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Stray (PS5) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Friday 7 June, 2024 // I stopped playing this game on: Sunday 23 June, 2024
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
June 23, 2024 02:09:57 PM
Ok finished the game! The "down a corridor" linearity definitely let up once I got to the first "city" area...and while there are other sections that are tightly restricted, I would say that while the game is linear (it's a narratively-led adventure game where you collect clues and complete tasks for NPCs in order to progress), the experience of playing it does not feel quite as constrained as I had initially thought it was. It's weird to me how I had a strong idea that this was a "cyberpunk" game set in a city - but it's just robots instead of people, and the game doesn't feel like that at all to me now. Yes, there's neon and such - but the major cyberpunk (as genre) themes aren't there. It does tell its own story, and it's really quite sad. It's post-apocalyptic in the sense that humans are extinct (or other wise gone as far as we know), but there's also the idea that this is a world that has recovered (in the nature regrowing sense) from whatever it was the apocalypse was about - it's not clear to me why humans holed up in the underground cities in the first place (and they then all died in a plague, oh, and then they unleashed something intended to solve problems but it mutated and has since run amuck - thus trapping all the robots inside the city). And through all this - you - a cat - have not only survived but made it through. Overall, yes - I did enjoy it, and I appreciated the brevity. But also, in terms of it's game design, it's pretty "light" (by this I mean it doesn't stray far from expectations and it does everything right). So, no special highlights in my mind here - but the navigation and UI work as they should. I guess I could say that I thought I'd get lost a lot easier (there's lots of vertical navigation in addition to horizontal) but it helped that the game's spaces are small even if they are well "dressed" with objects and details.
June 13, 2024 12:18:12 AM
I'm surprised by how linear the game is in the beginning. I think I only just got to the part where it opens up a bit? It is fun to explore as the cat - but the beginning was just following along (and enjoying how pretty everything looks and wondering -ooh, what happened in this world?). I wonder if I'll ever reunite with all the cats I was handing out at the beginning of the game before I fell "into" the "city"?

Stray (PS5)