This is a game where you play as a cat and there are several couches but you can't destroy any of them. That alone should convince you this isn't all its cracked up to be but I'll go on.

First of all, I'm gonna get my big gripe out of the way and say this is way below expectations. Some people will say that a game shouldn't garner negativity in a review because the game wasn't what the player expected. I don't care. Years ago this game was shown as being an experience in which you explore a city as a cat. I was hype for that for so long to basically just get a shitty linear experience. Boo!

There's not really anything in this game that requires you to be a cat. That's pretty weak. You have a dedicated meow button and there are like "scratching posts" throughout the game but none of it feels intrinsic to the gameplay. It's dull.

Speaking of being a cat, cats are usually agile creatures. The way you move in this game is clunky at best though. The movement basically controls like the least polished Assassin's Creed game. I often found myself going in a direction I didn't want while climbing or unable to jump to a new ledge because I wasn't looking at it right. Frustrating to say the least. Also they make this game even LESS a game where you play as a cat by having you become friends with a flying robot drone who serves to do everything for you a cat can't do for the sake of convenience. The robot will shine a flashlight for you, open doors for you, and even teleport items to you. All things that would have been much more interesting if you had to just be a cat and deal. It's dumb. At least you have to knock things over to solve some "puzzles". That's cat as fuck.

Speaking of the robot drone though, this game has maybe the most predictable and by the numbers story ever? At least the most bland I've experienced in years. You're trying to escape a dystopia that has people trapped even though they made it themselves and you make friends who make drastic decisions for you because "there's no other way" or you're most important. Some tired shit and you can see it all coming miles away. It's also all presented in either a shit ton of cutscenes jammed down your throat or they slow your movement speed considerable and/or make you wait on slow NPCs to progress the story. Both are things I find MADDENING. I will say though that the one part of the lore that IS good is that the game is mostly populated by these robots who were companions to humans and have since developed consciousness and formed their own little society. It's a shame they have such a neat concept and do so little with it. Oh well.

Branching off that, the one real impressive thing is the art direction of the game. Each area is unique in its own splendor and all the designs from the cat to the robots and even the mutated threat, Zurks, have a distinct look that really makes Stray feel like it has its own world. Again its just a shame they did nothing with it. Bleh

So yeah. Game is disappointing at outwardly frustrating to say the least. I eventually got used to the jank movement controls and hate finished this game so I could have an authentic review. Like I said, at least the game is pretty. Also I got it "free" with Playstation Plus Premium. This game would have gotten a way harsher treatment if I actually bought it. Hell I wish I had bought it on Steam just to have the satisfaction of refunding it.

I could only really refer this to furries who don't like video games and even then I'd. be sad for them because there's nothing super cat like about being a cat in this. Sure you can navigate smaller spaces but so can fucking Keebler Elves. If you want a game where you have to make your way out of a bleak place while playing as an adorable creature while also have excellent gameplay and movement mechanics, play Rain World. It's five times the game this shit is for 60% of the price. Please just play that instead.

The best Team Ico game Team Ico never made. Stray knows it lacks mechanical depth but it more than makes up for it with atmosphere, exploration and clever puzzle/environmental design. Exploring the cyberpunk hubs on offer is a delight thanks to the huge attention to detail present in every level; interacting with the world never stops being engaging because of the rather obvious central gimmick of viewing society from the eyes of a cat. It's heartwarming yet also very melancholic; a tough balancing act that Stray pulls off extremely well. I have some nitpicks here and there, but other than that Stray is nothing short of excellent. A great debut title from BlueTwelve that exhibits a lot of heart, and I am definitely looking forward to whatever they work on next. I love this silly cat game.

A really pleasant experience, short but sweet. The environmental storytelling is awesome, there are so many little details about the world you can only discover by really exploring and putting everything under a magnifying glass. And the world really is stunning, there are a few spots where you can let the cat rest and watch the camera slowly zoom out to encompass a large area, and I was glued to the screen the entire time.

I was surprised - but not actually in a bad way - that this game isn't some mega-polished ultra high quality visual showpiece. There are object physics, but they easily get screwy when you start to mess with them. The cat animations are great, but up close, the cat isn't actually very graphically detailed. But none of that really matters, the team obviously knew where to spend there time, where the visuals really mattered.

Biggest issue for me was the latter half of the game feeling a bit quick and lackluster compared to the wonder and explorability of the slums. The final area was quite cool, I wish they did more with it.

I was not Feline fine after finishing this.

Stray is puzzle solving platformer that you play as a cat and trying to get back to the surface. playing as a cat you'll normally do what a cat does. Climb up things, knock down stuff and pretty much be a menace while looking cute. While trying to get back you'll run into robots acting like humans and help them with their issues.

The game is not long and will take you a few hours to finish and i dont really see myself going back to play it again, but it has a great idea and worth the asking price.

and if you have a cat, you'll probably be hugging it after finishing this.

Stray is a beautiful, poignant meditation on history's mistakes and on how future generations are left to -- and, with luck and determination, can -- pick up the pieces.

