Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book club. Over the last few days we played through Metal Gear Solid six, the Stray Cat.

Nah, I’m kidding. Well, sort of kidding, but we’ll get to that later.

Stray was a short game done right, if you ask me. Just the right mix of leisure, traversal puzzles, environmental storytelling, reef fetch quests, collectibles, chase sequences and emotional storytelling as well. And well, it wrapped up before overstaying is welcome, which many games can learn from.

What was your first take on that, Alex?

[00:00:34] Speaker B: My first take on Stray. Something totally different to what I’ve really ever typed. Playing as a cat was unique. Yeah, I will say, yeah, unique, actually. Really fun. As I said as a. As a cat owner myself who owns three cats, I’m not gonna lie to you. There’s a trophy that says meow 100 times. I got that trophy in the first five minutes. I kind of just said this.

[00:00:59] Speaker A: Bam.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: Spam, Spam. The meow button.

And yeah, it was, it was very unique, very different.

I did think going into it, like I’d be able to just jump whenever I wanted as a cat. Obviously we can’t. We have to actually have the prompt of X to jump. Right. You can’t just hop around willy nilly all freely, which actually seems like bimbly through the trees. Yeah.

Which actually in the end was actually kind of nice, as you said, because there are puzzle puzzles and other things around. So it’s. It was. Yeah, it was very unique. Different experience, but it was fun.

[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I’d agree. I think it.

It’s my first impression, really. The gameplay is very simplistic. I kind of expected that. Right. The mail button was a good time just to keep smacking whenever I forgot about it for long stretches. And I was like, oh, I guess I should be meowing more often. I’m a cat. So there’s that role playing element.

Outside of that, it’s really just that single button jump to climb and traverse. Kind of like an Uncharted or Assassin’s Creed or. So many games these days that have climbing and parkour and whatever else. And then there are the chase sequences with the mass amounts of the weird furry blob things that can run and jump a lot faster than you. In that first chase sequence, I died after passing a couple corners. And in my second attempt, I just remembered the teaching of if for whatever.

If what? For whatever reason you end up being shot at, run in a zigzag pattern. And that actually worked like a charm in this. To dodge the Zerk, there was also that weird robot cut in half that freaks your cat out when you come across it in the beginning and you essentially accidentally put it out of its misery.

So I didn’t realize this game had some horror elements to it, but they’re done very well with striking a tone and setting a mood in those moments that kind of really heavily contrast with the more pleasant experience with the robots. But anyway, it gets back to the beginning. Right. The intro is so sad. I know you mentioned last time that the thing. One thing you knew about this game was that you’re just chilling with your cat friends and then you fall into a city.

But they made it a lot worse with the scratching to hold on and made it so dramatic. I mean, it’s not like it was the nicest place they were living with all the pipes everywhere, but it was their living spot and it seemed quite cozy with a nice view, a cat parkour, jungle gym, and lots of greenery.

[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s a nice. It’s a nice start with all your buddies, as I said. And since I did get that meow thing, I kind of just ran around my buddies, just spamming the meow button at them all. All the other. All the.

[00:03:38] Speaker A: Oh, so you got the trophy before you even fell down the hole?

[00:03:42] Speaker B: Actually, no, I think I got it just not long after I fell because I.

[00:03:46] Speaker A: For.

[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah, for the while where you’re just roaming around with them and then you scratch a tree. That was another kind of cool mechanic. They had a scratch scratching.

[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yep. Absolutely. There’s a lot of those little moments that you don’t expect going into it, that you end up coming across that kind of give a little chuckle for sure, definitely.

[00:04:08] Speaker B: But, yeah, it was a nice start. And then, as you said, I think it’s somber pretty quickly.

You’re running around with your friends, they’re all jumping across the pipe. And then when you jump across the pipe, it breaks and you fall down and it’s kind of like a Mufasa moment and they’re all staring down at you as you’re trying to hang on.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah. It switches to first person, of course.

[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yes.

And then you just. Yeah, you fall down into the.

What is it they call it? The dead city, where it’s all just. Yeah. Trash and sewers.

[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you certainly kind of shrug off that fall.

It definitely. It was limping and bloody after that first fall to set up the story, and then you end up limping again later. But man, he can handle a impact, that’s for sure.

[00:04:57] Speaker B: I love. They had the mechanic of the cat just licks himself or he’s injured and it’s like automatic healing.

