The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Review

by Tomte • 4 years ago

59 72 4 years ago

The Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket is the best meme to emerge from this game.

All software engineers should be assigned an Industry-Standard Reassurance Rubber Duck as part of their training.

The Duck will be with you at all times. It will be your greatest ally. It will never betray you. It will not mock your code. No matter what trials or tribulations you might encounter, the Duck will always be there to reassure you.

xena6• 4 years ago

However in some cases people have known to have their duck talk back to them. People don't talk about this much because of social stigmas but it has been known to happen more than a few times.

notjustanymike2• 4 years ago

For people on the fence about this, I have played it. It's better to think of it as a sequel than a remaster.

JonathonW• 4 years ago

It's both. All the content from the original is there, polished up to modern standards. And then there's a bunch of new material added on as well.

It likely feels more like a sequel if you choose the "played it before" option at the beginning of the game-- that introduces the new content much earlier. If you tell it that you haven't played before, it takes much longer before it starts introducing the new content.

acomjean• 4 years ago

I think the "played it before" option is for me, if I choose to get it. Is it worth it if you'd played the original?

The original was interesting in its kind of a game, but more of a experience. The narration was excellent and there were some interesting nooks to find. I definitely didn't find everything. (I think there was an award to not play the game for a year).

jonny_eh• 4 years ago

It's a sequel contained within the original. So it's worth the purchase for new players and those that played through the original.

m-p-3• 4 years ago

And for those unaware, the original was made in the Source (Half-Life 2) engine, while this remaster is running using Unity.

paulryanrogers• 4 years ago

Wait it wasn't GoldSrc? (A la HL1) Because I recall trying the mod before it went commercial and it felt get much like an HL1 mod.

causi4• 4 years ago

I was a big fan of the original but I find something repugnant about something that launched as a free mod, then was remade as a $15 game, and is now remade again as a $25 game with no option to upgrade your original purchase.

smilespray• 4 years ago

The satire starts before purchase. Quite befitting.

Ekaros• 4 years ago

I agree. From free mod to paid product sure. But for unknown quantity of new content entirely new game with even higher price feels exactly like the corporate publishers would do it...

jedimastert• 4 years ago

no option to upgrade your original purchase

It's not an upgrade, it's a remake. They recreated all of the original content from the ground up

jorams• 4 years ago

It's a remake that contains the entire original, as well as a lot of new content. As the creators put it:

The script for this new content is longer than the script for the entire original game.

If you don't want more content you don't have to buy the remake. The original works fine.

notjustanymike2• 4 years ago

It's difficult to discuss this without revealing things. Some might say the price is as much as a sequel...

Night_Thastus2• 4 years ago

I agree completely. I think it works much better if you've played the original, then took some time to go back and play the new content. Otherwise some of its commentary about sequels (reviews, rose-tinted glasses, etc) kind of loses its "punch".

daneel_w• 4 years ago

I've only played the original release so far. It was fantastic and refreshing.

oneoff7862• 4 years ago

I couldn’t get into the original. Seemed like the one and only kind of game I would rather watch an streamer do.

twiceaday• 4 years ago

I was into it but my enjoyment kept dropping. I "finished" it anyways because I am a completionist. Your goal is to find new branches in the decision tree and your reward is a novel joke. But your punishment for forgetting that you already explored a branch is to hear the same joke again, which for me is grating and retroactively worsens the initial novel experience. It also wastes my time, I don't want to be here I want to see new things. And the closer you get to fully exploring the tree the more often this happens, more and more of the game is retroactively ruined for me.

causi4• 4 years ago

It would've been nice if the game stopped you from taking the exact same route twice.

Night_Thastus2• 4 years ago

The original is quite short, there's not a lot of time wasted. The decision tree is the joke, not the gags that are put in. The whole game is parodying the way that decisions are done in games. What you get at the ends of each tree are just fluff/gags. (Mostly good ones, imo)

oneoff7862• 4 years ago

Ooh yeah that resonates. Especially if playing from a completion isn’t perspective and trying to do minor deviations that don’t really pan out.

braden-lk• 4 years ago

I respect the game a lot, but it was more impactful and novel in 2011. Its themes seem well-trodden in 2022.

(If you like the "cubicle-based existential nightmare" genre, give Severance a watch; I really enjoyed it.)

speedgoose2• 4 years ago

I didn’t really understand severance, at the beginning I thought it was a parody of corridor movies with all these extremely long corridor scenes, but after all I think they really went with the cheap filling option and hope we watchers will think it’s for the atmosphere.

In French we call that a nanar.

https://www.nanarland.com/glossaire/c-comme-couloir-film-de....

