11/3/2022 0 Comments Meow match level 69Thankfully, the game's rather generous checkpointing means that succumbing to the Zurk is no great hardship most of the time, and BlueTwelve's artful framing of its chase sequences means it's usually pretty easy to decipher where you're meant to be heading, too. Since you're a cat, there's no way to fight these one-eyed monsters except by running away most of the time, and if you don't shake them off fast enough then they will nobble you into a quick restart. They're a bit like the cute cushion of Half-Life's headcrabs, pouring out of shadowy orifices to leap at you with their sticky, life-sucking mandibles. This does that vital service of handing back agency to the player, giving them the space to wonder whether that ledge is just too far out of reach, or whether your surprisingly springy hindlegs can just about stick the landing.īesides, it's not like Stray has zero stakes, either, as in between noodling about its various hub zones, your (still very linear) mission to find a way back to the surface will occasionally see you branching off into dedicated locations where the game's main threat hangs out: the Zurk. The key difference here, though, is that you're actively using the camera to find that next jumping point, as the prompts only appear if the jump is achievable. In this sense, Stray is not a particularly challenging game, as when it comes to navigating its city, there's no accidentally falling to your death or missing a jump. You can hold down A (or Space, if you're so inclined, although Stray is definitely best played with a game pad), for example, and your cat pal will leap around to its heart's content as long as there's a corresponding button prompt on your surface of choice. It puts your Uncharteds and Tomb Raiders to shame, really, even though its platforming follows a similarly automated mould. The minimalist HUD is still a touch artificial, to be sure, but the overall effect it creates is one of astounding realism, letting you actively pick through this forgotten jumble of ledges, rooftops and air conditioning units as you see fit, rather than feeling like you're simply going through the motions on a predefined path. Whereas other 3D platformers tend to drown you in gallons of paint and glinting footholds telling you where to go, Stray opts for a smarter way of doing things, offering up simple, context-sensitive button prompts showing you where you can and can't jump as you move the camera around. I wouldn't go as far as saying it loosened my jaw quite as much as when I first set eyes on Trico from The Last Guardian, all told, but I reckon if BlueTwelve had the same kind of budget and scale as GenDesign and Sony's Japan Studio did back then, then Stray's cat would be every bit the equal of that famous cat-bird-chimera.īut it's the way Stray's cat navigates its walled, closed-off city that impresses the most. You can also play a mean game of billiards, much to the annoyance of the local robots. You can scratch the backs of sofas and knead and shred carpets with alternate squeezes of the trigger buttons, meow at will, lap from dripping water bowls, topple piles of carefully stacked books and push paint cans off the edge of ledges - and, if you leave them idle long enough, they'll stretch and catch flies too tiny to be caught by the human eye. The cat itself is a marvel of digital observation, fully inhabiting all of the best cat-isms I know and love. Stray, BlueTwelve Studio's cat 'em up explorathon, puts you in the paws of a similarly savvy feline protagonist. MEOW MATCH LEVEL 69 WINDOWSAs an owner of two tortoiseshells myself, they've unlocked routes in our house I never knew existed, using the tiny lip of our fridge as a gateway to the top of our kitchen cupboards, bed frames as launch pads to the middle bar of our sash windows (not even the actual window sill, those daft beasts), and don't even get me started on how they managed to get onto the top of our 2cm wide shower rail that one time. A must-play for cat lovers, and it also breaks new ground for action adventure fans.Ĭats are masters of their domain. A remarkable tale about the best cat in video games finding their way home through a dense and rich post-apocalypse.
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