![]() It’s safe, but it makes exploration in the hub areas a joy rather than a challenge as you nimbly bound up air conditioning vents on the sides of buildings and saunter through railings. You also can’t accidentally walk off a building. In Stray, you press a button to jump to the ledge in the direction you’re holding, and if you can’t make it, you can’t do it. While I think there’s space for games where executing a difficult movement can be a thrill in and of itself, I’ve definitely felt frustrated when my character has flung themselves off a building because a context-sensitive button decided to do something different this time. That’s not to say there aren’t some great gameplay ideas here - the parkour sidesteps my biggest frustration with essentially every game featuring a direct movement system I’ve played: falling off. None of these mechanics are especially innovative or mind-blowingly original, just like they weren’t in Half Life 2, but they’re so well executed and competent, and at a total of a quick 5-8 hours depending on your obsessiveness about collectibles, nothing outstays its welcome. The level design also keeps things constantly fresh - there’s stealth puzzle sequences, there’s some physics-based platforming, you’ll receive a powerful weapon to fight the Zurks and then have it taken away a couple levels later. There’s also the isolated, foreboding tone, which is contrasted by the hope and levity that the still-functioning Companions bring. ![]() ![]() There’s a canal level, a boat level, a subway level. I actually first had this thought mere moments before I hit a switch to call a slow moving elevator and had to fend off hordes of them while the lift descended. The main enemies, hyper-evolved-bacteria creatures called Zurks, fling themselves at you with a screech very reminiscent of headcrabs. It’s a series of linear action sequences broken up by some wandering around dialog-driven hub areas. It’s powerful (or emotionally manipulative, depending on your perspective) in the way that movies about animals often are.Ĭats aside, there’s a lot of Half Life 2 DNA in Stray. The emotional and intriguing story happens both in spite of and because of you: as a cat, you can’t understand any of this, but you still feel things. It’s also a very narratively consistent way of enforcing a silent protagonist - all dialogue is filtered through a little drone companion, who can understand and interpret the other robots around you. You know what a cat can do, and even you ingratiate yourself with the robot Companions and Outsiders wanting to escape the city, who are very confused by your presence and form - you have a base from which to work. It’s all optional, though, meowing included it’s just a grounding in a foreign, confusing world, letting you discover how it all functions from a fixed, quadrupedal perspective. You fall from your arboreal home into a post-apocalyptic city, and as you wander you’ll nap in some cozy hollows and scratch some furniture. You play as a little orange cat and you do indeed have your dedicated meow button. I’m relieved to tell you that Stray is no Cat Simulator, but instead one of the most charming, engaging, and exciting single-player narrative games I’ve played in years.īut it also is, kind of, a cat simulator. ![]() This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I enjoyed Untitled Goose Game – but I’ve become somewhat cynical about the kind of challenge-less meandering that plagues so many “wholesome” releases featuring cute animals. There was an air leading into its release of it being a kind of “Cat Simulator”, featuring groundbreaking “you’re just a little kitty cat!!!” gameplay complete with memetic Press X To Meow a la Untitled Goose Game. I was misled, in the best possible way, by the hype for Stray. ![]()
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