The new cat game Stray has received a hilarious new mod that changes in-game meowing to the yelling from a famous sequence in Heavy Rain. The cat-centric title has recently taken the gaming world by storm, with Stray receiving massively positive reviews and becoming publisher Annapurna Interactive’s most successful launch yet. Although Heavy Rain was released over a decade ago, its story-heavy nature does bear acute similarity to Stray, and now the games have a new, entertaining connection between them.
Heavy Rain is an interactive story game that centers around multiple protagonists, but the most memorable is father Ethan Mar. Near the beginning of the game, Ethan loses his son at a crowded mall, prompting a chase scene event where he frantically searches for him. This scene immediately became heavily memed due to the main action players could take during it, an awkwardly-phrased command on the screen that said “Press X To Jason,” meaning to shout Jason’s name. The new cat game allows players to partake in many classic cat activities – Stray players can get a bag stuck on the cats head, scratch up furniture, and even utilize a dedicated meow button at any point in the game.
A new video from IGN demonstrates a hilarious new Stray mod based on the classic Heavy Rain Jason button. The mod replaces the meow sound that springs from the dedicated button with many different voice clips of Ethan yelling “Jason!” in several different intonations, with the entertaining video showing the game’s cat shouting the boy’s name at various unsuspecting robots and other cats. The mod is available to implement in the PC version from creator Gibrietas on Nexus Mods.
Although the Heavy Rain Jason meme is several years old, this new Stray mod is just as funny in the present day. One of the standout features of Stray is the incredibly realistic cat simulation experience it provides when compared to most titles with an animal protagonist, so the game’s life-like main character suddenly shouting in human speech is incredibly entertaining. The mod perfectly captures the absurdity of the original moment in Heavy Rain that made it become so viral in the first place, and is no doubt one of the most unique mods to be created for Stray since its release.
Funnily enough, the Jason shouting scene wasn’t the only name-yelling moment in Heavy Rain to become a meme online – a bug that made Ethan only shout the name of his other son, Shaun, in various cutscenes also became popular, and fans can only wonder if that mod isn’t far behind. Designing funny replacement mods for games is a popular pastime for many fans of both AAA and indie titles. Whether it’s replacing God of War characters with the Simpsons family or making increasingly awful beds for Grandpa in Stardew Valley, absurd mods are always appreciated by players, and this hilarious Heavy Rain mod for Stray is no exception.
