My big Review

[grihajedy]

6,5/10
Stray is coming out on Playstation, what will Xbox answer in the same day? I present to your attention - a new exclusive, I would say, visual novel that combines 2d "2fps" animation and 3d elements (like driving cars, trains, helicopters, as well as some background or physical objects).
I'm not against experiments, always only for it, but for some reason everything goes wrong with Xbox, I don't know what it is connected with, I can only assume that Microsoft does not properly control the development of games, and maybe they also recruit not very competent people, In short - gives a lot of money to anyone, with hope that at least some games will become unique, and become their Exclusive indie-masterpiece, but it doesn’t work for the 4th time, the gunk, recore , battletoads, for me a mediocre sea of ​​thieves, it seems that after they don`t find a successful result, they begin to approve more and more cheap formats, and that's how we "arrived" to the game - "As Dusk Falls".
So, I repeat, such a "bookish" visual style of this "like a movie" game is not the biggest problem, for the first 2 hours I was not even particularly bored, especially since game offered to you a co-op up to 8 people, although it was made "through the ass", but more on this later. The fact is that the story itself is of no value, there is a very banal plot about an unsuccessful robbery by brothers from a not very prosperous family, along with whom a couple more ordinary civilians are "sucked into trouble", and, yes, someone undoubtedly like such stories, and, in general, this concept is capable of creating "emotional tension" for the characters, but not here. Personally, I've watched a lot of films, I just "facepalming" everytime from the "template" and clichédness of each local character, plot twists and turns also consist of clichés. Just imagine a typical movie about a robbery, stretched for 6 hours, and what will happen in it - and here it will be, the simplest possible film about a very local robbery attempt with the characters that are most stereotyped for such a story,
And, with very boring, 1-frame art, yes, it looks original, but why should we play it? The plot here consists of 2 books of 3 hours each, the second of which is called "Expansion", it tells about the escape of criminals, and since all "Suspense moments" with hostage taking are already resolved in the previous chapter, it already looks like not very necessary dlc, and it plays even more boring than the original)
So, maybe something extraordinary awaits us in the gameplay? Well, the game is made more like a "game for streamers", the fact is that here all the players make decisions for all the characters, the option with the most votes wins, if the same numbers - the answer is chosen randomly, also you will have a "forcing" mechanic ", we can disable control for other players 3 times in 1 chapter, this is very useful at key decisions - that require the consent of the majority of players. This kind of gameplay might be of interest to you, but then again, either if you're a streamer or if you have a lot of people playing with you, which can be problematic as either you need multiple people with gamepads to play via "remote play" on Steam, or you need to be with all people in 1 Wi-fi network so that they can download the companion app and use their phones. Well, either everyone should have a working Microsoft Store and a Game Pass subscription, yes, in this case there will be no problems, it will be possible to connect to your online at any moment of your gaming session. Of course, there is also QTE, the only complaint about them is that they are too simple, they do not represent any challenge, in a co-op game they work either in turn, or all players must have time to press the desired button.
There is no special variability in the story either, yes, you can influence a lot of things, but in the end everything comes to about the same results, not counting the "unfortunate endings" for the character, when you did something completely contrary to the further good fate of the character.

🏆Well, we have another unnoticed exclusive of Micro soft with rather specific gameplay and an empty clichéd story, and somewhere, probably, one creator of such wonderful books is rejoicing, the fact that he managed to achieve the adaptation of his writings, at least in this format.

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Обзор на русском: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199274703904/recommended/1341820/