Stray

 

When Stray was released last summer, it received a lot of positive press. The concept intrigued me on a number of levels. First off, the fact that the main character is a cat is unique. More than that, seeing the cat navigate through a Cyberpunk/Blade Runner-like setting looked awesome. The game was included with Playstation Plus when the revised Plus launched last summer and I downloaded it immediately. I didn't get around to playing it until now.

You start the game in a pack of feral cats.  You fall into a drain, traveling underground and ending up in a run-down city occupied only by human-like robots. There are no humans. You quickly befriend a drone called B-12 after downloading an artificial intelligence into its body. You quickly learn that the city is infested by Zurks, a mutant bacteria that was developed to help consume trash, but has evolved to be able to consume organic life and the metal that makes up the robots. The robots have become self aware and have developed their own society, they remain trapped in the underground city. B-12 promises to help the cat return to the surface.

You meet a robot named Momo, a member of the Outsiders, a group dedicated to finding a way out of the city to the surface. You eventually navigate to the Midtown sector of the city, where you meet Clementine, one of Momo's colleagues. She plans to steal an atomic battery to power an abandon subway train leading to the surface. In the process of stealing the battery, the cat and Clementine get caught by the Sentinel police robots. You eventually escape your cage and free Clementine from prison, but she is unable to join you as she is distracting the Sentinel police. Using the atomic battery, you are able to power the subway and escape to the city control center. It is revealed that the city you are trying to escape is called Walled City 99, which was built to shelter humanity from a catastrophe on the surface, but eventually the entire human population is wiped out. Realizing that the legacy of the humans is with the cat and the robots in Walled City 99, B-12 sacrifices himself in order to open the blast doors over the city, exposing the Zurks to sunlight which kills them and deactivates the Sentinels. With the main exit now unsealed and open, the cat leaves the city behind, reaching the surface.

The gameplay is mostly puzzle solving, though there are times when you have to use stealth to avoid Sentinel drones, as well as speed to outrun the Zurks. You can't fight by scratching or biting, so the only action to take when attacked is running and evading the enemy. The game incorporates typical cat shenanigans to solve some puzzles, such as knocking over objects to expose ledges or cause a distraction. At times this can be quite humerus. The game is relatively short, in the 5-10 hour range depending on how much you explore, but I think this is fine for this type of game. You're somewhat limited in what you can do as a cat, so I think this length perfectly suites this game.

Better than the gameplay, however is the city setting you're trapped in. This game looks gorgeous. Using Unreal Engine, the run-down futuristic city is an amazing place to just view. This makes exploring it all that much fun. The plot also traps you into this mystery where you don't fully know what is going on. Are you in the future? Did the Zurks eliminate mankind? This mystery on top of the awesome city to explore creates a great experience. Additionally, the soundtrack is phenomenal and pairs perfectly with the futuristic and mysterious settings. The whole experience is quite enjoyable, and definitely worth 5-10 hours of your time to play.