Buy The Stanley Parable

Witty, unusual and quietly discomfiting, The Stanley Parable, without exaggerating, is one of my favourate games of all time. I am not going to give much away in this revew as I bellive I would spoil it, and I dont think I would do it justice in my attempt to describe it. All I will say is that it is, at risk of sounding cliché, more of an 'experience' than a traditional game, it has a absolutely great sense of humor, frequently mocks the player, game design itself, and is one of the only games to this date that has truely astonished me

The Stanley Parable is a game everyone must play.
It is brilliant in its simplicity and offers an incredibly enjoyable experience.

Short game with many different endings and possibilities. Whatever you do, the game reacts to you.

I thought I had finished the game but no... it tricked me. It only gave me a long ending to show me how ignorant I was to the world around me.

You can bend and break the rules but are you ready to face the consequences? Nobody is invulnerable.

What the heck am I talking about? You'll have to play the game to find out! :)

It took 6 hours of smashing space button to protect a baby and advance. It was worth it

You can disobey and break the game.
10/10

If you play the free demo you'll know whether or not you like this game, so this review is pointless and futile, which is entirely appropriate as the game itself revolves around pointlessness and futility.

You know how some games have hidden "easter eggs" that you can find by doing unexpected things? Well this is what you do throughout the game. You have to constantly restart from the beginning (Stanley's office), take different routes around the building, push different buttons and interact with different items. By doing this you eventually reach various different "endings" to the game. When you think you've found them all you can check one of the Steam Guides to see if you've missed any. There are one or two that you're extremely unlikely to find on your own. There are also several hidden secrets that you may or may not discover on your travels.

Good games have nice graphics, good gameplay, cool music... but how many would you describe as having great narration? That's what this game is all about: listening to a very English narrator, dripping with sarcasm and deadpan wit, giving a running commentary on Stanley's (your) actions - or lack of. Like listening to Howard Stern, you'll keep playing just to find out what he's going to say next. Who knew that standing in a broom closet doing nothing could be so entertaining? The theme/philosophy of the humour is to gently poke fun at the way gamers chase objectives, thinking they have choices, but really it's all futile. Have a look at the ridiculous achievements and you'll see what I mean.


The graphics details are set to low resolution by default within an obscure advanced options menu. I only discovered this after I'd more or less completed the game. Dammit. They're pretty good anyway but I would have liked to play the whole game in high def. Come to think of it, maybe this was part of the game...

Sometimes the game restarts before you've had time to read all the interesting stuff on the whiteboard or whatnot.


This game is too short, there's barely 3 hours of unique gameplay. The nature of the game means you'll replay parts of it multiple times, but like a good joke it inevitably wears thin.


The Broom Closet and the '430' achievement. Hilarious! There is a beautiful acoustic guitar song hidden deep.


Like a fine wine, this is a game to be sipped and savoured because as exquisite as it is, there's not enough of it. Buy it on sale and you'll get good value for your money.

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Great game. Great ''story-ies'' . This narator just.... Messed up with your mind. Different ending. It's a masterpiece

And then Stanley realised that he is on the best walking simulator of all time.

Brilliant in the most puzzling way.

I bought this game on sale this summer, and I kind of put it off until now. I can't believe I waited that long, because this is one of the most fun games I have ever played.
Although it can get a bit confusing, I find that is what makes it fun. If you get this game, though, I don't reccomend reading any guides until you've had your fill of tooling around. To me, at least, it makes the suprising game much more fun.


Pros
First off, the price! I think this should be worth much more.
The narrator has a personality, and will indeed say different things depending on what you do throughout the game.
There are SO many different endings, and I'm currently trying to get to them all. That being said, it is a time-well-spent undertaking since each one (most of them, at least) eludes to a bit more of the.. "Story"
The story isn't actually a set one.
The acheivements- take a look at them, real quick. The developers are genuises.
Each of the endings gives you something different.
Its freaking hilarious. That's the main thing.
The creativity behind it all. Play the game to understand.

Cons
As I said, it can get somewhat confusing, especially for gamers looking for a straightforeward story.
The story is pretty wavering. I still don't understand it fully.
You get NO instructions at the beginning of the game, even though the controls are basic WASD and the mouse.


At least 9/10, Please just give it a go.
I've never laughed this hard at a video game before.

The Stanley Parable is well made, interesting, and humorous. I would highly recommend you play the game, but not at the price point of $15 let alone $10. A more-or-less complete run of the game is two hours and after the first hour you've seen most of the options. After that it becomes repetitive as you perform slight variations to evoke a different ending

After your 2 hours there is no replay value. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and I highly enjoy it, but buy on sale for $5 and not more. To be clear I don't think any 2 hour game is worth $15, at least none that I've played

On a side note it's not compatible with 4k resolution, but runs at 300 fps at 2715x1527 on gtx 970