That’s what it was. He just licked his. Where his wounds were whenever he. When. Yeah, you said there was limping later on when he limped later on I had. Later on I had my wife next to me and she saw it. We like fell and when I fell and she’s like, oh no, he’s limping. No. And then he like stops and sits and licks his leg and then he’s just not limping anymore like he did in the beginning.

[00:05:26] Speaker A: Combine game mechanics with real life.

[00:05:28] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:05:30] Speaker A: And right. And pretty early in the story you meet B12, your drone droid companion, and bam. It becomes a game about more than just running around as a cat. The drone does have one of the most common tropes of all time and can’t remember anything. So you have to go and collect those memories as you go along by finding items. And all of a sudden this game also has a text delivered story to it, which was a pleasant surprise.

I didn’t enter thinking it was a major story. I figured it was just escape the city. But it goes a lot deeper than that into even some existential territory.

You know, I’ll just suspend my disbelief that a cat can easily understand and also read translated English.

[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s a.

It was. It caught me off guard of by the end, like how deep and kind of depressing the story was. But it was.

It was a good story. Overall I did enjoy it. I think the whole learning about.

I mean we’ll go more through it, but just overall it was a really intriguing story.

I was quite sad and depressing.

Not at all what I thought it.

[00:06:36] Speaker A: Was going to be.

[00:06:37] Speaker B: I thought it was just as you said, just play as a cat. And then, all right, we got to get out of this city and to the outside, I think everyone called it. Right?

[00:06:46] Speaker A: Just to the outside and you. Right. I mean, you end up coming across so many different things. There’s a lot of layers to the story. I mean, at first, especially as you uncover this society of robots that you run into the various areas, you know, once you find your first fully intact robot, it sees you and immediately starts running.

And they set it up like a horror moment, like it’s going to come and start attacking you, but you’re the one that’s actually scaring the robot. And you know, I was wondering if it was running from you or from B12 or just had no idea what you are and figured you were one of the zerg monsters. But it definitely got interesting from here on out. They thought you were going to eat them. Uh oh.

So you discovered that the, those zerk can eat through metal.

[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it eats. Yeah, it would eat the robots. Like I think later on there’s a, there’s the tunnel sequence or the sewers. Sorry, not tunnel, the sewers that we go through. And there’s like, oh, there’s been a couple of robots or whatever that have gone down there and haven’t come back and yeah, you see like bits of robot that have been eaten.

[00:07:50] Speaker A: Right.

Yeah, I think some of the environmental things. Right. I mean you mentioned the scratching mechanic. There’s certain parts where you can go up and lick water out of whatever puddle has formed. There’s an option for some of the robots to kind of rub along their legs and then they end up looking at you with a.

Either.

[00:08:10] Speaker B: A heartbeat.

[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you can, you can nuzzle one that actually had a sad face afterwards. I don’t know why. Yeah, you can nuzzle. That’s what it is.

[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah, you can nuzzle the robots.

[00:08:19] Speaker A: So that’s entertaining. I don’t know if you do this, but I think my favorite one, if you interact with a paper bag, it gets stuck on your head and then the controls don’t work properly. Like you don’t go where you want to go. And I run into things and literally every direction is something totally random.

[00:08:34] Speaker B: I did do that.

I did do that as a cat, mainly because I’ve also seen one of my cats do that in real life and they flip out.

So it was, yeah, it was kind of funny just to put the bag on and then as you said, the controls are completely weird and funky. Right. And you’re trying to get it off and then you’re able to just shake it off.

[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I think also.

Little callback to season one of our podcast is this game Stray actually has a rest option like death stranding.

It’s not quite as useful since you don’t need to replenish stamina or anything like that, but you just curl up and take a cat nap. I did like the sort of cinematic slow zoom out to take in all the scenery around.

And you even mentioned you got the trophy for having an hours long cat nap. I didn’t go through that, but I did.

[00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I put him to sleep. I had him take a nap and then I just, I found it was on a rooftop. There was. One of the robots was sleeping on the rooftop and like next to him was a pillow.

[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yes, I remember that.

[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I.

[00:09:38] Speaker A: In the slums area.

[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yep, in the slums. So I just had my cat nap and I put the controller down and then left it for an hour. But through the whole control, the whole time, you can hear the cat purring through the PS5 controller.

[00:09:50] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:09:51] Speaker B: Which was pretty funny. And it vibrates every now and then too.

So. Yeah, that was a. Kind of. Just a cool little mechanic.

[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The. I. I especially like the soundtrack in this game too. It. It didn’t. It seemed kind of nonchalant at the beginning, but it really.

