1 Hour Review: The Stanley Parable

Another game that I had gotten from the Steam Sale that had occurred over the winter holidays was The Stanley Parable.

I had gone into this game knowing only that it was a bizarre game, with some rather odd things about it, and that there was a fair bit of narration in it. But, the thing that I didn’t know was just how important, or unimportant, that the narration was. This is not a game where you have to look through things, and then read, and then do more things. This is a game that had a full story written out in front of you, but is, to the best comparison that I can think of, a ‘choose your own adventure’ game.

The game was originally created as a Half-Life 2 mod, much the same as Garry’s Mod, but the interesting thing about it, is that in the recent year, they re-released the game, making it much more polished and stand-alone, meaning that you could play it without the textures of HL2 because it was it’s own game.

Throughout the game, you play as Stanley, and you are listening to a narration about him spoken by some unknown voice. But, the game isn’t purely linear. You’re not just following everything that the narration says blindly, and then finding out what happens. The game narrates, but there is choice. You can choose to do what the narrator says, for example, “Stanley went through the door on his left.”, so you go through the door on your left, or you could take the door to the right. There are times when you can go back to the ‘main story’, so to speak, through different doors, or through different actions, but these are not required.

The game… is odd. Very, very odd. But that’s the beauty of it. The game, with all of it’s talking, and various other quirks about it, is rather fun. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who may ask about the game, and for anyone that is looking to inquire even more about the game, “What’s the game about? What do you do?”, the only response that I will give to you, my fellow geeky readers, or to anyone out there that might be wondering this particular question, is, “The game is about Stanley.”

The game, because the Steam Sale is over, is at 16.99$ CDN, so it’s not an extremely expensive game. Feel free to venture over to the Steam Store to pick it up, and become the best Stanley.

Overall rating: 5/5