Have you ever wanted to be a cat? Yeah, I know, me neither… but that smelly guy in line in front of you at the airport with the cat fur all over his fleece and his JanSport backpack – he’s DYING to be a kitty cat.

And no judgment if you’ve always wanted to be a cat. I didn’t get it at first, but then I saw the trailer for Stray. 

Check it out here:

Yeah, watch that and suddenly you think “being a cat could be awesome” and it kinda is. 

Stray was released with an interesting marketing angle. It’s was launched, in my view, at just the right time to serve as a lure for Playstation users to upgrade their Playstation Plus subscription from Essential to Extra. I’ll admit, I’m one of the suckers. 

***PS (<—- no pun intended), if you don’t know what Playstation Plus is and how the new subscription levels work, keep an eye out for another article where I’ll explain and review my experience with PS Plus Extra thus far.***

So long story short, I upgraded and immediately got to playing Stray based solely on the trailer and some generally favorable reviews. 

I played Stray on Playstation 5 but it’s also available on PS4 and Steam. Stray is a lot of fun. Keep in mind, I’m not a cat person, but I really enjoyed the unique gameplay experience. You move like a cat, you sound like a cat, you can do funny little cat things like scratching furniture, meowing, napping in different spots, pushing things off of counters and shelves, running across keyboards, and more cheeky things like that. Cat people will get a KICK outta this.

The game is mostly a platformer with mild RPG elements, in that you talk to people and you can do little side quests here and there. There are a few puzzles, nothing too hard, and there is one shooting element that I actually found quite hard.

Another fun aspect of Stray was the unique setting you explore as you play. It’s set in a dystopian walled-off robot city. It’s Blade Runner meets Puss in Boots? That’s not right, I don’t know what it Blade Runner “meets” in this scenario, but basically, it’s Blade Runner with a cat. While it didn’t feel wildly next-gen, Stray was very enjoyable to look at (in fact, writing this makes me want to dive back in for an hour). 

Stray is fun to explore and you can talk to the different citizens of this walled-off cyber city to learn more about what happened to the humans and so on. There was some interesting lore, a few cute moments, and enough mystery to keep me nodding with interest. 

There were, of course, allusions to “humans destroy everything” which is annoying as usual. I guess we should be used it that by now, huh? I mean, seriously reader… you there reading this article…. you’re a top notch mother f***** for existing okay? I just wanted you to know that in case you thought you’d enjoy a little escapism for a second. <—- that’s sarcasm; I love you and I think you’re great.

Overall, Stray was a fun and unique experience. I felt it dragged towards the end and I began ignoring side quests just to get through it. If the game really hooks you, however, there’s plenty to do and explore. I recommend you check it out regardless, but perhaps wait for it to be on sale OR if you’re interested in upgrading your Playstation Plus from Essential to Extra, you can get the game for “free” along with tons of other games, in which case it’s a must-play, at the very least for its unique mechanics and point of view.

Enjoy!