Stray video game review – post-apocalyptic cat-astrophe

metro.co.uk:

The most realistic cat ever to appear in a video game is the star of a peculiar cyberpunk style adventure in a world ruled by robots.

No matter how popular they may be on YouTube, cats are always the last choice for an animal hero, whether it’s movies, TV, or video games. Bubsy Bobcat, Mae from Night In The Woods, and Meowth are already scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of cat-themed protagonists and the reason for that seems obvious: as cute as they are, a cat wouldn’t lift a paw to help anyone. But there’s always an exception to the rule.

Stray is an unusual game in a number of ways. For starters, it’s an indie title that often looks better than many a full price game. Although it’s actually completely free if you’re a PS Plus Extra or Premium subscriber, as this is the first example of a new game being available from day one on the service. (There’s also a free trial for PS Plus Premium this week, so theoretically everyone can play the game for nothing.)

You play as a cat, an ordinary non-anthropomorphised cat, but in a post-apocalyptic, Blade Runner style city populated by robots and what look like the headcrabs from Half-Life. The game flits between whimsical fetch quests, such as making someone a poncho to keep them warm, to survival horror style elements accompanied by a discordant industrial soundtrack. Like we said, it’s an unusual game, but rarely a dull one.

Although nothing is explained in any detail, the implication is that hundreds of years ago the Earth suffered some kind of ecological breakdown, exacerbated by the creation of a special bacteria to break down waste that, by the time of the game, has evolved into the headcrab-like Zurks. At first, the cat (he doesn’t have a name so we’re going to call