(You can use DeepL to translate French to English, it’s much better than Google translate https://deepl.com ).

mplewis• 4 years ago

There’s a lot more depth to Severance than its aesthetic style and setting alone.

t-writescode2• 4 years ago

Funny enough, that's much of the point of the game and what it talks about in the expansion, especially during the [spoilers] endings.

CDSlice• 4 years ago

If you want some games that really revolutionize what games can be, check out Celeste, Secret Little Haven, Baba Is You, and Glittermitten Grove. All of these games really challenge what games can be and experiment with radically different kinds of art.

I haven’t played most of these games but I have played a lot of Celeste and I don’t really see how it challenges what games can be or experiments with radically different kinds of art. Don’t get me wrong, it is an absolutely amazing game and one of the best platformers of all time with a sweet, well written story but at the end of the day it’s a 2D platformer. Yes the controls and art are much better than most but there is nothing in the gameplay fundamentally different than what the original Super Mario Bros had on the NES.

I’m also not really a fan of the snobbish tone of the article. Horizon Zero Dawn is certainly not revolutionary in terms of game design but nobody claimed it was. Genres exist for a reason and just because a game (or TV show, or movie, etc) conforms to the expectations of the genre doesn’t make it bad. Also as a side note, I really resent them calling Aloy a “waifu” since Horizon is one of the few games with a female protagonist that is both undeniably a woman while also not being made as a sex object. Metroid is famous for being one of the first games with a female protagonist but for the entire game Samus might as well be a guy, non-binary, or a robot since all you see is her armor. You only find out she is a woman after beating the game and discovering that based on how much of the game you completed the more clothes you can strip off of her until she is left just wearing her underwear. Tomb Raider on the other hand had an obviously female protagonist but one that was intended as a sex object for guys to ogle with her large breasts, skimpy clothes, and near complete lack of personality. Meanwhile Horizon presents Aloy as a strong protagonist who doesn’t need men to save her at every turn while also not being sexualized to such extremes that you feel like the real reason she exists is so that men have someone to ogle at while playing the game. The fact that Horizon (and The Last of Us series which presents its female protagonists similarly) get such extreme hatred from capital G Gamers because “they made them look like men!” should be evidence enough that this is revolutionary in its own way in the industry.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

I've found people who extole Stanley Parable are not just capital G Gamers but also capital G Gatekeepers. Their game curation aesthetics have all the tact of Superman's Braniac collecting planets.

Celeste is derivative of Donkey Kong Country. I agree that for an author who thinks derivation itself is stinky, using an overly reductive critical framework where every game is derivative of, I don't know, unaliving Donkey Kong at the arcades, it was odd to see Celeste as a counter example.

Most of game innovation the past decade has been in the monetization model, moreso than mechanics. The author looks down their nose at microtransactions so they have probably missed all the innovation even as it continues to cross pollinate with every aspect of the games industry. No wonder they think Stanley Parable is still a noteworthy observation in 2022.

alexb_2• 4 years ago

LOL... If looking down on "innovative monetization models" is gatekeeping, I am the largest gatekeeper there is.

xena6• 4 years ago

Hi, author of the article here. Microtransactions are an active cancer on the gaming world and I abhor their prevalence in modern gaming. The _only_ time I find them okay is for when they are for _cosmetic purchases only_, and even then the games industry has done a terrible job of making sure that is the case. Sometimes I want to play a game to play a game and immerse myself into that game's world. I don't want to have people manipulate money out of my wallet and into their bank account.

Then again, I'm also someone who has been suckered into spending over USD$200 on Fortnite skins, so a lot of my rejection of microtransactions is rooted in the fact that I am vulnerable to their temptations and would rather they be anywhere but in the games that I play on a regular basis. Nintendo games are usually good about not trying to fleece you for cash in a game you paid full price for, so I play a lot of those.

thatguy09002• 4 years ago

Innovation in micro transactions is such a wild take. Absolutely awful for the games industry.

corrral3• 4 years ago

The author looks down their nose at microtransactions so they have probably missed all the innovation even as it continues to cross pollinate with every aspect of the games industry.

I've been doing some serious innovation in plumbing lately. Cut the drain pipe of an upstairs toilet so now it just drains into the room under it. If you hadn't been paying attention to letting-toilets-drain-into-occupied-rooms, you might not think there's much innovation going on in plumbing.

