Stray (PS5)
For some, the idea of a game where you play as a realistically animated and rather adorable cat would be a selling point that doesn’t need much more elaboration. However, if you pick up Stray as an excuse to fool around as a playable tabby cat, you might be surprised to find the game moving into quite a few different directions. Not only will the cat soon find themselves interacting with a post-human robotic society, but they’ll even end up fighting back against unusual creatures that they’ll need to pop by shining a violet light on them. Stray certainly isn’t just a cat simulator, but whether that’s a good thing is a tough question to figure out.
Stray begins with the player living a simple life as the unnamed feline lead, the cat walking around some overgrown architecture in search of food and water. There’s a little room to bond with the rest of your small clowder, but eventually the stray cat takes an unfortunate tumble, not only finding themselves separated from their group but now down deep within a closed of city with no easy exit. Luckily, the cat will soon receive some help in the form of a tiny drone named B-12 who starts to add some actual dialogue to the experience, the cat portrayed somewhat realistically so it won’t exactly be engaging in conversations itself. Still, even though B-12 journeys alongside the stray cat for the rest of the journey, some of the illusion of authentic cat behavior is broken a bit by the fact it clearly understands spoken and written English to some degree as it needs to start following instructions and even begins making trades with the robotic populace of the city. Since this game seems to be in a far-flung future though you can at least excuse it away as perhaps some minor evolution to feline intelligence if you want to cover up for what is more than likely just a design convenience.
As you explore more of the enclosed city, you’ll begin to find the humanoid machines who occupy the buildings left behind after humanity went extinct. They seem to have a bit of reverence for their organic forebears despite being aware of their robotic ancestors having first been developed as servants, but the unfortunate thing about their increased self-awareness is they seem to have fallen into many of mankind’s failures. There is definitely strong class disparity to be found between the small robot settlements, a fitting theme for a game steeped in a cyberpunk aesthetic. The grungy neon ruins occupied by these robots certainly invites the player to look around rather than just strolling along to the next objective, and there are structures and situations certainly designed purely to show off the cat’s excellent animation and provide it with some amusing interactions. This is at times a game where you can amusingly type on a keyboard by walking across it or play a piano by jumping onto it, but there is still some more serious storytelling when the game turns its eye more towards the plight of the robot populace rather than your generic objective of reconnecting with the other cats. It doesn’t feel like the story is exactly breaking new ground or even delving too deep into the topics it discusses, but it at least carries you to a few new locations with interesting area designs and has you run into a few amusing personalities.
One unfortunate element of the time you spend as this fairly normal feline is that much of your actions are inevitably fairly shallow. It’s a bit hard to point at one exact gameplay style the game engages in beyond the generic “adventure” label, but a lot of time is spent simply navigating the city, a task that is rarely much more than identifying where to jump next and pressing a button to automatically complete that action. You can’t fall even on purpose and there’s almost no pressure on this element of exploration much of the time. While sometimes you do need to find the exact path at times like figuring out which appliances you’ll need to leap between to reach a rooftop, it’s still most often just a matter of looking up and seeing the obvious choice and taking it to gain elevation. This navigation makes up a good deal of what you’re doing despite its simplicity, but there are segments where you at least need to do a tiny bit of problem solving. The puzzles aren’t often very deep, you’ll need to perform actions like carrying batteries to the right plugs but the pieces of these puzzles are rarely far apart, and sometimes you need to go locate an item you’ll trade to a robot citizen for some other good or service, but these don’t inject too much exciting interactivity into the experience. It does stave off some of the emptiness you might otherwise feel if you hadn’t been given more direct tasks though, and searching for things like sheet music for a friendly musician who will play music as you sleep beside them at least requires a little bit of scouring and a good eye to complete.
It is perhaps for the best Stray doesn’t deviate into more involved play all that often though. In this somewhat bleak future, small but dangerous creatures called Zurks have begun to infect the city. Normally they take the form of rather fat mites that are a bit smaller than the cat, but they come in tiny swarms and try to leap onto you whenever they spot you. Sometimes safely navigating around them is a bit of a puzzle, using things like your cat’s meow as a lure to trick them into a trap a bit nifty, but other times you can easily just outpace them and if they do latch onto you, mashing the circle button will usually shake them off. Later in the game you do get a violet light that will make any that spot you pop as long as you catch them in the spotlight, and there are mandatory uses of this feature so Stray isn’t quite a non-violent game on top of the cat already being at risk of dying if a few too many Zurks latch onto it. There are even some fairly eerie organic environments found in Zurk nests that might unsettle plays looking for a cute cat game, but again the Zurks aren’t as threatening a danger as the story tries to pose them as since you can often outmaneuver them without too much trouble.
