This morning’s post is in part an addendum to yesterday’s post. My opinion on Stray is changing a bit as I get further into the game. Essentially the game seems to be a repeating pattern of miserable alien blob infested “endless runner” segments perforated by moments of exploring adorable robot settlements. I feel like on some level the alien segments are there only to be able to claim that the game has some skill-based gameplay when in reality the studio should have simply embraced the fact that it was a walking simulator. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the game would have been much better if I was just a cat roaming around a dead city talking to cute robot friends and never having to deal with these alien abominations.
In fact, I can outline the exact moment my opinion of this game started to shift. Light spoilers but The Slums is the first settlement that you spend time in, and during your travels, you find out that one of the robots has figured out a way to fight back and went out into the sewers to test this weapon never to return. So you go through a series of events to uncover this technology and when you have it… it is great. The weapon overheats so you have to carefully time your attacks but it works… you have some way of dealing with the alien swarm other than trying to run perfectly without getting captured. Then just as soon as you have the weapon… “story elements” take place and rob you of your only line of defense pushing you back into the “endless runner” territory. This feels so phenomenally bad and only serves to make the next sequence of awful alien-swarm-time feel all that much worse.
I talked briefly yesterday about the “red screen” where you get overwhelmed by the alien blobs and your cat lies down… and the game asks you to reload from a save point. Admittedly I was fine with this the first time I saw it after sorta learning the ropes of how to dodge the blobs. I was less fine with it the several deaths that I took trying to install a transceiver on top of a very tall, very blob-infested tower. Then all the deaths I took trying to get through the sewers… made me significantly not fine at all with it. I crossed that threshold from “it’s okay this is just a game” to “this is a sweet baby cat that I want to protect and I am failing”. This is the danger honestly of including cats or dogs in your games, because if you make our failure cause them to die… it hurts a lot.
So while my opinion yesterday was extremely good in this game, after more play I am starting to create some sort of risk versus reward matrix in my head. The gameplay of me roaming around a settlement and making robot friends is delightful, but at what point does that joy not outweigh the pain of watching a sweet cat die over and over. Granted like I said yesterday the death sequence is tasteful and not graphic… but just knowing that my cat is lying down because I failed them and that they are getting eaten alive… is not cool. Having to continue to confront the blob bullshit while simultaneously being robbed of the only defense I had… is not cool at all.