I played about an hour of it at my cousin's. I love cats, but the game wasn't really doing anything for me. I need a bit more than walking down hallways pressing x or triangle when the game tells me to.
Stray - Meh-ow
- Thread starter CriticalGaming
- Start date
You want some game in your game bro?
Turn off the jump prompt. Then search for things that look like you can jump on.
Sounds even better, mashing x in front of possibly jumpable surfaces really adds the kind of engagement I'm looking for.
Jumping at things and repeatedly finding you can't jump onto them and falling to your doom would probably be much more irritating, though.
I felt a little bit like this about whichever iteration in the Crysis series (Two?). You enter a new zone, whip out the binocs, and it tells you every single trick or route available to you to get through the zone. Sure, at some point you'll have to do the hard work of shooting some bad guys, but it's also quite patronising to just be told there's a cliff you can vault here, a grate you can sneak through here, a door you can bust down here, and those are your three ways through so fuck the enjoyment of exploring and finding out interesting stuff for yourself.
Crysis 2 is what you're saying. Honestly, I rarely ever used it, nor did I have a problem with it. It is fun just finding this stuff out on your own, but if a player wants use it, then there is nothing wrong, if said player prefers the option. It was Crytek trying to ease newbies in, and I give them credit for at least being thoughtful.
This kind of thing makes much more sense for games where knowing what does what when is very important for how the game is played, like Mark of the Ninja. Knowing that something will make noise or that it's a grate you can sneak into is very important for such a mechanically minded game like that. I wish ever so much that game design colleges taught ACTUAL game design and not 3D modeling. I know there's a much greater demand for modelers but it's stuff like "Knowing when your audience wants you to tell them something or not" that clues you into how the lessons may be missing the point.
At least it makes you look at and consider the virtual world. That feels like engagement rather than a modified quicktime event.
How, unless you’ve not yet subscribed to PS+?
“The free PS Plus trial means you don't have to spend $17.99 / £13.49 to give PS Plus Premium a whirl. But keep in mind that you'll only be eligible for it if you're a completely new PS Plus subscriber who's never paid for the service in the past.”
I dunno. That shit was free for me. I downloaded played and beat it and that was that.
Think there's a bit of confusion about button prompts in this game, if they're turned on. They're not quick time events or obligations, all they do is tell you where you will jump to if you press the jump button at that exact time in that exact position. The game never is clear where you must go, there are no objective markers or directions pushed, and I got lost a few times already. The only solid prompts are talking to characters, picking up stuff orr wiggling off enemies when they're attacking. No different from every other game. There's also offensive mechanics provided further in the narrative.
Though the jump prompt option may be worth keeping on for the odd situation where there is a ledge above and below you simultaneously, as it wont be clear whether you're looking up in precisely the correct way to not make the game think you wanna go down instead.
Though the jump prompt option may be worth keeping on for the odd situation where there is a ledge above and below you simultaneously, as it wont be clear whether you're looking up in precisely the correct way to not make the game think you wanna go down instead.
I basically would like the game to play very nimbly bimbly, like an actual cat behaves. Like maybe at most there would be a few places where you’d slip a bit but still should be able to land on your paws. And swatting at stuff, both in the air and on the ground. Giving oneself a bath, etc. These are cat criteria here, and the game would feel amiss without.
That's seriously one of the most amazing things about cats. I've held my cat belly up, 1 foot above above the couch and dropped her and she still managed to instantly twist around and land on her feet.
Stray - Zero Punctuation - The Escapist
This week in Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Stray, the cute cat adventure game from BlueTwelve Studio and Annapurna Interactive.
www.escapistmagazine.com
I just finished it.
Didn't impress me too much. I get why a lot of people are into it, because it's a very well directed game, it has very nice art design (sometimes you can just tell at first glance that something was made by the french) and sound design and is paced pretty well but it's just all so barebones. It's, more or less, a game where you don't do anything. Every single mechanic it has is implemented in the most simplistic way.
The jumps are contextual. The puzzles are rudimentary to the point that they might as well not exist. The stealth and enemy encounters are one off set pieces that offer neither challenge nor satisfaction. It's a game that stops just short of playing itself. And as a matter of fact I'd say it's one of the few games where you'd get practically the same experience watching a Let's Play on YouTube as you get actually playing it. Mechanically, there just isn't a proper hook.
See, I strongly dislike the term "movie game" because I think it's practically meaningless. People throw it at everything from games that have long cutscenes, like Kojima's games or practically any JRPG, to games with any breaks in the action for the sake of narrative whatsover, but Stray practically consists entirely of the sort of segments that other story heavy games would use to break up their gameplay. It seems to me like leading a specific design philosophy right into a dead end. I'm usually all in favour of setpiece heavy, narrative driven games. I kept thinking of Last of Us 2 playing Stray (Bear with me here, I know that we're talking about two vastly different levels of production values, but I think my point stands) and I remembered being kinda lukewarm on it. And everything I said about that games tryhard macho writing and presentation still holds true. But as much as it emphasized its own direction, there was still a really strong gameplay core in it. And obviously I'm not expecting Stray to do anything on that games level, but it's not difficult to imagine a world where Stray has actually engaging platforming, puzzle solving and stealth instead of vaguely gesturing towards them, but not being able or willing to actually work out and implement their mechanics.
