Stray Nintendo Switch review

Outside of gaming, the thing that eats up my free time the most is caring for pets. In our house we’ve had everything from rescue ducks to millipedes over the years, but above all else I’m a cat person. These furry little assholes are just the right blend of self sufficient and cuddly for my liking, and even a more than occasional bite and scratch from our problem child Maven won’t change that stance. Two years ago the game Stray released much to the delight of my fellow cat lovers, and really captured some of those irritating feline behaviours we all know and love. Now it’s available on the Switch, which I’ll admit took me by surprise.

In Stray you play as a ginger cat, living life with its furry friends in a post apocalyptic world. Unfortunately this happy life doesn’t last long, and our protagonist falls into a walled city populated entirely by robots. These companion bots were originally made to serve the humans who made this dark and derelict city a home, but without them have developed a self awareness and live together mostly in harmony.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in robot world though (and not just because no sunlight can reach the city) as a deadly bacteria called Zurks is threatening to devour all organic and non organic life. Only by teaming up with AI drone B12 can our kitty hero save the day by letting the daylight into the city to wipe out these germs, but it won’t be an easy task.

For the most part Stray is a game about exploration, even though it features both open and linear sections. Environments can be climbed by simply finding places you can jump to and pressing the jump button, with nothing actually resembling platforming in Stray. Finding routes to where you need to go isn’t always straightforward though, and to save the day you’ll need to move barrels to make paths, find electronic doodads to open doors, and occasionally even avoid that pesky bacteria.

To break up the peaceful parts of Stray, you’ll often have to escape certain death from the Zurks. This usually means racing past the almost adorable blobs as they launch at you, and shaking them off with a tap or push of the button (depending on your accessibility setting) when they manage to reach you. These sections aren’t necessarily designed to test your twitch reactions and gaming skill, but are a fairly intense way to mix things up away from the narrative of the game.

A lot of what I spent my time doing in Stray was sightseeing above anything else, while finding out what happened in this world via documents and chatting with the robots who live there. It’s such a unique and striking setting for a video game, but I must admit that by playing the game on the Switch you will be missing out on possibly the most appealing part of Stray – the jaw dropping visuals.

It is worth mentioning before I start critiquing the visuals of this particular version of Stray, that the game does run really well on the Switch. The frame rate isn’t ever perfect, but the game is totally playable and enjoyable on this more than dated hardware. On home consoles though Stray is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, with every cityscape worthy of hanging in a gallery and every apartment recreated in incredible detail. In a game that’s essentially about urban exploration above all else, having low quality muddy environments takes away a lot of the game’s appeal.

There are a few other issues with Stray as a game too, but none quite as frustrating as the stealth sections. Dodging drones that are scanning for life in out of bounds areas isn’t a whole lot of fun, and can get pretty frustrating. This isn’t a huge part of the game though at least, and especially once you realise the route you need to follow aren’t that hard to get through either.

Although the Switch version of Stray isn’t the best way to play the game, it does still enable you to see the best moments of Stray in all their glory: the silly cat interactions. As a cat you are well versed in cat behaviour, and can interact with the environment accordingly. Scratching on walls and carpets is pretty basic, but all cat owners will be used to kitty keyboard typing and the annoyance of your beloved pet knocking every single item off a shelf. Playing as a cat means you can finally be the one who is a typical cat (for no reason other than it’s amusing) and Stray does this perfectly.

It’s not the ideal way to play the game, but Stray is still a wonderful game, even on the Switch. You’ll admittedly be missing out on the incredible visuals by playing on Nintendo’s handheld, but being able to play Stray on the go is rather novel and a lot of fun.