Review
Played on: Xbox Series X
Released: 2023
I watched my daughter play Stray last year. It was not a title I was planning on playing myself. Before going multiplatform, I kind of wrote it off as hype being a PS5 exclusive and featuring a cat.
Recently, I spotted her copy lying about at home and I decided to give it go! After all, I'd had an enjoyable time watching my kid play through it and I needed a more relaxing title.
On the surface it's one of those feel good, walking sims that appeals to casuals, with minimum requirements for gameplay. However, as you play and get into the story, there's a fair bit platforming, avoiding enemies and cool exploring parts.
Let's purr and take a closer look!
Set in a dystopian, cyberpunk-like future, you play an orange cat which accidentally falls into an underground city. Within it, there are thousands of nasty critters which lurk in the dark. When you finally escape them to a haven of a city square, sporting a neat neon lit urban aesthetic, you realise all the inhabitants are robots. Thus, you story finding out what has happened and how to escape the city.
It's a well-presented story, surprisingly dark at times, and taps into melancholic emotions along the way. I suspect a lot of players really love that you play a cute orange cat too. What surprised me were the turns the story took and it takes on a much bigger story of how the underground city has been abandoned.
Stray plays well for this kind of game, with a responsive and fairly interactive control, bledning what I can only describe as a walking sim and action platformer. Although jumping is simplified; you need a jump prompt to be able to do so, there's enough places available to climb to make it at least feel like a platformer. It adds verticality to the world and organically allows you to do what a cat does best; climb stuff.
There's a nice blend of puzzle solving thrown in, which goes along nicely with unfolding story. Puzzles never reach any high complexity, but they make the progression interesting. Usually, they're related to finding pages from a journal or doing a fetch quest to require an item. There are even a few side quests to help the robots with too, giving that sensation of taking part in the daily life of the robots.
Action scenes take place too; they're mostly about escaping the creepy Zurgs, which remind me a lot of the head crabs from Half-Life. Once they turn up, they will attack in hoards to kill your cat. These scenes become quite intense and adrenaline pumping!
It's this combo of platforming, puzzles and action escape scenes that makes Stray stick out from just another story driven walking sim. It helps momentum and variation through the 5–7 hour playthrough. It paces its progression well and keeps you intrigued along the ride.
Visually, Stray is very solid looking title considering its indie roots. The environments are well designed, sporting that blend of an overgrown city and a cyberpunk city of the future. There are tons of small detail and interiors are scattered with items.
Each house looks like a living place, abandoned by time with all the belongings of its earlier owner still there. The overall design fills like a crammed, Asian styled city and being a cat allows you to sneak and climb around everywhere to explore!
Especially the lighting is well done with reflective surfaces showing the neon signs in their reflections on tiled walls or water puddles. There's a great atmosphere in the dimly, warm orange, lit rooms, and in contrast are bright, flickering fluorescent tube, lit rooms too.
I appreciate the 60fps optimisation for consoles too, not something I'd expect from this type of release. Furthermore, it adds extra responsiveness to the controls and keeps a sharp and detailed image.
Music is pleasant and of the ambient electronic nature, but can also ramp up in action scenes, building a contrast between intense moments. There's overall a melancholic vibe as you realise robots are still living in hope of escaping, the vibe it sets with the neon city hits a great atmospheric spot.
It's clearly a title for a casual audience, never pushing the player in any way that is too hard or tricky to solve. The prompt-based jumping reflects something this and feels restrictive for players used to just jump and land on ledges freely.
Thus, it becomes mainly a playthrough of atmosphere and story. Yet, it goes the extra distance to add more depth with quests, puzzles, platforming and action sequences.
My daughter and I each enjoyed our playthroughs in entirely different ways; she is less experienced as a gamer and enjoyed the simple and enjoyable playthrough, while I just preferred a more relaxing game to kick back and disconnect my brain.
Both of us really liked the atmosphere with the contrast between cosy little homes of robots to the scary and infested areas of Zurgs! Pick this up for a unique story experience and atmosphere, but don't expect any great depth or much replay value.