While the Zurks sometimes give you decent puzzles and some actual danger while navigating, a few stealth sections later in the adventure involving deadly robots are a bit less cleanly implemented. In one area, outmaneuvering the robots after they spotted you can sometimes just involve sprinting until you turn a corner and they struggle to find you, while at other times they can be quite a nuisance as they will shoot the cat dead if you can’t shake them. There are cardboard boxes to jump into that thankfully the robots won’t realize you’re in even if they watched you leap in, but this does make the stealth feel like a strange addition. Much like the Zurks these sections are often better when they have a small puzzle element like blocking the view of the robots rather than just trying to avoid their attention as they patrol and a few of your Zurk herding tricks work here as well, but the stealth doesn’t feel realized too strongly in either the action or puzzle direction so they don’t feel like strong additions.
As a result of its simple gameplay deviations not packing much punch, it does feel like Stray is more about constructing a specific vibe and giving you space to explore, but it can’t be completely boxed into the narrative adventure genre. It dabbles a bit too much in other ideas and enough of its six to seven hour runtime is spent with the other gameplay types, and it does seem a bit like a case of split focus leading to ideas being a bit rudimentary. Stray likely is more interesting than it would have been had you just been walking around against the backdrop of some gorgeous and moody environments to soft electronic music, but layering in some story and gameplay shifts do mean you get some more memorable segments and a helpful dose of setting and objective diversity so the game doesn’t lose all its novelty after you’ve seen the impressive animal animations.
THE VERDICT: Stray pays a lot of important and productive attention to its aesthetic elements, not only making its feline protagonist feel authentic in how they move but the world around them has plenty of well-realized sights to absorb as you explore as that cat. The story of societal dysfunction amidst the closed city’s robotic populace also helps to give you a bit more of note to attach yourself to, but the actual activities involved in navigating this science fiction setting are often underwhelming. Simple puzzles, unopposed navigation, and threats that aren’t all that dangerous save when they’re a touch annoying bring down the mood a bit as you’ll find not too much of interest to really engage with in this lovely if sometimes sad world. It’s thankfully not an empty experience, but it does feel like the small novelty of being a mostly realistic feline is left to carry too much of the game’s appeal.
And so, I give Stray for PlayStation 5…
An OKAY rating. There are definitely some players who don’t need to hear much more than “you can play as a cat” before deciding if they’ll like this game or not despite some of the unexpected directions it heads, but the idea is often more captivating than the reality, especially since it doesn’t feel like Stray’s hoping for that to be the main appeal. Instead, it often seems like Stray just paid a good deal of attention to the quality of its visual elements to ensure that the cat protagonist feels more true to life while it is more interested in showing you this post-human civilization of machines that it developed. The stray cat is a participant in trying to help better things for this society, much more attention given to interacting with it than to moments that try to simulate typical cat behavior. There is some intrigue in trying to learn more about the closed off city you’re stuck in where no sunlight has touched it in years, but some stronger deviations from your limitations as a cat feel like they could have been necessary to make the puzzle-solving or navigation more entertaining. While I did criticize the game a touch for the moments where it’s clear the cat is capable of understanding multi-step problem solving or the English language, if Stray instead leaned more into the idea this cat is abnormally smart then you could have more compelling situations involving complex puzzles or more work put into exploring the space. It can feel at times like Stray is holding back to avoid becoming too inaccessible though, the nearly automatic jumping making it simple to do much of what the game asks of you, and it is a bit of a shame the moments where it is willing to get rough involve weaker elements like the stealth sections.
Stray is still an overall quick playthrough and one that doesn’t lose steam much, the player often having a good deal of control in whether the plot zips forward or if they want to mess around a bit in the different parts of the closed city to see if there’s a cute interaction to be found. Stray isn’t poorly made and there was definitely a lot of artistic talent put into realizing a vision that is a bit more complicated than some players likely expected, but it feels like there are already experiences that better realize what its story was aiming for and there will likely be games that better feature an authentic feline in the starring role. I will commend it for being more creative than a mere cat simulator, so while Stray might not really excel at what it sets out to do, it doesn’t feel like your time with it will be wasted because of its attention to even the tiny details.