Previously, Journey has been confirmed as featuring a 1080p presentation, but overall image quality is a little strange. The selected method of anti-aliasing is actually less effective than the technique used on the original PS3 game; pixel density has increased, but pixels tend to shimmer more during gameplay. There's also a number of soft edges throughout, giving the impression of a lower resolution - pixel-counting throws up a wide variance in potential resolution measurements, sometimes sub-native, occasionally above native resolution. Occasionally it seems as if we can see super-sampling on the horizontal axis and upscaling on the vertical. It may well be down to the effects of the post-processing pipeline, but overall it doesn't quite look like the 1080p presentation we would expect. Fortunately, the strong design work manages to side-step these issues for the most part. In-surface aliasing isn't an issue and temporal instability is kept to a minimum. Anisotropic filtering is also engaged to a reasonable degree though it only becomes observable on select surfaces such as flowing scarves.
Much to our surprise, certain visual effects have been removed or diminished in this new version of Journey, sapping away just a touch of the visual perfection that came to define the original game. Motion blur, which is beautifully utilised on PS3, has been completely eliminated, which has a small impact on the presentation: speeding along the sun-drenched slopes feels a tad less dramatic without this effect in place. It's likely that Trick Pixels felt that at 60fps, motion blur was no longer a necessity. We disagree and feel that even at higher frame-rates, motion blur can add greatly to the presentation.
This extends to lighting and effects as well. Sand simulation is a critical element in the presentation of the game. Created from a juxtaposition consisting of three height-map layers and textures designed to simulate millions of little 'mirrors', the original design successfully forms the illusion of a vast body of reactive sand stretched out before the player. This glittering sand effect is now reduced significantly. In the original version, you'll notice sparkling grains of sand present throughout many scenes, while the effect is often absent on PS4, resulting in a flatter overall presentation. The sand in general appears to lack the coarseness that is so evident on PS3.
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