certainly contribute, it's really down to the game design itself. When you first start out, a small figure swaddled from head to toe in a brown robe and wandering a vast, ruined world all alone, the feeling of solitude and isolation is almost crushing. And then, eventually... you see another wanderer. Thankfully, there is no PSN ID hovering over their head to tell you that this is T0KerSm0Ker420. Nor can you hear them shouting obscenities at you over the headset. For the brief time that you are together, they are not some dumbshit who accidentally stepped away from Call of Duty for a second to try out the latest PSN title. They are a person, and you need them desperately. Stripped of any ability to communicate with one another, save making some humming sounds that merely act as a beacon for other players, you are amazed to find yourselves instantly cooperating to propel each other to previously unreachable spots as if were the most natural thing in the world. That is Journey: a brilliant rumination on human frailty and how we are better off together than we are apart. Also, a reason to curbstomp Roger Ebert's chinless freak face the next time he pontificates on how a video game can't be art because he's a million years old.
