Stray review

Stray is a third-person cat adventure game set amid the detailed, neon-lit alleys of a decaying cybercity and the dark environments of its seedy underbelly.

The early novelty of playing as a cat on Stray soon gives way to a startling realisation that we often act like cats in games anyway. Particularly in platform puzzles like this, our first inclination is to explore, looking for unorthodox routes up the walls of buildings, say, or jumping on furniture and seeing what objects we can manipulate. Tramp simply makes such actions more natural, giving us the perfect shape to work with. The feel of your moggie is crucial here, and it’s immediately apparent how much observational work went into animating it.

A slender red tabby cat is a representative of a small colony of cats living in an abandoned industrial area, long ago mastered by nature. At the beginning of the game, your gang waits out the storm in a concrete hideout where you can have a little game fight or mutual sniffing and smearing. These interactions are full of recognisable details – the way the ears move and rotate, the stretching exercises – and if you like cats, Tramp should “meow” you. The next morning you go for a walk with your team, the leaves are still wet from yesterday’s downpour.

You can pause to feast on a puddle of water, or use a tree trunk as a handy scratching post between bouts of jumping up stairs and across chasms. At first it seems too prescriptive that you can only jump when a button prompt appears on the nearest ledge, crate or pipe, with a guarantee of a successful landing. However, this system is ideally suited to the flexibility of an animal with measured targets that doesn’t care about wild jumps, but rather scans its environment for easy-to-reach surfaces. In our Stray review you will read all the details.

About

Developer: BlueTwelve Studio
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Release date: 19 July 2022
Price: $39.99

System Requirements

Requires: 64-bit processor and operating system
Platform: Windows 10/11
Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 | AMD FX-6350
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti, 2 GB | AMD Radeon R7 360, 2 GB
DirectX:  Version 12
Storage: 10 GB available space

Stray review: Game Play

Stray is a story-driven adventure spanning five chapters. It focuses on puzzle-solving, exploration, and platforming. You progress through the story by solving puzzles and traveling around the area using your expert feline skills in stealth and speed. There are also a number of memories to unlock. They belong to your B-12 AI drone companion. You don’t have to unlock all of B-12’s memories to beat the game, but his story is worth hearing.

You’ll unlock most of them just by progressing through the story, but some memories are hidden all over the world and require a bit more research to find. The puzzles can be challenging, but they’re not so hard that you find yourself racing your controller against the wall in a fit of frustration. Most of these puzzles are quite simple: you have to move certain items to get to higher places, or find hidden items by hugging your inner cat and knocking everything off the shelves.

While some puzzles later in the game require a bit more thought to figure out, most of them involve finding a way to get to certain areas by manipulating the environment and can be easily solved with enough research. Despite playing as a cat, Stray requires you to complete several quests. Usually all you need to find what you’re looking for is talking to all the NPCs and a fair amount of bribes.

Stray review: Visuals

The Tramp looks fantastic on PS5. From the highly detailed environments to the smooth, almost frighteningly realistic animation of the playable cat, watching the Tramp in action is a delight. Creating a believable playable cat has clearly been a top priority for Blue Twelve Studios, and the team has done a phenomenal job in this area. Cat lovers will instantly fall in love with this digital feline, and the way it races across rooftops and snuggles its nose against robots is always adorable.

However, the show’s visual star isn’t the cat, but the cyberpunk city you travel through. Every inch of the game world feels handcrafted, and the contrast between futuristic neon and overgrown nature is striking. Stray is the type of game that absolutely begs for photo mode, making its absence at launch feel like a real missed opportunity.

Stray review: Performance

Stray is a nearly flawless experience that works great with no noticeable frame rate drops or pop-ups. for the entire duration of the passage, we encountered only one graphical error associated with a mysterious disembodied scarf. But other than that, our entire experience has not been marred by any performance dips. we were completely immersed from the very beginning and remained so all the time. Visual fidelity and overall game performance are further enhanced by the Dual sense controller’s haptic feedback.

This brought the realism of the adventure to a new level and added charm to the game as a cat. Minor touches, like the purr coming from the controller, pulled me even more into the game. And that brings me to one of our favourite parts of the game: scratches! Blue Twelve Studios has carefully studied the mannerisms of our feline companions to give the main character as much realism as possible, and they have done an incredible job. we found ourselves indulging in all the cute behaviour of our furry friends.

Stray review: Sound

The game also sounds great, with its mostly low-key soundtrack fitting the overall relaxed vibe. At the beginning of the game, you can also meet a robot with a metal guitar that can play the notes you find in the world. Listening to these tunes is a great excuse to put the controller down and just switch off for a minute.

The Tramp is also nicely polished. On my first play through, we ran into a small number of bugs and had no major crashes or major crashes. We’ve seen the cat get stuck on objects a few times, but a quick checkpoint restart fixed it. Luckily, Stray is generous with auto saves, so no major progress has been lost.

Final Words

Stray is a delightful adventure set in a dark yet endearingly hopeful cyberpunk world, thanks in large part to the fact that you play as an adorable cat all the time. Its combination of simple platforming and puzzle-hunting quests is very well balanced over the roughly five-hour story and while we wish our movements were a little more nimble during that time, we still enjoyed jumping over rooftops and running down alleys. to find his well hidden secrets.

Michael Smith
Michael Smith
Michael Smith, a tech-savvy content editor at Bollyinside. With a knack for simplifying complex tech concepts, Michael specializes in crafting user-friendly "How-to" articles and valuable tips. His focus spans Windows, Mac, hardware, and support. Beyond work, he's an avid explorer of diverse tech fields, constantly staying ahead of the curve.

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Stray is a delightful adventure set in a dark but tenderly hopeful cyberpunk world, thanks in large part to the fact that you always play as an adorable cat.Stray review