Games never needed to have intense combat systems to be great. It just seemed like they did. Developer Blue Twelve managed to create the bones of an amazing game without throwing one punch or firing a single gun in Stray.
This game puts you, paws first, in the role of a nameless stray cat born in a cyberpunk apocalypse. You’ll traverse a world inhabited by robot rules and matter-eaty things as you attempt to free this vault of a territory to the outside world that had been abandoned after humans became extinct.
Stray is probably the best cat simulator ever made. Scratching carpets, rubbing on things to leave a scent, even just climbing on shelves to knock things over like an a** hole; everything cats do is something you can do here. On top of this, the team behind the game has crafted a visually and audibly beautiful world to explore. The tidbits of this game are so lovingly done. Among the despair, you’ll be able to rest your cat on beds, piles of rags, and other things that create a serene moment where you just want to put the controller down and take a moment to appreciate what you’re seeing.
One of the other best parts of the game is its soundtrack. For the synth wave generation, there’s a ton of great music and beyond that everything audible in the game has lots of texture. Starting with your DualSense controller, not only does the haptic feedback feel good when you’re cat-scratching at the environment but all your sweet little meows emanate from the controller speaker. Somehow I never became annoyed of hitting that button even though it rarely served an in-game purpose. This leads to the use of the music, beyond tense music cues that signal an oncoming threat; the bass of the soundtrack vibes with how you explore the world. If the soundtrack is in the middle of a song and you’re climbing A/C units, the bass kicks in a touch deeper.
The mechanics of the game are stellar. What Stray has a major problem with is the use of main character. All the emotional weight of the story rests on the robot NPC you interact with in this world through the B12 companion droid, yet we never play as the droid and there’s not a robot to be found in the promotional imagery. Stray wants you to bond with the cat you play as but never really lets you build a unique relationship with it through either motivation or customization. Being able to name the cat alone would have gone a long way, but you remain namelessly worked to death by a bunch of robots that a cat wouldn’t actually care about. My cat can’t even be around a vacuum cleaner much less would he ever help the BB-8 I have.
Even if you apply a willing suspension of disbelief, there’s still a lack of stakes/motivation for the main character of this game. Without spoiling too much there’s an ample missed opportunity early on as the game really begins when you’re separated from your pack of kitties in the first five minutes. Having the cat miss his friends throughout the game and want to see them might be cliche storytelling but at least that would have been more believable motivation than helping a robot that’s just using you for its bidding. When you roll the credits on the game, you can’t help but feel a sense of what was the point of any of that.
The storytelling simply doesn’t match the level of craftsmanship in the game which really keeps it from being memorable. This is a shame because Stray is such a well-made game that pushes the boundaries of what small teams are able to accomplish.
Ultimately, Stray is worth a one-and-done playthrough experience if you’re looking for something different. The game is available now on PlayStation Store and STEAM.
