1/19/2024 0 Comments Stray instalIn other words, they're like every minor RPG NPC you've ever met, except here they make sense. At the same time, they have no frame of reference when it comes to meeting a cat, thus standing idly as you jump on their tables, knocking over their cups. They don items of human clothing, displaying facial expressions on monitor heads crowned by hair made from nests of wires-a fashion consciousness born of half-understood mimicry that nonetheless feels authentic because it wasn't socially programmed. It's fascinating to see how the human-built machines have picked up on fragments of their makers' dead culture. These androids aren't merely quest givers-they're an essential supporting cast. A barter bot will trade useful bric-a-brac for energy drinks, for example, while a guitarist wants you to seek out music sheets so she can play some songs. Stray now gives you space to play again, as B-12 helps you seek information from the androids and aid them in return. This place thrums with life, even though there's none, with haphazard streets framed by neon signs that neatly reverse edgy cyberpunk connotations, bringing a healthy glow to an enclave robbed of sunlight. You'll rely on your buddy most once you reach a little oasis in amongst the mess where robots have made their home. B-12 is now your partner, the mouth and hands you'll need to converse with robots, hack doors, and store puzzle-solving items-crucial in a concrete and metal conurbation where nobody thought to install cat flaps. It uploads itself into a tiny drone and 3D-prints a harness around the cat in which to house itself. Follow the path and you meet an AI called B-12 who wants to join you in returning to the great outdoors. Hopping along the city's concrete peaks, watched by surveillance cameras, a series of neon signs seems to be directing you somewhere specific. You'll also soon find a friend to give you some technological guidance. None of this is especially taxing, however, and while it's certainly possible to get caught, these sections mainly serve to vary the pace between more unhurried travails. Later, you'll find them blocking your route and have to trick them into chasing you with taunting meows-a reverse game of cat and mouse-to lead them astray. At first, the only way to survive the zurks is to run for your life, sprinting into the screen while plotting paths between streams of the squeaky blobs and weaving at speed to avoid their grasps. All that remains are their former android servants, functioning free from direction, and hordes of nasty beasties called zurks, which look like baby headcrabs from Half-life and exist merely to chew through anything that moves.Īt various stages of your adventure, you'll have to pass through zurk-infested territory, usually marked by a coating of unsightly, stringy goo, as if a giant pizza had exploded. It seems that people built the underground city you've plummeted into because the planet surface had grown toxic, only to meet their ends regardless, long before the outside bloomed once again. What follows for the rest of the game is a journey to reach the top again, revealing the fate and legacy of an extinct humanity on the way. I don't recall the last time I cared about a game protagonist's fate so much. From such innocent beginnings, it's a gut punch. Look up and you see a distant halo of light, from which mournful meows echo down. She's now stuck in much less idyllic surroundings-dusty, garbage-ridden ruins. As it happens, though, the plot soon intervenes: a rusty pipe betrays our sure-footed avatar as she vaults a chasm, snapping under her weight to send her tumbling down then down some more into darkness. Indeed, the prowl and pounce rhythm introduced in the opening minutes could have kept me entertained for some while on its own.
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