I don’t know, it was more ambiance than anything else, but it was a great backing track for everything you’re doing especially, I think taught in a lot of those.

In a lot of those rest spots you could just kind of lie down, take a nap and listen to some music, which you can also do in desk training.

Very interesting.

[00:10:31] Speaker B: You could. Yes, I did. Like, I don’t know. Did you. In the slums, did you find all the music sheets?

[00:10:36] Speaker A: I did. I went through all of them and I found I think 7 out of the 8 just by wandering and exploring. And then I ended up realizing, right, of course there’s obviously eight to find. So I hunted the last one down. I.

It was the one that was in the bar on top of the booth near the pool table.

[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that one took me. Yeah, that was, I think the last one I found too. And you got the one. There was one that we had to trade.

Trade for.

[00:11:05] Speaker A: Right. There’s one inside of a lock, a safe near the musician. Yeah, there’s. I mean, there’s a lot of. Basically just fetch quests in here, but they find interesting ways to make them a little more entertaining. And at least with that one in particular, you end up getting a reward of listening to a guitarist play some music.

[00:11:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you do. Which was cool because it’s all the. He’s playing all the music of the soundtrack of the game.

[00:11:26] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. And. But you end up hearing that they have names to the songs and one of them’s even called Untitled. And it. Yeah, it was a.

That was a nice little experience. I think I did a handful of the fetch side quests. I did end up doing one later just because it was really a small area for the ant.

Forget what it’s called the ant hill. Basically the giant treehouse area. You needed to collect three sets of colored flowers.

[00:11:52] Speaker B: I did that. Yes.

Later on. Yeah.

[00:11:56] Speaker A: But yeah, so I. I guess jumping into a bit more of the deeper stuff. So the horror elements, mostly scenery wise in some of Those darker areas gives me really heavy HR Giger influence vibes. Something like Alien or I suppose you could say stranger things as well. Especially when you come across the giant walls of Eyeballs that around.

Obviously the Zerk are kind of more fluffy Pixar looking things, except that they eat you. But those chase sequences are pretty intense, at least with how fast they are and the fact that it takes some serious button mashing effort to get them off and they just keep popping back on right after anyway.

Also, Zerg sounds like something from Toy Story. Just the name of them.

[00:12:36] Speaker B: Kind of an interesting choice because it wasn’t it Zerg? Is it Zerg? Emperor Zerg was the.

[00:12:43] Speaker A: Is that what it is?

[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s Emperor Alien was the bad guy. The alien bad guy in Toy Story. Yeah, it was though. Zerk is. It’s like they’re his minions.

[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it. It kind of almost is. But I think as you go through a couple of. Right. You need to like plug in the battery or plug in the generator or whatever else to make your next unlock your next area.

And you go through these chase sequences. Then you end up getting the UV light gun, which is kind of cool except that it has a really fast overheating system.

[00:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. It’s very fast. I actually didn’t use it as much as I thought I would. So for the sewers part, I actually didn’t use it because it’s a trophy to get through without killing any.

So I was able to get through the whole sewers without killing any of the Zerks. Just kind of like running in circles and running away from them. But I did use it a few times later on.

[00:13:35] Speaker A: I ended up using it a fair bit. I think when you first get it and you’re bringing. You’re escorting the robot back to the slums. I think that’s Doc, isn’t it?

I ended up using it.

[00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s Doc.

[00:13:47] Speaker A: I ended up overusing it and really just overheating it immediately. So what I did was from then on when I used it, I would just sprint, wait until some of them were approaching, blast them really quick, like just a tap of the button, and then shake off any others and keep sprinting and then blast the next group as they were about to arrive. So I kind of just like toggled on and off of it to make it last. Because that seemed to be the most efficient way to get through those areas for me at least.

[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. So I wanted to talk as you. I want to go Back a little bit. I was going to talk more. A little bit more about some of the story. So we can start like in the slums. So you get to the slums, as you said, people run away from you. We have B12 with us. And the robots think we’re something that’s evil. Well, it’s gonna eat them. But then they determine, oh, no, never mind, you’re actually nice. You’re not gonna harm us. And then it’s like, basically, you gotta find. I think you find four notebooks of.

[00:14:49] Speaker A: Yes, the characters. It was the other outsiders.

[00:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Then you have to. Out there.

[00:14:56] Speaker A: But it’s in order to find. To convince the. So Balthasar, Clementine, Balthazar, Clementine, Doc. And Doc, the first guy.

[00:15:04] Speaker B: I forget the name of Momo. No, no, it wasn’t Momo’s.

