Nostalgia Factor:
I, like many people, first heard about Stray when it was released back in 2022. I remember the game's popularity exploding out of nowhere. It immediately piqued my interest. I like video games. I like cats. I have an orange cat. A game where you play as an orange cat? Sign me up! But you know me. I refuse to buy anything brand-new. I decided to wait until the game was free or I could pick it up for dirt cheap, no matter how long down the road that was.
Turns out, I wouldn't have to wait too long. I've been on a kick of getting games from my local library, and I decided to do a quick search and see if they had Stray. Lo and behold: they did! I put the game on hold, and a few days later it was ready for me to come pick up.
Would the game live up to the tremendous hype, or would it fall flat on its face? Let's find out!
Story:
I came into this game completely blind, and I have to say that it went in a direction I would have never seen coming. I expected a cutesy game where you play as a cat, and do silly cat things. Maybe something akin to Untitled Goose Game. That's not what we got. At all. I imagine that this must be how people felt about Ecco the Dolphin back in the 90s. They expected a cute, fun, kids game where you play as a dolphin. Instead they got a story about a time travel and aliens. Similarly, Stray isn't just a silly kids game where you play as a kitty cat. It is a post apocalyptic tale of a group of robots trapped within a walled city.
Like I said, I came into this game knowing nothing. The action begins with you and a group of other cats strolling through an abandoned sewer or irrigation system of some kind. Big rusty pipes and that kind of thing. Your cat slips and falls down into a walled city that is populated by robots. The cat activates a drone that has the brain of a scientist downloaded on it. The sentient drone joins forces with the cat, and they go on a journey through the robot city in order to find a way out of it.
Along the way you encounter a colorful cast of robot characters. The setting of the game reminds me of the Stephen King novel The Wastelands, where the characters discover robots on a programmed loop doing the same thing for all eternity. Some of the robots seem to be gaining sentience, however, and are looking for a way out of the city.
The whole game had a very Nier Automato-ish feel to it, with the characters often saying similar things to the characters in Nier. There is even a city in a treehouse populated by robots that feels like it was pulled right out of Nier. I always felt that the story of Nier fell flat for me. Guess how I felt here? Exactly the same. Been there, done that, a thousand times over.
Gameplay:
Stray seems heavily influenced by other games I've played in the past. It starts out in a linear fashion. You just have to make your way from point A to point B. A little icon indicates where you can jump. Just hit the button and the computer makes the jump for you. You don't actually have a normal jump like you would in a platformer. Speaking of which: this is not a platformer. The way you jump and skip along, doing parkour while hitting x, reminded me a bit of the gameplay in Uncharted or Assassin's Creed. You often have to find a way to traverse some dangerous situations, like jumping from balcony to balcony. You have to look up and around, and see where you need to jump. You can think you are stuck, but then you notice a signpost jutting out that you can jump on to make a crossing. That's the main challenge early on in the game. Just finding out where to go is almost like you are solving a puzzle itself.
As the game progresses, things open up a bit more. The only way I can think to describe these parts is... Shenmue? You have to walk around and talk to people. They tell you who you need to talk to next. You collect things for people and do jobs for them. It just reminded me off and on of Shenmue for some reason. Am I the first person ever to mention these two games in the same breath?
There are occasional stealth segments as well. Metal Gear.
The game also has strong walking simulator vibes. So that's how I would describe it. Not a cutesy cat game geared towards kids, but a walking simulator peppered with elements of Nier: Automata, Uncharted, Shenmue, and Metal Gear.
And it sucks.
Okay, maybe sucks is a bad word. It is just not very good. I thought it was boring AF. I spent way too much time wandering around trying to figure out where it was I was supposed to be going and what I was supposed to be doing. Even when the game is moving along from chapter to chapter, I still didn't find myself very interested in what was going on. I had no connection to the storyline. And in a game with such weak gameplay elements, it HAS to have a good storyline. And it didn't.
The game is so dim and dreary. There is no element of fun to be found here. It's almost like the ability to play as a cat is more of a gimmick that anything else. They could have just as easily told this story with a human character. It is just completely the opposite of what I expected coming in. A happy, frolicking cat adventure this is not.
Graphics:
The game looks fantastic. I have to give credit where it is due. The post apocalyptic world seems so decayed and pathetic. It is filled with such small, smart details, from the posters on the wall to the garbage you'd see strewn about. Really felt like a dead, forgotten world.
When the robots are introduced, the game takes on more of a cyberpunk feel to it, which (again) is not what I expected from this game coming into it. The neon colors and the heavily sci-fi influenced locations look amazing. I really loved the world of the game, if anything.
Sound:
The game sounds pretty good. It's a very atmospheric game. All the little sound effects, like the humming of electricity and the patter of the cat's footsteps, all make the dead world feel very real. Occasionally you'll encounter an area where music is playing, and it is easy to get pulled right into the game. There is not a lot of voice acting here, which I suppose is okay because a cat doesn't really understand English. In all, I think the game definitely gets a thumbs up in the audio department.
Overall:
Meh. I was very unimpressed by the gameplay of this title. Stray is awesome in the audio and visual department, but lacking in the fun department. I often asked myself if I was enjoying myself as I played this game, and the answer was almost always no. I expected so much better. I almost feel as if a generic platformer where you controlled a cat would have been more fun than this. It was barely even about being a cat. It's about the robots and their struggles to regain humanity and escape the city.
If you like the game's story, you probably got much more out of it than I did. Can we agree the gameplay sucks, though? Sometimes a game can get away with it if the story is good, but I don't think that this was the case here. I didn't like the story. I didn't like the gameplay. I was interested in the setting and the atmospheric vibe of the story, but that's it.
Unfortunately, I can't really recommend Stray to anyone else. It does almost nothing for me. I suppose, in its defense, I can safely say that it is not a terrible or a bad game. I wasn't horribly offended by how awful it was as I played it. I just found it to be very bland. If you like the storyline, you will get more out of it than me. But I won't be returning to this anytime soon, if at all.
THE GRADE:
D+
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