CollinEMac2• 4 years ago

I actually haven't played any of those games but I'm surprised the author(s?) didn't mention any of Daniel Mullins' games. Pony Island, The Hex, and Inscryption are all really interesting "meta" games in the same vain as The Stanley Parable. Inscryption being the one that I feel functions the best out of the three as both a commentary on games as well as actual gameplay.

xena6• 4 years ago

Author of the article here. I haven't played those games so I can't really comment on them :)

saghm• 4 years ago

I'll second this; while I haven't played them myself, I've watched playthroughs of all three of them, and they really do an amazing job of blurring the line between the player's character and the real-life person playing the game. Combined with having some hidden secrets being only unlockable by doing real-world things outside the game, it's hard for to decide whether he's basically created a new art form that transcends the game genre or just has gotten everyone who's played the game essentially to join a sort of AR/roleplaying game of which his video games are just some of the pieces.

shell-E2• 4 years ago

I think that one of the biggest things that Celeste has going for it is its movement mechanics. It's this brilliant system where you are given all of the powers you need at the beginning but aren't taught how to use them until completing the game (i think a lot of the mechanics are actually revealed in the B and C sides). This also gives Celeste some killer replay-ability - there's nothing better than going back to early stages and using learned movement tech to break intended solutions. I think I could be convinced to categorize that as a bit of a revolution of game design.

This is also something that Outer Wilds did really well imo.

bowsamic2• 4 years ago

It's just a tight platformer with a small twist in the movement mechanic, that's not "a revolution of game design".

Frankly, Outer Wilds plays like shit. The controls are extremely complicated and difficult to wrestle with. However, that really suits the exploratory nature of the game. However, in terms of game design, Outer Wilds is clearly _far_ more interesting and revolutionary than Celeste. Totally physics-based 3D platformer and space exploration game on a time loop is obviously far more mechanically interesting than a 2D platformer with a restricted mid-air dash...

sandworm1013• 4 years ago

Games that challenge the standards, therefore making them good art: Factorio. Papers please. Obra Dinn. Prison Architect. Even old-school Minecraft did amazing work challenging definitions. (Subnautica?) I haven't seen an artistically interesting AAA game in decades.

garaetjjte• 4 years ago

Prison Architect though? It's not a bad game, but seems like ordinary entry in simulation/tycoon genre.

Arainach2• 4 years ago

When have AAA games ever been the source of challenging standards? AAA implies a level of budget at which that much risk isn't taken. If you look back multiple decades, it was so much cheaper to make a game that the definition of AAA doesn't makes sense. Even first-party major publishers were at most "AA".

Doom challenged standards, but Doom could be made by 5 people crammed in a house. Metal Gear Solid. The Sims had more people credited for music than Programming, Design, and Graphics combined (21). Minecraft was one person for the most part.

Look at the credits list for Morrowind: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Credits

And for Skyrim: https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/elder-scrolls-v-skyri... At the time, development costs were estimated at $100M.

The latest Skyrim Anniversary Edition remaster will surely have a credits list dramatically longer than the 2011 release. AAA games are expensive now, and no one's going to invest tens of millions on the hope that billions of people across the world understand your cryptic commentary about nuclear weapons or whatever.

Phrodo_00• 4 years ago

Out of those I've only played Baba Is You and it's a great game, and certainly pushing game design.

It's not too unlike other programming puzzle games from zachtronics or Tomorrow Corp, but its interface is a lot more abstracted and it feels like a different paradigm than those.

I haven't played Glittermitten Grove, but Frog Fractions is a great meld and full of surprising genre shifts. It's not revolutionary, but it certainly has its own feel.

I'd have added Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers Please to the list, though. Maybe instead of Celeste, like you said.

mrtranscendence• 4 years ago

I’m also not really a fan of the snobbish tone of the article.

As someone who really enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn, I agree. It was a fun romp with a lot of spectacle, and there's surely room for that in the world. Not everything has to push the boundaries of the art form.

I suppose it's true that basically no AAA publishers release anything that does push those boundaries, but that's unsurprising, since pushing boundaries isn't where the money is. For every Baba is You or Outer Wilds that takes off there are a thousand games that make next to nothing. It's similar with the visual arts or music; by challenging norms or experimenting with "radically different kinds of art" you're much likelier to end up with something that displeases almost everyone than you are to be the next Jackson Pollock or Ornette Coleman.

I really resent them calling Aloy a “waifu”

Given the amount of hate Guerrilla got for not making Aloy ultra-sexy in Forbidden West, this was pretty unfortunate phrasing.

numpad02• 4 years ago

I really resent them calling Aloy a “waifu” since Horizon is one of the few games with a female protagonist that is both undeniably a woman while also not being made as a sex object.

Maybe they hate human protagonists on games wholesale. I’m on anime side and has a personal hate against a broad spectrum across Disney/furry/cartoon. Due to this background I am easily triggered and might go on to a rant of similar scale if, for example, a graphic, visually homosexual werewolf character would become an AAA protagonist.

The author’s odd reaction to just a modern female protagonist seems to be on that kind of internal logic and magnitude.

quechimba• 4 years ago

Great game. I'm amazed with how they could come up with everything. I really enjoyed the broom closet ending.

norwalkbear• 4 years ago

Sounds like the usual highbrow gatekeeping you see in movies too.

Let people like what they like

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Review

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