This game is being described as a platformer, but I don't think that's accurate. It's an exploration game. You traverse a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk city, with your progress being gated by environmental puzzles, locked doors, and occasionally hostile NPCs. People are calling it a platformer because of its emphasis on jumping and verticality, but the jumps themselves are handled by contextual button-presses -- you can't actually miss a jump.

The real joy of Stray lies in appreciating its world. Art direction, color and lighting, music and sound meld to place the player in a neon-lit purgatory that somehow manages to feel both cavernous and cozy. The choice of a cat protagonist is a stroke of genius here, as it helps the city -- which is objectively somewhat small by modern video game city standards -- to feel like a massive place in which to get lost exploring every alley and rooftop.

The game's shortcomings feel pretty minor after a first playthrough. My main complaint has to do with the jumping mechanics: it was often hard for me to tell where I could and couldn't jump, and progress in a given direction was often barred by the unexplained absence of a jump prompt for a surface that seemed clearly within reach.

that's a great cat right there.

it's going to be easy to tear this game down and a lot of those criticisms will be valid. does it commit to just being a cat and running around? not at all! i do wish it was less video game-y and i had hoped for more exploration in both gameplay and the, almost there, post-human story.

overall though i can’t help myself when those little cat animations play out. the game is clearly built on a genuine and sincere love for cats and that rules. i’d meow 10 times in a row, scratch at every wall, rug, door, and couch i found. taking a pause to map out how i would scale boxes, pipes, and a vending machine to get onto a roof before pushing vaguely in that direction and watching it all awkwardly play out. it all feels comforting in a special way.

there are moments that you can curl up and sleep while the camera slowly pans out and shows you the surrounding area and i don’t think they ‘do anything’ because the exploration isn’t all that deep. however, you’re never really forced to stop and look around so those became my favourite thing and i would settle for a good 5 minute catnap every time. i just hope this means more cats as the player characters outside of silly cat simulator games.

my least favourite bits were anytime the cat was put in some trouble. genuine ‘i’m not sure how much of this i can take’ stuff that i’d rather have seen gone as the ‘failure’ points felt unnecessary. the game also has a very French vibe and that checks out with the developers so idk if that sways you one way or the other? there’s also an arrow to the knee joke at one point but i understand that the game has been in development for a while..

even in writing this, it all feels like i’m being a lot more critical than i’d like but i can’t overstate how much simply controlling a cat was a wonderful experience. it's also very pretty and the music is nice.

lots of minor annoyances but overall incredibly charming and soul-rejuvenating and i’m better for experiencing it. that's cat ownership baby!

What a huge waste of time. For the player. For the devs. For the artists who designed the assets that make the world feel alive and detailed. What was the point of any of it? Why did they do all of this work, just to make a pretty mediocre easy-mode adventure game? It's frustrating. Couldn't they have worked on a nice little short film instead? Compete with Pixar for once? There's a ton of high quality stuff here! Stray tells a nice story about a lost cat and its adventures in a robot world; you go off and do favors for people as you find your footing, gaining a robot companion named B-12 along the way. The whole time I played it I was annoyed that there was not a jump button.

The lost cat, having slipped away from its companions and down into a dank, mysterious, walled city, has the obvious goal of getting out, of going "Outside." See there's a group of robots in that city known as "The Outsiders," the cat allies with these Outsiders and works in concert with them to develop the technology to get Out. Along the way you learn a little bit about the world you've found yourself in. There are comical story beats where your cat-activity of scratching up the furniture uncovers a secret, that kind of thing. The cat, though a little uncanny (I played on PS4), is convincingly charming if you're a sucker for that kind of stuff. It'll curl up into a ball at some spots, especially one, and you can see they're trying to go for the internet cat love thing. And it's well done, they deserve it.

But so why a video game? You don't need this to be a video game to get all of that. There's some stuff I haven't mentioned--Zergs, a jail segment, some minor stealth elements--that benefit a bit from the videogame format. There's a tension you just can't get to from a movie. But everything else, the world navigation, the "platforming," it is so easy it may as well play itself. This game is functionally a walking simulator, except instead of walking as a person you walk as a cat. Now walking simulators are not bad in and of themselves, I like quite a few of them myself, but realizing you're playing one when you wanted a platformer is disappointing. And even moreso, realizing how much the game would rock as a platformer dissapoints even harder. A lot of the game's navigation is about jumping on stuff, but you can only jump on stuff once there's a button prompt. This creates a disconnect--in a traditional platformer you'll learn your jump range, how high you can go, movement tricks--in this one there's nothing to learn, just look at where the green circle appears.

Does that kind of strict control sound cat-like? What do you know about cats. What are the like, known, essential traits of cats. Cats are known as being fickle or stubborn, they don't often do what you'd like them to do. They're agile, and fast, though occasionally goofy. The internet thinks they're adorable and is obsessed with 'em. They're great subjects for platformers, although it hasn't been done as often as you'd think. Good platformers enable quick, agile movement, and cats are--to some degree--thought of as being quick and agile. Super Mario 3D World and Rain World are probably the biggest examples of cat-based video gaming, the latter featuring a "slugcat" with really tight platforming. Rain World really immerses you in the feeling of being a slugcat. The controls are tight and difficult, and you look dumb when you mess up. The world is mean and unfair, and you feel on a deep level where you are on the food chain. It's might not be fair to compare Rain World and Stray too closely, they're clearly going for different things.

