[ozzie]

I also agree with the cinematic platformer label. These kind of games were always more interested in storytelling, atmosphere and depicting a believable game world than your usual platformer. The Oddworld games fit also into this category.

But I haven't played Journey. I'm just judging by the looks of it. Maybe it feels more like an adventure game than I presume. The labels we use to describe games are often too limited and vague anyway. I find it more helpful to describe what a game has to offer and doesn't have to offer. People consider Dreamfall to be an adventure game, but fans of the genre were disappointed when they found out how much action elements it contained and that they couldn't progress past those fighting and stealth sequences. For many it wasn't adventure enough and required too much reflexes.
Genre labels can say astoundingly little about a game. I think they only help for traditional games which stick to conventions established in the past.
On the other hand, he we are, discussing in a forum of a site called AdventureGamers. So I guess it's kind of important to know what can and can't be an adventure game. I just think that the appliance of a label isn't especially useful to figure out if such a kind of game might be for you.

Edit: Just watched the Gamespot video and her argument basically is that Journey, like adventure games, offers a thoughtful narrative and something something unconventionally (I couldn't quite make out what she was saying there). Well, thoughtful narratives can be a part of pretty much any genre now. Platformers can have thoughtful narratives (Psychonauts, Another World,...), so can action-adventures (Outcast) and RPGs (Planescape: Torment). Hrm.
And whatever she was talking about regarding "unconventional", her examples of adventure games (King's Quest V, Broken Sword, Curse of Monkey Island,...) are very conventional ones of the genre.
So I'm not convinced.