[00:15:09] Speaker A: Maybe it was Momo bringing.

Either way, it was. You know, it’s a. It’s a series of fetch quests to get you through, to convince the. The outsider that didn’t want to. Want to leave to go and get you out and lead you along to the next portion of the story.

[00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah, Momo. So you take. Yeah, you go with Momo.

I think you do. There’s the quick thing on the rooftop. You take the transmitter, which was just not too difficult. It was just you, like kind of running around, making sure you don’t get killed by the Zerks.

[00:15:42] Speaker A: That was definitely the first hint of heavy stealth that I saw in there until obviously waiting for the elevator to come down. That doesn’t really count as much.

[00:15:50] Speaker B: But the.

[00:15:51] Speaker A: That area with the barrels and then locking Zerk inside of the gates and things like that were very much reminiscent of a lot of stealth games, which was kind of fun.

Jump and climb on things. Helps.

[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I definitely. For the last bit of the.

For the elevator, I kind of had a route where I was able to run and jump and kind of like. It was almost like a figure 8 pattern so that I never got caught by any of the Zerks until the elevator arrived and I was able to go up. But then you go up, you take it, because from Momo, you get this transmitter to transmit to get a hold of all the other friends, the ones.

[00:16:28] Speaker A: That are already outside of the slums.

[00:16:30] Speaker B: The ones that are already outside the slums to see where they are and what. How. What their ideas over what ideas they might have to get outside.

And then we meet Doc. Which one? It’s hilarious because Doc literally looks like Doc from Back to the Future.

[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yep. Lots of tributes here.

[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Which Was I found really funny. And then. Yeah, we go with Doc. We get the array and then we go.

Trying to. Trying to remember now. Get the. We get the. Is it a neuro. What was it called? Is it a neuralyzer neutralizer?

[00:17:05] Speaker A: I forget. I just think of it as the UV gun. Yeah, it’s like loaded into, basically. And really, I think the.

Right. Okay. This is obviously marketed as a game where you play as a cat, but it turns out this really is a game about B12. The story is especially about B12. And you’re helping him along as definitely.

[00:17:24] Speaker B: A story about B12.

[00:17:26] Speaker A: Regain his memories. There’s a lot of. There are many existential elements where they don’t necessarily reference philosophers specifically, but there’s an NPC at some point that you can talk to that brings up this concept that is an existential concept where if a robot or an AI replaces its arm and then its leg, and then it keeps replacing parts until he doesn’t have any of its original parts, is it really the same person anymore?

And that’s actually something that’s just a general concept, but I’ve already seen that in another game I’ve played recently that also has AI or androids as one of their main characters, or both of the main characters. I won’t say what it is, but interesting that that kind of idea keeps popping up in games here because there’s just so much to it. Right. I mean, I think B12, especially once you finally figure out, oh, he was a actual human that was uploaded into a system and then downloaded into this drone, which I’m not 100% sure, but it definitely looks like V12 is either a prototype or just a custom version of the Sentinels that you end up finding in the jail.

Did you get that vibe? I think the shape of it mostly looks like it just more humanized or personalized the face that it has.

[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, I agree. Also, he also B12 gave me the face of BD1 from Jedi Fallen Order.

[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:18:57] Speaker B: Okay. I hear you. To me, slightly looked.

Looked a little bit like BD1 in the face. But yes, I could definitely. Yes, I think he was sort of slightly just a smaller sentinel based off the sentinels. Probably use scrap parts of them.

[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Most likely it’s just the way things go. And anything that has a drone or a droid end up using the scraps to make something good.

[00:19:21] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:19:23] Speaker A: You also. I mean. Right. I mentioned that this. This cat has a penchant for shrugging off injuries. It’s bloody and limping after the first fall, it’s bloody or it’s limping again. After you leave the slums to find Doc and you go on that Donkey Kong barrel ride kind of moment, I started wondering if it would do anything, if this game would do anything with the whole cats have nine lives concept and have you either get to your eighth before finishing the story and then dying or something.

And it turns out that it has a. An application of it just not woven into the gameplay. You get a trophy or achievement if you die nine times. Yeah. Cool.

[00:20:00] Speaker B: That.

[00:20:00] Speaker A: That is checking the box off, I guess. But I was hoping it would have some, like, dark. It’s already a pretty depressing dark game. I was wondering if it was gonna make it, like, okay, you die a ninth time and you get a full game over. You have to start from the beginning.

[00:20:13] Speaker B: Oh, God. Yeah, I. I got that trophy of dying nine times. I actually didn’t think I would do it. And I wasn’t trying for it either. I did actually die nine times.

