Hi gamers, today I'm going to share with you a game I just started playing and I love it so much. Stray is one of the best indie games I've ever played. If you don't care about my review, it was chosen as the best indie game of 2022 by Steam. It was also voted the best in action, but I don't agree with that. Although the game has some action-packed sequences, but is that enough?
First of all, I have to say that this is one of the best graphics games I have ever played. If you look at my posts on Hive, you'll see that I don't usually post AAA games. My laptop's graphics card is a GTX 1050, so I haven't pushed it too hard so far. The most challenging game I played was Mount Blade II: Bannerlord, and that was really challenging. Although the images I'm sharing here are not good enough. After I recently shared my thoughts on Sniper Elite 4, I realized that my PC was performing better than I expected, so I wasted no time and decided to download Stray.
The first tip I can give you about this game is to play it with a joystick. I'm playing with a keyboard and mouse and I have to say that it was really difficult. Your mobility in the game becomes difficult. Movements that you can do very easily with a joystick turn into things that require fine detail when using a keyboard and mouse. For example, there is a sequence in the game where you run away from creatures called Zurk. In that scene, I wished I had a joystick because I had to try 4 or 5 times. When a Zurk jumps on you, you have to press a button to throw it away, but you also have to keep your perspective with the mouse and run with the W and Shift key. I hope that was explanatory enough haha.
My favorite and least favorite thing about the game is the same, the puzzles. In many parts of the game you have to solve puzzles and they were fun in the beginning but then they started to get frustrating for me. I had to solve so many puzzles even for a small mission that it was getting annoying. You have to find certain objects and they're really well hidden. Sometimes the game gives you hints but sometimes you can lose your mind to complete a mission. Or you can look for the solution online after a few attempts. Although I usually don't prefer it, sometimes I thought I was wasting too much time and looked up the solution online. I sometimes laughed at myself when I saw how simple the solution was, and sometimes I said that I was glad I looked it up online or I would never have solved this puzzle.
I won't give you any spoilers about the story of the game, but I liked it a lot. The progress was exciting for me so far. I'm very curious where it will go and I'm very lucky that I didn't see the end of this game. If anyone does this in the comments, I want you to know that I will downvote the comment :P Sounds are also used very well in the game. It draws you into the atmosphere. There are many details in the game to make you feel like a real cat. You can drink water from puddles, you can scratch carpets. When you see a pillow or a bed, you can sleep on it and even rub against NPCs like a cat.
By the way, the game has an open world and you can go anywhere you want on the map. You can interact with many objects and NPCs. There are also buildings that you can go inside. Apart from that, one of the things that surprised me in the game is the map system. There is no map in the game. So you can't mark a point on the map and go there. You are in the open world, there are clues that direct you to the places you will go and you have to keep your eyes open for them. Despite this, I only felt lost 1-2 times in the game. It took me a while to figure out where to go, but I didn't have much difficulty.
After finishing this game, I can share another post with you about my general thoughts. I am very curious to see how the story will progress. Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have played the game before, don't forget to share your thoughts with me in the comments. Take care and have a great day!
