Stray Reviews

MEOW
Stray is a game about being a cat... in a sense. Before I bought it, I read the reviews in the MS game store, and most of them said, simply, “Cat” or “Meow” or “You get to be a cat.” “Perfect,” I thought. (Nope. I'm not doing the obvious puns here.) And it did start off just like what I thought it was going to be. You're SPOILER ALERT a cat--an orange tabby, to be specific--and you're doing cat things, like meowing, lying around doing nothing, swatting your cat friend's tail, and being groomed by another cat. Then you and your friends go off and start doing other cat things, like running and jumping. So far, so good. Then, pretty quickly, it turns into a different sort of game. In a word: robots. There are lots and lots of robots in Stray. The playable character is still a cat, but it lives in a world of robots. With a companion drone. That shoots a ray beam. The reviews I read didn't say anything about robots, companion drones, and ray beams, so, as a public service, this one does.

CAT THINGS
Stray is a cat adventure. Because cats are great at jumping, there's a strong platforming element to it. There is also a puzzle element. The puzzles are easy, though, so if puzzling isn't really your thing, you probably won't mind it. The protagonist can't make a bad jump or fall, except in cutscenes, so it isn't one of those platforming games where you're always falling to your death if you don't time your jumps right. There is a little bit of combat involving the aforementioned ray beam, but most of the time, the goal is to avoid or escape from the enemies instead of attacking them.

The cat experience that you want in Stray is well done, as far as it goes. You get to do a lot of cat things, like knocking stuff off of shelves, getting underfoot of people robots that are walking, curling up on a pillow in the cowpie position, scratching on furniture and doors, walking on keyboards, leaping into boxes, and much more. Any time you get to be a cat, it's a lot of fun. I love that the meow button works even during cutscenes. And, if there has to be a robot/drone story in a cat game, I guess this one is OK, but to be very honest, it's not what I wanted, and a lot of it does not feel very catlike. The whole concept of going on quests for robots and drones is especially not catlike. Cats do what they want, not what people, robots or drones tell them to do. I would have enjoyed it so much more if, for example, the quest would have been to bring dead birds to the robots instead of bringing them sheet music or canned drinks. Instead of having the cat handle power cells with its mouth, maybe they could have had it bat spherical power cells around with its paw. If there's going to be a ray beam, it could be activated by the cat hissing instead of whatever actually activates it, which they never explain. Also, I didn't like that there are some little ratlike enemies, but instead of hunting and catching them, the cat-protagonist is always running from them. That's WEAK. Also, the companion drone has a flashlight, but why would a cat need that? Did someone forget that cats can see well in low light? I can't stop thinking of ways to extend the cat experience, but it seems like someone developing the game just hit a wall and gave up on the concept partway through.

TECHNICAL ISSUES
Technical issues were minor but present. Once, I opened a door to find no foreground scene; just a white foreground against the regular background. That required a reload from checkpoint, when it happened again, then the third time loaded normally. Once, I was brushing up against a robot's ankles, as cats do, and the robot was close to a wall. The cat avatar didn't have enough room to do perform the animation, and it required a total, dashboard reboot required, restart of the game to proceed. I managed to make hacking one door at the end impossible by taking one step out of order, which required reloading from a checkpoint to make the game winnable. Also, maybe this was just my console, but numerous times when I switched over to another game or app and then returned to Stray, it would not wake up under any circumstances and would not even restart from the dashboard. I had to reboot my Xbox. This happened a lot.

MUSIC, SOUND, VISUALS, ATMOSPHERE
The robots have segregated themselves, or have been segregated, into several communities: a ghetto, a small, remote village, and a bustling city. The cat explores these environments, plus several more that the robots tend to stay away from. The robots imitate a lot of human behaviors, including getting drunk, being annoyed at those darn kids who play their music too loud, and being bored because there's nothing cool going on in this lame nightclub. They speak to each other via electronic stuttering and wah-wahs, which the cat's companion drone translates into its own language, which the cat inexplicably understands, as well as to written English, which is convenient for the player. (Suspension of disbelief is required.) There aren't any humans or human voices. The game's ambient music is electronic, which is something robots might dig, I guess.

ACHIEVEMENTS
The achievements fall into story, collectible, cumulative, and challenge categories. You can restart from the last checkpoint and also use chapter select, so technically, none of them are missable. I can't see getting the speedrun achievement in the same playthrough as a lot of the others, though--especially the one that requires idling for an hour--so plan on a minimum of two playthroughs. I pay no attention to achievements on my first playthrough; I used my second and third playthroughs to get all but the speedrun, and made my fourth playthrough the speedrun.

There is one challenge achievement that I've seen a lot of hate for in solutions and videos.

People are making it out to be the worst thing in the history of video games that has made them give up gaming forever. Honestly, it isn't that bad. The challenge is hard--it took me about 35 tries, I'd guess--but it takes about a minute per attempt, plus about twenty seconds of reloading time, so it's pretty easy to just retry and retry until you get better and unlock it. When I think about some difficult challenges I've had to do for achievements, this one isn't even in the top 100. I don't know...maybe because Stray is, like one commenter said, “such a chill game,” and they throw this one hardcore achievement in, that makes people so upset. Or, maybe the problem is with all the kids these days who want life to be easy...buncha spoiled brats.

SUMMARY
Despite the robots, drones, and ray beams, I liked Stray, mainly because it's the only game I know of that offers a cat experience, and they did a pretty good job with it. And I will say this: if your list of top three things you want to see in a cat-themed game are jumping, meowing, and robots, you will love Stray.