Stray

Eventually the cat mechanics will bore you 

Game no: 483
Genre: Adventure 
Platform: PS5 
Release Date: 2022

Stray is a game where you play as a cat in a post apocalyptic setting where humans are gone and robots have taken over. You are task to explore the world and figure out how to escape. That basically it this game basically lets you do cat things. From a guy who has 5 cats it is true to what it says. The cat can do almost what a cats does which includes, sleeping, scratching the carpets and sofa, drinking and doing cat things. The only thing that it can do is lie flat on the belly and wait for someone to give him a rub.

This game is a linear game where every time you reach a new area you are task to do some fetch quests in order to progress further. While the areas are small, there is no map and you can get lost pretty easily since everything looks the same (neon red and dark). You have a robot companion that helps you along the journey but it's basically a one sided conversation because the cat doesn't talk. The robots however provide some good inside with limited amount of dialogue given. There are also the bad guy, the look like those small leech creatures from Half-life where they will latch on to you until you die. So there are moments where you need to escape from a horde of them and that is trilling since you only have a split second to think about the next move. 

The issue with this game is unless you are really invested in the story, there is really no incentive for you to stay on. The cat mechanics after a while become a bore to me and it's doesn't help that the environments doesn't tell you what to do and leaves you guessing what is next. On a side note of the story, I still don't get it after finishing the game. It left me with more questions than answers which I really don't like in a game without any narration. But that's how it was design was I can't fault them on that. 

In the end, Stray is a great cat simulator game. You'll grow to love the cat and want to root for him but the gameplay is not that fun. Good thing is that this game is short clocking in under 4 hours or 7 if you want to explore everything. I'll give this game a B-Rank and it is a good play for one weekend