A mini review of Stray
Aug. 16th, 2024 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseI finally got this game in a sale, and I played it. It's not a long game (barring having to replay some sections over and over because you failed them) - I finished in 5.5 hours. I'm not sure about the replayability, though I intend to do so in order to do more exploring and 100% the collectibles.
The non-spoilery version is that I loved the graphics and environment, the story was great, for someone who likes cats and exploring post-apocalyptic environments this is definitely worth playing. That being said, it's a puzzle game with several stretches where you have to avoid enemies - either by running and dodging or being stealthy and using the environment to your benefit. While there are some cute and friendly cat shenanigans, it is a fairly dark game. I went into this game only knowing that you are a cat and there are robots (trying not to spoil myself), and was unpleasantly surprised. That being said, I did enjoy it once I changed my expectations - it reminds me in a vague way of Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, though I didn't figure that out until quite late in the game.
(If you're looking for a cozy cute friendly cat shenanigans game that's more cartoony than realistic, I've heard good things about Little Kitty, Big City.)
I'll put spoilery things below the cut, but I want to leave one above it: before you start your game, go into settings, select the controls tab, and change shake mode to single tap (and of course, save the change). This will make some sections of the game slightly easier, especially when you're using a keyboard/mouse. I only discovered this 2/3 of the way through the game and I regret not finding it earlier.
The general plot of this game is that you're a perfectly ordinary stray/feral cat who falls down into a walled city. You have to get back out, but the hole you fell into is way up in the sky - certainly not a place that you, a tiny little cat, can climb back to. With the assistance of your friends, you can get back out and back home, but it's not easy. You get involved in a tale about inequality, authoritarianism, and how humanity ended in this particular universe.
It is 12 chapters long, and as mentioned above it took me about 5 1/2 hours to complete. I didn't try to 100% anything, a lot of my time was spent dying over and over in certain sections.
Five of the chapters are pretty much free-roam (within boundaries) safe areas - Chapters 1,4,6,9, and 12. The rest you'll be facing enemies that can kill you, so you'll be either running for your life (with some clever manipulation of enemy behavior thrown in) or using stealth (also with some clever manipulations of enemy behavior thrown in).
The enemy you'll be facing in the first part of the game - chapters 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 - are the Zurks. They're best described as hairless, blobby rats with cyclops eyes. They love hunting in packs and they'll eat anything that moves - robot or cat. Getting through areas with them either require a ton of running, clever use of their tendency to jump (sometimes straight into a pit), or both. If you have one or two clinging to you, they can be shaken off, but if a bunch of them catch up you have to re-start from your last checkpoint. Remember above I mentioned changing a setting earlier? These enemies are the reason why.
For a short while you'll have a weapon that can splat Zurks, but you can't use it very long and it has to recharge, so you'll still be doing a lot of running and dodging.
The enemies in the second part are Sentinels. They're robots that patrol the areas in chapters 10 and 11 and they require more stealth and problem-solving to get around. If you get caught in their lighted search area (represented with blue light), the light will change to yellow briefly and then to red. When it turns to red, they start shooting - it's electric current, but far too much for your tiny cat body. These bolts can be dodged similar to how you dodged the Zurks, but it's one hit and you're gone. Fortunately, they don't react if you're not in their view, so you can make use of the physical barriers as well as random boxes scattered about that you can dodge into.
My favorite sections of the game were when I could just wander around, play a bit, maybe learn a bit more about the worldbuilding/backstory, and just talk to the robots. Basically, chapters 4, 6, 9, and to some extent 10 and 12. (4 and 6 feature a neighborhood full of peaceful robots trying to carry on the traditions and activities of the humans before them; 9 has a similar neighborhood. You can also explore a third neighborhood in 10 until you advance the plot and trigger a lot of Sentinels. Chapter 12 is also completely exploration, though the inhabitants of that section are not as interesting as the other neighborhoods.)
It's safe to say that any section that involved Zurks or Sentinels was probably not my idea of fun, though I'd take the Sentinels any day. Stealth games are not my thing, but at least Sentinels don't hunt in packs of 20, and it was less onerous than I thought to get around them.
But if I had to pick out two sections that I really hated, it was the first part of Chapter 8, where you have to run through a gauntlet of Zurks (and where I repeatedly died until I discovered that control change I mentioned earlier) and the last part of chapter 11, where you have to get three Sentinels into cells - which is especially tricky when you have to lure two of them into the same cell.