[00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of those Zerg sequences were pretty tough. And some of the Sentinel. If you get caught by a Sentinel, you don’t have a lot of time to escape or hide.

[00:20:30] Speaker B: I think five of them came in one section, which we’ll talk about here in a minute. To Sentinels. I think, like, probably half of them came in one section.

[00:20:39] Speaker A: Right. And I don’t know if there’s anything in particular from the sewers they want to touch on, but once you get to Midtown, there’s tributes start flying all over the place.

[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there wasn’t too much in sewers. I mean, we just. In the sewers part, it’s just kind of a cool little boat ride that you take at first with Momo and then.

[00:20:58] Speaker A: And you have that whole section and rooms and escape sequence of the area full of eyeballs, which was creepy as hell. And then you get attacked by Zerks in that same place. And it was visually striking and cool, but man, it was creepy.

[00:21:15] Speaker B: It was creepy. There was a part of me. When you get into that room with the eyeballs and it does like the cutscene and shows B12 looking at the eyeball and then it pans back to you. There was a part of me that was expecting a boss fight. And I was like.

[00:21:29] Speaker A: I thought about it for a second too.

[00:21:31] Speaker B: It’s gonna come out here and how am I gonna kill it?

[00:21:34] Speaker A: I mean, this like, two second overheating UV gun is not gonna do anything against an eyeball that big.

[00:21:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s like, do I just blind it? Constantly.

[00:21:47] Speaker A: That’s probably. Would have made the most sense.

[00:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But no, otherwise there isn’t really. There aren’t. There’s no boss fights in it. It’s just more of like the chase sequences with the Zerks making sure you get away and Right. Not getting caught.

[00:22:01] Speaker A: Right. And right. So you get to Midtown, and I go through a number of different areas. I think they’re the. The cool section in the apartment block where you can find the cassette tapes and then also destroy the cameras and you find Clementine’s house and you end up having to go and get a disguise for Blazer, her contact, which was kind of fun because it’s. It almost feels a bit like Hitman series where you can don many, many disguises. So you had to get a construction helmet from a drunk guy in a bar and then a. Oh, no, that was the vest. And then you get a.

Oh, no, that was the helmet. You get a vest from a clothing store by putting a cassette into a.

[00:22:37] Speaker B: Putting the cassette in there. So it’s so lo.

[00:22:39] Speaker A: Into a cassette player in the back room and stealing it. So there’s a lot of kind of funny moments there. But yeah, there are Heavy Metal Gear Solid tributes in the Neko Corporation and jail sections in the form of plenty of stealth and even complete with hiding in cardboard boxes, which is a major pillar of stealthing in.

In mgs, which I thought was hilarious. I think it was actually really well done where you can hide in obviously away from spotlights, away from the sentinels. You can cause distractions. You can meow to get them to chase you and then lock them inside of a room. Like all of that was a really good execution of a stealth system, which didn’t need to happen, but I’m glad they did.

[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a cool little stealth section. That was another one.

First, I’m just gonna go back quickly. Just random. Random thing about when Clementine tells you, like, oh, go find my friend Blazer, and all that. And then you meet Blazer, and all I could think was just dodgeball was like, meet Blade, meet Laser and Blazer.

Just like it’s Blazer.

[00:23:52] Speaker A: The naming of characters in this was very entertaining.

[00:23:56] Speaker B: Globo Gym, was it? Globo, Jim Cobra.

[00:24:01] Speaker A: This story did even manage to squeeze in some twists and turns. So Blazer double crosses you and Clementine just for some money.

What a douche.

[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

I wasn’t expecting that, like going up there and then you’re in the club also to get into the club. I love that the one Guy who lets you in in the.

The back way, through the back window is called Alex. Me. My name. I just found that hilarious. I was like, cool, there’s a robot.

[00:24:32] Speaker A: You’re the one that’s sneaking in the dissidents into the club.

[00:24:35] Speaker B: I was like, all these robots have, like, really unique, interesting names. And then there’s just a robot called Alex. I was like, all right, cool.

Yeah. You sneak in the back window. He’s like, hey, you want to come in and have a drink? It’s like, sure, I’ll drink as a cat. Sure.

[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah, why not? That makes total sense.

[00:24:53] Speaker B: Jump in the back window of the club. And then. I don’t know. Did you. It was another trophy that I did. Did you do it? You could get the vinyl record and.

[00:25:01] Speaker A: Put it on the dj, the table and scratch.

