Written Review.
Welcome to my latest Final verdict, today I’ll be talking about Stray a game that was released for Playstation 4 and 5 and also on the PC.
Stray starts with you, a little ginger cat interacting with a few other cats on a rainy day in a dry hideaway. After you sleep the next day you all venture out into the world. You get separated from the other cats and end up underground.
The game is a relatively linear experience, though there are times where you can explore a little off the beaten path to find collectables and items of use. While you progress through the game you get a companion with you in the form of a tiny drone. One of the collectables happens to be memories of the drone, known as B12, as he tries to remember his past.
Stray is a third-person platforming adventure, though unlike traditional platformers you can’t just jump whenever you feel like, basically when you roam around the underground city you are able to jump onto walls, boxes and other objects, there has to be something interactable there for you to jump upon it. You can interact with the inhabitants of the city too, you can talk to them, which the help of B12 who can translate what is being said by them, or you can rub up against them in an affectionate way. You also have the option of presenting items you have collected to most of the inhabitants and they will help you in the best of their abilities, or point you in the right direction.
The underground is a mysterious place, filled with neon lights that keep the place bright, as there is no sunlight, all the denizens of this city are actually not human, they are all robots, robots with more to them than what seems to be simple programming. You’ll meet many of them on your relatively short journey through the game and while venturing through the city trying to find a way to get back to your cat family and get back to the surface and outside you begin to unravel the mysteries of B12 and where the humans have gone.
You won’t have a completely carefree time climbing up and out, there’s an enemy in the game called the Zurk, these are strange little creatures, smaller than yourself, who attack you and chase you about. They are even able to eat the robot citizens and this is why getting out and about exploring is tough with robots too fearful for their lives to have doors unlocked if they lead outside of the communal area they reside. There’s some nice puzzle solving in throughout as well, nothing too taxing just simple puzzles that break up more active sections of scurrying about.
Stray is a very nice game to look at with wonderfully designed robots with a very distinct style that feels both retro and futuristic, not only that the city itself is a great setting with its grim, dystopian design fitting for the rundown future that is portrayed as a generally miserable landscape with its occupants wanting more and seeking to get outside for the first time in many years, or even ever, you also have a soundtrack that for the most part is atmospheric, lending itself to the dingy unsettling slums and uninhabited tunnels that spread further out. There are times where the music becomes hastily frantic as you encounter some Zurks and are needing to escape in a hurry along with that you have more mellow, affecting compositions that meld with scenes that require intrigue or even emotional depth. Speaking of audio, the fact that there is a meow button is great. you can wander around meowing to your heart’s content and it actually helps in later parts of the game.
I’ll be honest here and say that I really loved the game, I did have a few minor glitches, though they are pretty trivial and few and far between and fortunately were simply the cat clipping through a box or other piece of debris.
As I said I loved the game, it all comes together nicely with its lovely visuals, gripping atmosphere, engrossing audio and intriguing story. I can’t think of any faults other than the clipping which is so minor it is litteral nit-picking at what is considerably the best game of the year so far and with that, I will rate this game 10 Pugsleys.