Platform: PC

Developer: Galactic Cafe

Publisher: Galactic Cafe

Release Date: October 17, 2013

Genre: Adventure

Nerd Rating: 9.0 out of 10

Reviewed by Some Jerk From Boston

Questions. All this game leaves is questions. Just when you think you’ve figured something out, WHAM! Some catechism knees you in the mental ballsack! You may ask a problematic question such as, “Why can’t Stanley do anything else?” when you’re only option is to jump repeatedly off a tall platform and killing yourself, or a philosophical query such as “Is this endless moment an extension of Stanley’s branching state of mind?” when the only way to go forward is to reset the game, yet “Is this game worth $14.99?” Is bound to the the most important one.

…yes?

You play as Stanley. Your job is to push buttons all day, every day…until one day, the instructions regarding which buttons to press stops. For the first time in your career, you have to leave your office in order to find what’s going on…or not. Due to the multiple options presented to you, the game can end by wimping out and simply shutting the door. It’s a bizarre twist. How many games do you know that can end this way? The answer is all of them. It’s called going outside, but fuck that noise. Let’s curl up on the sofa, throw a fuzzy blanket over our legs (goddamn throws are never long enough) and dig in to what this game is.

For the moment, let’s forget about the deeper meanings this game may or may not present. We’ll leave that debate to the stoners and hipster philosophers (the combination of THC and Smug would be it’s own exercise in philosophical theory; what happens when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?). We’re going to focus on the tangible aspects you can experience.

This might need an explanation.

The Stanley Parable is an interactive story. You won’t meet another character, you won’t solve complex puzzles, you won’t even push more than one button throughout your playthroughs (I used a controller, so the analog sticks don’t count, and if you’re using WSDA to move around, don’t be a douchebag by saying “TECHNICALLY, I’m pushing more than ONE button.” You won’t make friends that way)As you move through the empty office, you come to your first choice, two doors. From here, the story will branch off in different ways depending on which path you take. ‘Branch’ might not be the right word, that would imply that it’s all one story. Go through one door and it turns out that you were a part of a mind control experiment, fall off a platform and you’re scolded for dying just to prove you have free will, run down the corridor marked ‘escape’ and you’re sent to your death, only to be rescued by a different narrator, taken to a meta museum of how the game was made, then begged to restart the game in order to prevent experiencing yourself get crushed to death.

It’s kind of a mind fuck.

Through it all, how are you supposed to have fun walking through doors and pushing a single button? The game designers found a simple, fool proof mechanic for keeping their audience invested: the sexy voice of a British man.

Well, that and great writing. You see, everything that happens to you from the descriptions of your surroundings to the thoughts in your head are narrated to you. The game has fun with this by crafting interesting and unique situations that play off your instincts as a gamer. How do you ask? Without giving any more spoilers (I’ve already ruined like, what? Three? Five of the game’s endings? I’d read back what I wrote, but fuck it. I’ve got other shit to do), The Stanley Parable plays through, and comments on many of the troupes you’ve seen time and time again. In fact, the narrator explains this very thing in a sequence that explains how the game should be played and why he’s explaining the reason he’s explaining the explanation, all while you, the player, stand completely still in a broom closet. You know what? What else can I say? That one sentence pretty much sums what playing The Stanley Parable is like.

Yet I wasted six paragraphs to get here…

This game is an experience. It’s funny, thought provoking, and certainly a conversation starter. Each run through of the game will take you about ten minutes, more or less, leaving you with few moments to ponder what you’ve just witnessed (though I hear that there’s this new fangled invention called a ‘pause button’ that all the kids are using, but I doubt that will stay around very long), yet in those moments, you’ll be affected in ways you never thought a video game could achieve.

This is one of those games that’s a must play, though no one says that you have to buy it. At $14.99, and only around four hours of total gameplay, it’s one of those games that causes one of those inner struggle that only a gamer would consider an actual struggle. Is it worth the money for such a brief experience? When else would I be able to play something like this? Will I be able to afford lunch? Will my girlfriend/boyfriend yell at me for wasting rent money? Lucky for you, watching this game is almost as good as playing it. Sure, there’s another dimension to moving Stanley around yourself, but in my professional opinion as someone with free time typing words onto the internet, it doesn’t matter how you experience The Stanley Parable, it’s more important that you experience it at all.

Written by Nerd Bacon