[00:25:03] Speaker B: And then. And then you scratch it. Yeah. Which was funny.

[00:25:08] Speaker A: I mean, whoever came up with that whole little trophy was definitely patting themselves on the back for it being funny and clever. Because of the whole scratch mechanic they already had built for other purposes, obviously.

[00:25:22] Speaker B: I like. The other mechanic is that you scratch the doors to get people to open them.

[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yes. I thought that was really cool. And scratch kind of tucked in blankets and things to pull open drawers and whatnot to make platforms.

[00:25:33] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:34] Speaker A: They made good use of that mechanic itself.

[00:25:37] Speaker B: They did.

[00:25:37] Speaker A: Did you? I just kind of accidentally came across it. You can actually ride, basically a bar. What are those things called? A dumbwaiter. Into the basement of the bar, and you end up in this little room. I don’t remember what exactly you find in there. Nothing super special.

[00:25:51] Speaker B: But there was a. I did. It was a memory. It was like a remember.

[00:25:54] Speaker A: It was. Yeah.

[00:25:55] Speaker B: Memory in there. And that was it.

[00:25:56] Speaker A: And I didn’t go for all the memories, but I. I got a majority of them, I think, just by pure exploration.

[00:26:02] Speaker B: So same here. I didn’t get all of them either. I think I was missing by the end of it. I think I was missing like, three, maybe.

[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah.

And.

Well, so in addition to Blazer double crossing you, they start really going for the emotions. I guess Clementine sacrifices herself for you.

She just says at least one of the outsiders. Outsiders has to get out. So get out.

That. I mean, I really enjoyed the.

The motorcycle chase cutscene to escape from there. And then she just pops you through a hole and then locks the door behind her. And you can’t unlock a door, a mechanical door like that.

[00:26:46] Speaker B: No, you can’t.

I will go back to my nine lives thing in the jail. That was where a lot Of. So there’s the second.

There’s a couple little. Those puzzles where there are sentinels and you have to get them in the jail cell, and then you can lock the door and trap them in there. The first one or whatever was easy. I don’t remember if there was two or three, but whichever one that had two doors, one door was open, one door was closed, and two sentinels.

I kept, like, running around trying to do it, and, like, the sentinel would shut one, I’d get trapped, and the second one always just pop out. But running around, you have to dodge quick because they have shooting quickly. Yeah, they shoot quickly and they have a good radius. They can shoot kind of far and wide. And, yeah, I died. I died a few times there.

[00:27:33] Speaker A: That was.

That. That was the second section where you had to lock sentinels in a room. I surprisingly got that on my first try.

And I think it was because I had already done the first one. No problem. The second one, I was going through that second room, unlocked the second door so that you could pop out the other side, and I got immediately spotted and just started sprinting the other direction. And I think I was just lucky enough that both of them chased me the same way and was able to close both.

And I was kind of in shock after that because I really didn’t expect it to go that well, especially after being just caught off guard.

[00:28:10] Speaker B: But, yeah, it took me a few tries, but I did end up getting it.

[00:28:17] Speaker A: And so. Right. I like, you obviously get the battery and the keys, and so you go back to the subway and take the subway, and you do the fairly simple kind of computer, slash the cables thing to boot up the whole system to open the. The roof. And B12 sacrifices itself, too. Just. What the hell? What a gut punch, dude.

[00:28:39] Speaker B: That was a huge gut punch. I’m not gonna lie. I was sitting there. I mean, I was kind of. It was ladies at night for me. And then he’s like. He’s like. I knew, though, that even though I was gonna do this, that I probably wouldn’t survive through this if enough. I did it. And I was like, oh, my God. And then you just, like, lie down next to him and sleep next to him for a bit. I was like, yup.

[00:28:57] Speaker A: And you can even do it again. And you know, from that perspective, right? You were a human.

You are deposited into a droid body and then realize that you are a human. And so now, I mean, he. It. It mentions multiple times when you find other memories or other things just around that. You.

It wishes it was able to smell or taste or various other feel, like physical feelings or emotional feelings and. Right, okay. So it has this longing for what used to be. So it kind of makes sense that it would just be ready to sacrifice itself for Snit is still alive. But it’s still a gut punch nonetheless. They give you so many reasons to be attached to your companions along the way in this story, despite how little you really get to know them. And then they just take it all away.

[00:29:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Then they’re just like, go on without me. You need to get there. We’ll stay behind and sacrifice ourselves and take it. I was like, oh, my God. Everybody’s sacrificing themselves for a cat.

