For real, though. Stray is a fun little game, even if it's short. You can probably find it for dirt cheap if it's not already included on your preferred gaming platform. I played it via ps+ only a few months after it came out.
It 100% does. I didn’t play it either but I watched a streamer complete it instead of working one day and I don’t feel like he and I really had a much different experience of it
Lots of games have a simple interaction button. Stray had decent environmental puzzles and a fair amount of action for a game about a cat. I don't think the focus was really on action though it felt more like quiet exploration punctuated with tense high steaks chase scenes. I could imagine that is what a cat might feel like walking around in the world
Stray is a great game. It's not complicated. I loved to just walking on the chessboard while the robots were playing a game, and getting a trophy just because of being messy.
Stray is short and gameplay is on the simpler side, but it’s got a great atmosphere. I was longing for more fetch quests come the end just to hang out in the Stray world some more.
Sounds like you were playing the wrong game for you. But then no reviews would have described it as being like Mirror's Edge so maybe you should have checked before you bought it.
I think you could take this experience as inspiration to make the game you wanted to play. It sounds like there's an opportunity there - Mirror's Edge with cats might be popular.
I'm not down for these kinds of games, either. Short, linear experiences with little to no agency are, IMO, barely even games. I tend not to spend my money on games that I will play through once in like 8 hours, and then never touch again except maybe years later out of nostalgia.
Personally that's the dream game for me. I haven't got time for hundreds of mid-tier grinding hours. Give me something with emotional impact and an absorbing world that lasts at most 10 hours.
If I want just gameplay I'll just play one of numerous ranked games to get that fix