Is it worth $30? I don't know. Definitely, the level design is excellent and the environment is beautiful. But this is not a hundred-hour RPG, it's a relatively short game - you can take longer if you're going for 100% completion, like to bask in the environment, or die a lot, but if you don't do any of the above this takes about 2 hours.
The non-spoilery version is that I loved the graphics and environment, the story was great, for someone who likes cats and exploring post-apocalyptic environments this is definitely worth playing. That being said, it's a puzzle game with several stretches where you have to avoid enemies - either by running and dodging or being stealthy and using the environment to your benefit. While there are some cute and friendly cat shenanigans, it is a fairly dark game. I went into this game only knowing that you are a cat and there are robots (trying not to spoil myself), and was unpleasantly surprised. That being said, I did enjoy it once I changed my expectations - it reminds me in a vague way of Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, though I didn't figure that out until quite late in the game.
(If you're looking for a cozy cute friendly cat shenanigans game that's more cartoony than realistic, I've heard good things about Little Kitty, Big City.)
I'll put spoilery things below the cut, but I want to leave one above it: before you start your game, go into settings, select the controls tab, and change shake mode to single tap (and of course, save the change). This will make some sections of the game slightly easier, especially when you're using a keyboard/mouse. I only discovered this 2/3 of the way through the game and I regret not finding it earlier.
The general plot of this game is that you're a perfectly ordinary stray/feral cat who falls down into a walled city. You have to get back out, but the hole you fell into is way up in the sky - certainly not a place that you, a tiny little cat, can climb back to. With the assistance of your friends, you can get back out and back home, but it's not easy. You get involved in a tale about inequality, authoritarianism, and how humanity ended in this particular universe.
It is 12 chapters long, and as mentioned above it took me about 5 1/2 hours to complete. I didn't try to 100% anything, a lot of my time was spent dying over and over in certain sections.
Five of the chapters are pretty much free-roam (within boundaries) safe areas - Chapters 1,4,6,9, and 12. The rest you'll be facing enemies that can kill you, so you'll be either running for your life (with some clever manipulation of enemy behavior thrown in) or using stealth (also with some clever manipulations of enemy behavior thrown in).
The enemy you'll be facing in the first part of the game - chapters 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8 - are the Zurks. They're best described as hairless, blobby rats with cyclops eyes. They love hunting in packs and they'll eat anything that moves - robot or cat. Getting through areas with them either require a ton of running, clever use of their tendency to jump (sometimes straight into a pit), or both. If you have one or two clinging to you, they can be shaken off, but if a bunch of them catch up you have to re-start from your last checkpoint. Remember above I mentioned changing a setting earlier? These enemies are the reason why.
For a short while you'll have a weapon that can splat Zurks, but you can't use it very long and it has to recharge, so you'll still be doing a lot of running and dodging.
The enemies in the second part are Sentinels. They're robots that patrol the areas in chapters 10 and 11 and they require more stealth and problem-solving to get around. If you get caught in their lighted search area (represented with blue light), the light will change to yellow briefly and then to red. When it turns to red, they start shooting - it's electric current, but far too much for your tiny cat body. These bolts can be dodged similar to how you dodged the Zurks, but it's one hit and you're gone. Fortunately, they don't react if you're not in their view, so you can make use of the physical barriers as well as random boxes scattered about that you can dodge into.
My favorite sections of the game were when I could just wander around, play a bit, maybe learn a bit more about the worldbuilding/backstory, and just talk to the robots. Basically, chapters 4, 6, 9, and to some extent 10 and 12. (4 and 6 feature a neighborhood full of peaceful robots trying to carry on the traditions and activities of the humans before them; 9 has a similar neighborhood. You can also explore a third neighborhood in 10 until you advance the plot and trigger a lot of Sentinels. Chapter 12 is also completely exploration, though the inhabitants of that section are not as interesting as the other neighborhoods.)
It's safe to say that any section that involved Zurks or Sentinels was probably not my idea of fun, though I'd take the Sentinels any day. Stealth games are not my thing, but at least Sentinels don't hunt in packs of 20, and it was less onerous than I thought to get around them.
But if I had to pick out two sections that I really hated, it was the first part of Chapter 8, where you have to run through a gauntlet of Zurks (and where I repeatedly died until I discovered that control change I mentioned earlier) and the last part of chapter 11, where you have to get three Sentinels into cells - which is especially tricky when you have to lure two of them into the same cell.
Is it worth $30? I don't know. Definitely, the level design is excellent and the environment is beautiful. But this is not a hundred-hour RPG, it's a relatively short game - you can take longer if you're going for 100% completion, like to bask in the environment, or die a lot, but if you don't do any of the above this takes about 2 hours.