[00:29:51] Speaker A: But the real part that got me, too, was it took away its. Its B12 pouch, its droid pouch that you carry B12 in when it’s not floating on its own.

And wouldn’t you want to take that along for the memories? Yeah, you don’t really have much of a.

[00:30:06] Speaker B: Takes it away.

[00:30:09] Speaker A: Well, and then you find out, right, that the roof opens up and you get to look. I mean, actually, the view down into the whole city was kind of cool. It’s a relatively small place. The sun kills the Zerks and disables the Sentinels and kind of just wipes everything away.

[00:30:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. I don’t know if I caught this. So are humans completely gone, or. There’s still humans up on the surface.

[00:30:32] Speaker A: So that’s one of the things I was hoping we would find out when the story ended, was that there’d be some explanation. So they leave it completely ambiguous.

[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah, they do.

[00:30:42] Speaker A: The robots clearly think that the human, like, humans, have not existed for hundreds of years or many, many years. And the robots kind of took on the personalities of humans or emulated humans, which tends to happen a lot in Android replacing humanity. Stories in the media ever definitively say, one way or another, so your guess is as good as mine. If this is a depressing world and you want to have some hope in it, then, yes, maybe the cat comes across some humans or at least finds its own friends again. Or you can just go full depressing and say, humanity’s gone.

[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah, the end of it. I don’t know if you’ve seen the show. I’ve only watched the first season. The second season came out a little bit ago. I need to watch a silo on Apple tv. Plus not seeing it.

[00:31:25] Speaker A: No.

[00:31:25] Speaker B: It reminded me, obviously, with the opening and everything, like, very much like you’re in a silo.

[00:31:33] Speaker A: It looks like a silo. When you’re at the top.

[00:31:37] Speaker B: One phenomenal show, or at least the first season was great. So I need to watch the second season.

[00:31:41] Speaker A: Well, you need to watch, so we’ll trade.

[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

But no, it was. Yeah. I’d like to think there is still some. Some human beings out there, and if not, then if they’re normal humans and maybe it’s just a world of cats out there.

[00:31:58] Speaker A: A world full of cats.

[00:32:00] Speaker B: A world full of cats.

[00:32:03] Speaker A: Another funny detail.

[00:32:04] Speaker B: Someone dog sprinkled around.

[00:32:06] Speaker A: Well, you got to keep the cats in line, obviously.

[00:32:08] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:10] Speaker A: Another funny little detail that I noticed. I don’t know if you actually. How closely you looked. So when you finally unlock the gates to escape, if you. If you look closely at the door, it says the sign that previously said city closed, blah, blah, blah. Now it says city open in larger text. And then right below it, it says the city is actually open.

You can freely get in and out.

[00:32:33] Speaker B: Okay, I did see the city is now. I saw it changed from city is closed to city is open. I didn’t say the.

[00:32:39] Speaker A: Just love the. Love the sarcasm in there.

[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:43] Speaker A: The robots have a sense of humor. That’s.

That’s always something to strive for.

The other thing. So outside of the soundtrack, I think the sound effects in general were all right. Obviously, the. Everything cat related was great. I enjoyed the feeling of the padding, of the footsteps would make some noise of the cat.

And the. The sound effects for the robots talking was very, very much like Splatoon or Animal Crossing style or. There are just so many games that have a kind of babbly sound effect that.

[00:33:15] Speaker B: Yes, I like to take it out of it.

[00:33:16] Speaker A: Like, I feel like they could have done a million other options, but they took what they could. It wasn’t detracting in any way, but I feel like they could have been a little more creative with that.

[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I think they could have. It definitely. Yeah, it definitely. When I first heard him speak, my first thought was, oh, this is very animal crossing, like, for the speaking.

[00:33:39] Speaker A: But yeah, I. It’s good experience overall. My only, like, major parting thought would just be that they never truly explained the Zerks or what they are outside of the fact that they’re a plague of some sort. I really wish we learned a little bit more about that, but really, really wish we learned anything at all about the giant eyeballs, because that’s the thing that had me most curious.

[00:34:01] Speaker B: That.

Yeah, same. Because it was. I look, I get the little zerk things because it was something.

It was some program. Yeah, you said plague Thing done by the trash. Or was it by the Neko.

The Neko Corporation or that was in there. I think did them.

But yeah, the giant eyes. And then they have eggs that are.

[00:34:23] Speaker A: Zerk come out of eggs. But the eyes have eggs. Alien like eggs very much. I think they’re related in some ways, but I just wanted to know what. What the eyes are. And we’ll never find out unless there’s a sequel. But we already escaped the city, so why would there be a sequel?

