stray - you can play as a fucking cat

Game has a great atmosphere, but is pretty short for it's long development and, going against the grain here, I don't think the story is that great. Well, a lot of people don't care for it's ending but that's another thing. Worldbuilding wise I think they were doing a great job up until you're to slums part 2. A lot of things aren't left as mysterious as they begin, in a bad way. Not really over explained but over simplified.
The game strings you along with the mystery of the giant enclosed city, giving you small details but not much most of the time. But then some things start to break down, there's one part where you can see the entire city is less than 1km in diameter. This was supposed to be a massive shelter for humans before they went extinct, there's even a train line. How does this scale make sense? By the end, you know a little too much about the city, though the fate of humanity is kept slightly mysterious it's spelled out in simple terms by your ai turned drone, revealed human as a plague having killed everyone a long time ago, with them transferring themselves into a computer. They end up sacrificing themselves to open the city, and then you just leave without anything really being settled. There's a final cutscene, which I think is kind of eh, showing characters you've met looking up at the light coming in or the oppressive forces in one part dropping dead, but it feels rushed. It's pretty weird for a game that I think has been said to have been in development for 8 years, how buggy some parts of the game are also make this strange.
 
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ditto said:
What I'd really like is a Goat Simulator set in this universe, with some quests but mostly sandbox play.
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I do think a game where you are actually just a regular cat causing chaos and cannot talk to the humanoid npcs would have been truer to what people expected of the concept, and actual platforming rather than the locked down approach would have benefited this game. And would have made sense since you are ostensibly just a regular cat that, for no given reason, seems to have the intelligence of a human. I love how the world looks but not being allowed to properly explore anything, the entire game essentially being on rails sucks. It limits replayability quite a lot, along with npcs mostly only having one or two things to say and no real interaction existing outside of story characters. They could have still had the background of the creepy world, and maybe eventually you do open the city just by accident.
Setting up a bunch of characters you meet only for a short while and then abandon really doesn't make sense. And the only one you do play most of the game with dies.
 
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Can you choose the color of the pussy you play? Can you customize how the pussy looks? If I want the pussy shaved, can you shave it in game?
 
No and apparently it's based on a real stray pussy the devs adopted.
Its coat pattern clashes with the colour grading for 80% of the game so I don't know why they did this except to be able to talk about it in interviews.
 
It seems decent, definitely better than a lot of other indie-style games in the same vein, and I could definitely see myself playing it if I wanted a quiet weekend, but it's kind of crazy how much people are gushing over this game.

With how shit the industry is at the moment, decent is the new masterpiece.
 
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I played threw the whole game, I heard at one point in development in was going to be a point and click game. It defiantly still shows.
Toolbox said:
The game strings you along with the mystery of the giant enclosed city, giving you small details but not much most of the time. But then some things start to break down, there's one part where you can see the entire city is less than 1km in diameter. This was supposed to be a massive shelter for humans before they went extinct, there's even a train line. How does this scale make sense? By the end, you know a little too much about the city, though the fate of humanity is kept slightly mysterious it's spelled out in simple terms by your ai turned drone, revealed human as a plague having killed everyone a long time ago, with them transferring themselves into a computer. They end up sacrificing themselves to open the city, and then you just leave without anything really being settled. There's a final cutscene, which I think is kind of eh, showing characters you've met looking up at the light coming in or the oppressive forces in one part dropping dead, but it feels rushed. It's pretty weird for a game that I think has been said to have been in development for 8 years, how buggy some parts of the game are also make this strange.
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The story ripped off some of the movie Cat's Eye. I would recommend watching that than playing this game. They were going somewhere with the fleshy Silent Hill stuff being everywhere but it doesn't pan out in the end. The stupid little robot thing on the cat backside dies at least 10 times.
 
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Next Task said:
What I like about this review is it suggests you spent a full 60 minutes pressing the meow button before getting bored.
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It's a very great fucking button.

And I hate cats.
The fact that this is a good game is less a compliment to this game and more of an insult to every other game tbh.
Imagine the devs that worked a fuckton to make complex mechanics to make a pseudo-skinner box to get people addicted.
And it gets blown out by a fucking cat simulator.
huecoffs02 said:
View attachment 3517407

This is going to be the future of this game right? I know it. It looks comfy asf but I know the fanbase and the journos will ruin it.
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It is always the inevitable future of the cycle of games now.
Good job journoscum.

I kinda want a game like this but a dog and less.... pretentious? I don't know the proper word for what this game lacks, and it lacks SOMETHING vital.
 
Quijibo69 said:
I played threw the whole game, I heard at one point in development in was going to be a point and click game. It defiantly still shows.

The story ripped off some of the movie Cat's Eye. I would recommend watching that than playing this game. They were going somewhere with the fleshy Silent Hill stuff being everywhere but it doesn't pan out in the end. The stupid little robot thing on the cat backside dies at least 10 times.
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Really don't see the point of the zurks at all, the only real reason for their existence is to try and justify locked down chase scenes that I don't feel really fit the game. There was a lot of intrigue with them early on, but even seeing the weird giant flesh creature with eyes, when you realize the bugs can just be killed with a uv lamp and that they don't show up in midtown once you lose it, they really make less sense. Especially when the whole they eat metal bit is never really shown, sure there are dead robots but buildings in the infested areas would be falling apart if they were consuming them. The end of the game then just kills them off essentially, and the cat just leaves.
 
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It's been pretty fun and relaxing (except for a rather jarring genre-change section) but MAN is it buggy. In a single hour I've probably jumped to a dozen impossible ledges or otherwise clipped through walls/ceilings to accidentally reach a new floor.
 
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Plunkie said:
It's been pretty fun and relaxing (except for a rather jarring genre-change section) but MAN is it buggy. In a single hour I've probably jumped to a dozen impossible ledges or otherwise clipped through walls/ceilings to accidentally reach a new floor.
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It really is. I even got softlocked in one part when trying to climb through a fence gap. Cat just got stuck even though I could still move. Last night, after the hotfix, I got a really weird bug where every time I tried to jump off of an object I would get teleported back onto it after a second. Watching people stream the game, they encounter bugs like with the janitor robot's bucket that he abandons in a cutscene, where it just gets locked in place and constantly makes noise. There are other parts where audio continually plays even when the plot progresses and the thing that was making the noise isn't even there. I don't think they were working on this particular build of the game for as long as they were supposedly working on the game, because otherwise I don't see where those 8 years went.
 
I tried to played it. Go to the part after the fleshy ticks tried to attack me. Camera kept getting jittery and made me dizzy, so I stopped.

Don't think I'm picking it up again.
 
Massa's Little Buckie said:
I tried to played it. Go to the part after the fleshy ticks tried to attack me. Camera kept getting jittery and made me dizzy, so I stopped.

Don't think I'm picking it up again.
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Yeah this game has a problem with motion not being quite right, but I would at least say disable motion blur before giving up on the game. The zurk chases are the lowest points of the gameplay, but there are only two parts where getting attacked by them is unavoidable.
 
As someone who’s lost interest in most modern video games (especially AAA releases) I really enjoyed this. I love cats, and this game was very comfy and cute.
Took a couple nights after long days at work to beat this, gf and I sat back with some beers and meowed and jumped around as a cat and had a very nice time together.
Maybe that makes me a filthy casual, and teenage gamer me would probably spit on this game, but now as an adult I had fun, and that’s about all I really look for in videogames anymore.

Final Rating:

Cat/10
 
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