I would have been alright with the game just being a walking simulator if the story was strong enough but it really wasn't. The game has what has got to be the most intrinsically likeable protagonist you could imagine. It's a fluffy orange cat with big green eyes and some very lifelike animations. A small animal lost in a mysterious walled city trying to find a way out is a simple but effective premise. The game just makes some pretty poor decisions, in my opinion. I was very much with Stray for the beginning, say, about the first 30 minutes. What took my expectations down a notch was meeting the games secondary protagonist, B-12, your drone companion. See, I felt the game was onto something with showing you this crumbling post apocalyptic city from the perspective of a creature that can't directly communicate with its denizens and mainly gets to experience it as an observer. In the beginning, it made me think a bit of Pixar's Wall-E. Just a small, practically silent creature in a desolate world, serving as a vehicle for the viewer, or player, to immerse themselves into this word with a certain degree of detachment. And then you get a companion to do all the talking and quest accepting and exposition spewing for you and I felt a pang of dissapointment that the game never really managed to make up for.
Good presentation goes a long way for me, but Stray has neither the writing, nor the gameplay chops to back it up with anything more substantial. It's an glorified amusement park ride of a game, it's well designed for what it is, on the virtue of following a very narrow set of rails, but beyond sights and sounds that are aesthethically pleasing and very well curated, it's mostly devoid of... well, any of the things that actually make a good game for me.
Didn't impress me too much. I get why a lot of people are into it, because it's a very well directed game, it has very nice art design (sometimes you can just tell at first glance that something was made by the french) and sound design and is paced pretty well but it's just all so barebones. It's, more or less, a game where you don't do anything. Every single mechanic it has is implemented in the most simplistic way.
The jumps are contextual. The puzzles are rudimentary to the point that they might as well not exist. The stealth and enemy encounters are one off set pieces that offer neither challenge nor satisfaction. It's a game that stops just short of playing itself. And as a matter of fact I'd say it's one of the few games where you'd get practically the same experience watching a Let's Play on YouTube as you get actually playing it. Mechanically, there just isn't a proper hook.
See, I strongly dislike the term "movie game" because I think it's practically meaningless. People throw it at everything from games that have long cutscenes, like Kojima's games or practically any JRPG, to games with any breaks in the action for the sake of narrative whatsover, but Stray practically consists entirely of the sort of segments that other story heavy games would use to break up their gameplay. It seems to me like leading a specific design philosophy right into a dead end. I'm usually all in favour of setpiece heavy, narrative driven games. I kept thinking of Last of Us 2 playing Stray (Bear with me here, I know that we're talking about two vastly different levels of production values, but I think my point stands) and I remembered being kinda lukewarm on it. And everything I said about that games tryhard macho writing and presentation still holds true. But as much as it emphasized its own direction, there was still a really strong gameplay core in it. And obviously I'm not expecting Stray to do anything on that games level, but it's not difficult to imagine a world where Stray has actually engaging platforming, puzzle solving and stealth instead of vaguely gesturing towards them, but not being able or willing to actually work out and implement their mechanics.
I would have been alright with the game just being a walking simulator if the story was strong enough but it really wasn't. The game has what has got to be the most intrinsically likeable protagonist you could imagine. It's a fluffy orange cat with big green eyes and some very lifelike animations. A small animal lost in a mysterious walled city trying to find a way out is a simple but effective premise. The game just makes some pretty poor decisions, in my opinion. I was very much with Stray for the beginning, say, about the first 30 minutes. What took my expectations down a notch was meeting the games secondary protagonist, B-12, your drone companion. See, I felt the game was onto something with showing you this crumbling post apocalyptic city from the perspective of a creature that can't directly communicate with its denizens and mainly gets to experience it as an observer. In the beginning, it made me think a bit of Pixar's Wall-E. Just a small, practically silent creature in a desolate world, serving as a vehicle for the viewer, or player, to immerse themselves into this word with a certain degree of detachment. And then you get a companion to do all the talking and quest accepting and exposition spewing for you and I felt a pang of dissapointment that the game never really managed to make up for.
Good presentation goes a long way for me, but Stray has neither the writing, nor the gameplay chops to back it up with anything more substantial. It's an glorified amusement park ride of a game, it's well designed for what it is, on the virtue of following a very narrow set of rails, but beyond sights and sounds that are aesthethically pleasing and very well curated, it's mostly devoid of... well, any of the things that actually make a good game for me.
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A cat poop mechanic. That’s what this game is also missing, I’m guessing. If I’m playing a cat I want to go into a litter box (preferably customizable) and drop a steamer, then use my paws to cover that shit up with nice little sand physics. Also, just imagine what they could do with the DualSense for this, so you could feel the thousands of litter granules being dispersed under your paws. Fuckin A, what a missed opportunity.
I love it when Max tackles offbeat games like this. His commentary always seems so genuinely interested regardless of genre.
I kinda wanna try this but I am super overloaded so I'll just wait for a discount or something. Trails of the Azure coming out next month doesn't bode well for this either since I've been waiting for that game for like 15 years by this point lol.
This is basically a cat sim with a lot of running around more so than a fantasy cat combat sim where you become the kind of cats through battle right?
This is basically a cat sim with a lot of running around more so than a fantasy cat combat sim where you become the kind of cats through battle right?