[00:34:38] Speaker B: Who knows?

I don’t. Yeah, I don’t. Anyway, I do not think.

[00:34:42] Speaker A: Just make up your own backstory for the giant eyeballs that are straight out of alien.

[00:34:47] Speaker B: They literally are.

[00:34:49] Speaker A: It would. Honestly, it would have been cool if you could go up and scratch the eyeballs and they would pop.

And that’s how you get rid of the eyeballs. That is a missed opportunity there with the scratching mechanic and maybe the way that you beat the boss. You just need to find a way to confuse it long enough so that you can sneak up and scratch the eyeball.

There you go. I just made a new mod. Someone make that mod on PC.

[00:35:13] Speaker B: Nice. Good job.

[00:35:14] Speaker A: It won’t be me. I don’t know how to do that.

[00:35:15] Speaker B: No, neither do I. No idea.

[00:35:19] Speaker A: What would you give as a rating for Stray?

[00:35:21] Speaker B: Alex oh has a rating for Stray.

I. I did enjoy it. I.

I did really enjoy playing as a cat. Said completely new, unique mechanic. Never done that before, obviously. Ever in a game. Don’t know if we’ll have another game that does it because I said. Yeah, as we said, I don’t think there’ll be a sequel to this. I will probably say it is a short game. There’s a trophy. I didn’t do the trophy. There’s a trophy to beat it in under two hours, which means you can literally just fly, run, run through, fly through. Which makes sense because until you reach the sewers part slightly, it doesn’t really pick up until really kind of after the sewers around the sewers.

So you can fly through the gameplay pretty quick.

[00:36:08] Speaker A: But I think once. Once you’ve played it once, it’s probably easier to do it on a repeat playthrough when you know what you need to do. And the only hurdle or roadblock to getting done within two hours would be the NECA Corporation in jail, where you got to stealth. Unless you’re just really good at sprinting through the exact path you need to go. Yeah, there’s gotta be speedrunners out there who are doing that in an hour.

[00:36:29] Speaker B: I’m sure because I did try. Actually I did go back after I beat it and tried to do one of the trophies was that first zircon counter where you said you serpentined is to just not get caught at all. Like not even get one to jump on your back.

Like just make it all the way through. I tried it about six or seven times and I got very close but then I kept getting caught and I was like, you know what?

Nope. I don’t need to get like slightly frustrated or anything. Like I enjoyed the game. Don’t need to do this. I’m okay. Don’t need to try for these trophies.

So.

But overall I would say probably.

I want to say 8 but to be honest, I think it’s 7.5.

[00:37:13] Speaker A: Yep.

I’m landing right about where you are. I think I’m looking at it very much from a perspective of this is an indie game with a very unique premise and set of mechanics. And I think the cat specific mechanics are a big plus that boost it a lot. And I think the story at the end of the day was surprising in the fact that it existed but also the way it was told and they did a good job with it. I think I really liked the Metal Gear Solid stealth tributes and at the end of the day, I mean yes, it’s short. I did think it was. Shouldn’t have been much longer if they wanted to do that. I think they hit the length well.

But just certain details right. It’s not as polished as a lot of games can be.

So I’d probably land at a 7. 7.5 as well.

[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I think. I think 7.5 is a good. Good score for it. I really did enjoy the one mechanic as a cat being able to. Because my cats do it all the time. When you. They just paw off something. You press triangle in the game. Yes.

[00:38:17] Speaker A: And just slightly hit it with your paw.

[00:38:18] Speaker B: It gets closer, closer. Especially knocking off paint cans. Getting paint everywhere.

[00:38:22] Speaker A: I found that paint cans, the beer bottles. Yeah.

Being the a hole orange cat that you mentioned last time was yes I guess was a lot of fun stealing.

[00:38:33] Speaker B: Now I understand my. My one in real life does it because it is kind of fun.

[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah. You have lived the experience. Yeah.

[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yes I have.

[00:38:40] Speaker A: Don’t be so hard on him.

But yeah, really good experience overall. Glad we. Glad we played it and hope you all did too.

[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah it was. It’s been on my. Been on my backlog too for a little bit. So yeah I’m now glad that I have played through it so.

So thank you everybody for listening this week and stay tuned for our next episode.

[00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, check it out next time to find out which game season four of the Gaming Backlog Book Club will be about.

[00:39:09] Speaker B: Thanks. If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of any games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name. Thanks.