But both games decided to make the focus of their game a cat. A slugcat, in one, sure, but the choice of subject is interesting here. There is a sharp difference in approach and intention. Rain World wanted to put you in the shoes of the slugcat, to set up through its mechanics a kind of grammar to navigate its world. It's a simulator, to some degree. Though, it's worth pointing out that Rain World can be prohibitively difficult, to its detriment, and that Stray kind of exists at the other end of a spectrum here; Stray can be annoyingly easy, to its detriment.

That is all to say that Stray is not a simulator. Stray tells you a story and puts you on an audiovisual adventure. It's gorgeous, and kind of fun, and even has a little gameplay here and there. But on a mechanical level its boring, and maybe even a little lazy sometimes. And it's dumb to focus a "talk to guy do favor for him" game on a cat. People will play this game because its a cat doing cat stuff, and shit brother that's why I played it too. But on the whole. Eh.

A monumental effort for a small team. The environment design is spectacular and one of the clear highlights, and I cannot begin to imagine what a deceptively difficult challenge it must have been to get movement to feel good, with how the cat is animated and how few times I found myself moving to the wrong platform with its simple controls. The music also deserves praise, and I'm starting to get sick of how good the music is in every professionally made game that I play. I can only type "compliments the action perfectly" so many times.

Of course, there is a drawback to having a small team. The game is short, I clocked in at just over 4 hours (keeping in mind that I tend to go through games much faster than the average player). Steam achievements show that 3 days after release, 17% of players who have started the game have already finished it. That's fine, but those who prioritise quantity may feel a little let down if they expected more from a Sony-backed game. In addition to this, the puzzles are fairly simple and none of the action scenes took me more than 2 attempts to complete, so those looking for a challenge may also not particularly enjoy this one.

But come on, you're playing as a cat doing cute cat things in a lavishly decorated crumbling city. I really enjoyed exploring the city, and some of the action scenes were very striking. I enjoyed my time with this one, and I cannot understate how impressive of an achievement it is.

you and i may well be aware of the absolute deluge of indie and double a backed video games that wear childhood nurtured inspiration on their sleeves, titles like a hat in time or here comes niko all too proud to let players know a timeline absent of the gamecube would just as well be one absent of either title. but little did i ever expect a small studio to find themselves filled with inspiration and passion stemming from the absolute most boring fucking trite of video games: those that play themselves. you surely know of those i refer to--the last of uses and the bow raiders and the arkhams and spidermans and ghosts of assassins dogs ages. games that exist as some sort of hollywood mimicry in which high production values are, lol, valued far above anything else, far above the relationship between players and gameplay. games that push, push, push the player forward down the water slide--or really, those dark rides you can watch a defunctland on featuring garfield, because either way, passengers sit tight, see the sights, and leave.

and a large problem with these games lies in their tunnels stretching far, far too long--its passengers lose the novelty of garfield, and most finish climaxing should they have brought a partner aboard far before the eventual light flickers in.

well, the novelty of stray's cat protagonist is one that lasts twenty minutes, a span of useless contextual button presses for reddit and twitter gifs, and this is followed by a further three hours of cinematic slop to slog through. and then the game still goes (for those who have never heard of the sunk cost theory and/or those who, holy fuck, somehow like this shit), and it goes and goes and goes: down linear hallways, up linear walls, along linear paths disguised as well as a blanket disguises the couch. it's a particularly frustrating feeling to emerge into stray's city and find yourself met with all sorts of balconies and vents and roofs and rubble and be able to climb absolutely none of it save the sole path its designers intend.

are linear games bad by design? no. half life 2 is lovely. half life 2 is also not a game made up of multitudes of contextual button presses and cutscenes strung together by cutscene gameplay strung together by more cutscenes. when a chopper chases dr. freeman, the player is threatened and has to haul fucking ass. when completely nonthreatening silverfish chase the stray, the player holds forward, holds their arbitrary run button, the threat of danger not even remotely present, until the next cutscene appears. of course, these moments are broken up by hub world dickery filled with toothless robots who offer no whimsy nor intriguing in their empty words, and the same can be said for your personality-less companion no doubt boardroom blasted to ensure no player would grow weary (or attached).

let's stop dancing around it: stray is an abysmal video game. stray is a complete failure of neutered, paw holding gameplay that is less interested in giving the player tools to navigate its world and more in making sure the wittle pwayer doesn't stway from the wittle path ): and on that note, i wonder to fucking god if its qa players actually enjoyed the experience. were they having fun? were they giving honest feedback? were they actually playing? if i were stuck with this shit, i know i'd be trying to stay off the controller and on my phone as much as possible.

it's rare for a game to truly feel like its designed to waste and absorb your time like a robotic parasite, but stray nails it, let me tell you.

anyway, the star is for the hints of creativity. the half star is for the surprisingly excellent soundtrack from the... guy who did cave story wii of all things. huh.

play this if you don't like video games.