Recent reviews by zombifiers

Ending completely ruined it.

Imagine a version of Final Fantasy X that plays out exactly the same as normal -- except, once you get to Zanarkand, Yuna just performs the Final Summoning and then the game abruptly ends. You haven't even finished crying over Yuna's fate, and the game is just over with no closure at all, leaving you to sit there and ask, "What was even the point if we couldn't save her?" And it's only once you stop crying, after the credits have stopped rolling, that you pause and realize that the ending that the writers chose completely contradicts what the rest of the game was trying to do thematically.

That's Stray.

The first 99% of the game is wonderful and beautiful. The art direction is incredible, the music is lovely. The atmosphere is more effective cyberpunk than Cyberpunk 2077's. The world feels real and lived in. The characters are all distinct and likeable in their own ways. The cat protagonist is animated and lively and feels like he has a personality despite being unable to talk. His relationship with B-12 is one of the most touching ones I've come across in gaming in quite some time.

And then the last, like, five minutes happens and it all goes to ♥♥♥♥.

Do yourself a favor. Play this game, and then once the cat protagonist and B-12 get on the subway, just stop playing. Pretend that's the ending and just stop. Let yourself believe that B-12 and the cat escaped together and went on to re-discover the beauty of the world together. Because, while that's still inconclusive as hell, that's a way better ending than what we got.

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

This game feels like it was made by a bunch of people who got too high on the smell of their own "What if humans are the real virus??" farts during the pandemic. For the vast majority of its runtime, Stray seems to be a game that's about perseverance and hope and the kindness of strangers -- a game about how we're all better off when we work together instead of going it alone -- only at the very last second to turn around and go: "Now that the last trace of humanity is gone, the planet can begin to heal."

What????

The characters you meet and form bonds with along the way? No follow-up, no closure at all. Their stories end exactly where you left them. How does anyone actually benefit from the achieved goal at the end? Impossible to say, because the game ended before it told us. The protagonist cat goes through so much growth throughout the story only to have it all wiped clean at the end when he just... goes home. There's not a moment of hesitation from him, not even a Frodo-esque "how do you pick up the threads of an old life?" moment. He's just home. It's fine. Shut up.

What was the purpose of what B-12 did? What does opening up the city actually do for anyone? Why on earth would the writers choose to have the cat protagonist just run off into the sunset instead of going back to stay with the people who took him in and became like family? What was the point of any of those connections, in that case?

Why is humanity the sudden enemy? B-12 tries to make this make sense with a line about how he has hope for the future because the robots turned out so great -- and this is said after it's established that humanity basically wiped itself out -- but how is that true when the robots behave exactly the same as humans? Humans are painted as bad because of the power-hungry police states that they formed in the wake of a plague -- but the robots are also oppressing each other! That's, like, the entire point of the Midtown sequence! How is that any better from what humans did?

I wept openly over what happened to B-12, but I cried even harder during the credits when I realized that what happened to him happened for no reason at all. There was no reason for the writers to do that to him, neither from a narrative or a thematic perspective. It was like he never mattered at all -- that that bond between him and the protagonist cat never mattered -- because the protagonist cat just goes back to his old life anyway.

If you write a story where you purposefully get the audience attached to a character just so that you can make that audience mourn them later and that's it, that's the whole point of the character because their death has no thematic purpose...

... your writing is Bad, Actually.

There's no justification for what happened to B-12. The ending is sad for the sake of being sad. Don't get fooled by "the story made me feel an emotion, therefore the story is good." No. No, it isn't. Stories can make you feel feelings and still be bad. Hell, David Cage made an entire career off of stories like that.

The bonds you form with people don't matter. The trials that you overcome in life don't matter. The people you've met along the way don't matter. Sometimes people will just disappear from your life with no closure as though the connection never mattered at all, because it didn't, no matter how important it may have felt at the time. Humanity is a virus and we should just hand the world back over to nature. That's the message that Stray gives the player in the end.

This game broke my heart, and not in a good way. I loved this game. I really, really, really was in love with it. I was ready to give it a 9.5 out of 10. But that ending seriously knocks it down to a 5 out of 10 for me. It's really that bad. So, I can't recommend this game to anyone. Not in good faith. Because what the game ultimately delivers in the end is not what was promised during the bulk of it.

Just like my example with Yuna -- What the ♥♥♥♥ was the point of it all, when you can't save the person who came to matter most? Why bother telling the stories of Momo and Clementine if they never get resolved? Why bother developing the character of the cat protagonist, only to put him right back where he started at the end? Why go through the journey if the journey doesn't matter?

Why waste your time and emotions with this game?