The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
We were promised a biting examination of video games, free will, choice, and the meaning of life. What we got was a game that eventually convinced one of us to take a nap.
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Walking Simulator / Interactive Comedy / Philosophical Satire
Developer: Crows Crows Crows
Publisher: Crows Crows Crows
Release Date: April 27, 2022
Players: 1
Time to Finish: The end is never the end is never the end is never the end
Mystery Cartridge Classification: PALETTE CLEANSER
Rating: CLOSE THE FILE — NOT RECOMMENDED
The Case
We went into The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe with a very specific purpose.
We needed a palette cleanser.
After spending time with murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, investigations, and games where somebody is almost invariably having a terrible day, we figured it would be nice to play something completely different.
And The Stanley Parable seemed perfect.
It's funny.
It's clever.
It's supposedly a biting commentary on video games, player choice, free will, corporate culture, obedience, rebellion, the meaning of life, and the ridiculous relationship between a player and the game they're playing.
We expected something sharp.
Something funny.
Something that would make us stop and say:
"Oh, that's actually pretty clever."
Instead, Amanda fell asleep.
Not hours into it.
Shortly into the first playthrough.
Bradley kept going.
And going.
And going.
And eventually, The Stanley Parable became less of a game we were playing together and more of a personal endurance test to see just how many endings this game had, and as the tagline says, the end is never the end is never the end...
Stanley Is at Work
The premise is simple.
Stanley works in an office.
One day, Stanley discovers that everyone else in the office has disappeared.
A narrator begins telling us what Stanley is going to do.
And then Stanley does,or doesn't do, what the narrator says.
That's the game.
Sort of.
The joke is that you're constantly given instructions, and you can choose whether to follow them.
Go through the left door.
Or the right door.
Do what the narrator tells you.
Or deliberately refuse.
Follow the story.
Or break it.
The game then reacts to your decisions.
And sometimes the narrator reacts to your refusal to cooperate.
And that's clever.
It really is.
The first time.
The Narrator
The Narrator is the star of The Stanley Parable.
His increasingly exasperated reaction to Stanley's decisions is funny.
He knows what you're supposed to do.
You know what you're supposed to do.
And the game knows that you know.
So when you deliberately do the opposite, the Narrator has to deal with you.
It's a neat inversion of the traditional relationship between player and game.
Normally, the game tells you what to do and you do it.
Here, the game tells you what to do and then gets increasingly annoyed when you don't.
There's a genuinely good idea underneath all of this.
The problem for us was that the idea kept explaining itself.
And explaining itself.
And explaining itself.
Yes, We Get It
This is where The Stanley Parable lost us.
We understand the commentary.
We really do.
The game is commenting on player agency.
It's commenting on choice.
It's commenting on linear storytelling.
It's commenting on video-game design.
It's commenting on the illusion of freedom.
It's commenting on the relationship between the player and the developer.
It's commenting on the fact that video games give us choices that are ultimately contained within boundaries someone else created.
Those are interesting ideas.
And the game has some genuinely funny ways of exploring them.
But eventually, we found ourselves thinking:
"Yes. We understand."
Then the game would continue.
And continue.
And continue.
Meanwhile, Amanda Is Asleep
This is probably the most important piece of information in the entire review.
Amanda fell asleep.
And not in the "I'm tired, let's stop playing" sense.
She was actually asleep.
Meanwhile, Bradley kept playing.
Because surely there had to be something else.
There had to be another layer.
Another joke.
Another ending.
Another big payoff.
So Bradley kept going.
And eventually began finding increasingly bizarre endings.
Including one that essentially announced:
THE STANLEY PARABLE 2
At this point, the game had become less like a narrative and more like being trapped inside a very elaborate joke that refuses to acknowledge that you've already heard the punchline.
And yet...
Bradley kept going.
Because surely this had to be the end.
Right?
Nope.
The End Was Never the End
This is simultaneously one of the game's cleverest ideas and the thing that drove us absolutely crazy.
There is no real end.
You finish something?
That's an ending.
But then you start again.
And there's another ending.
And another.
And another.
The game repeatedly plays with the idea of endings, resets, restarts, progress, and completion.
The game itself becomes the joke.
You've reached the end!
Except you haven't.
You've completed the game!
Except you haven't.
You've seen everything!
Except you haven't.
You think you're finished?
You're absolutely not finished.
Eventually, we stopped thinking of the game as having endings.
It had interruptions.
The Stanley Parable 2
One of the most memorable things Bradley encountered was the game's bizarre Stanley Parable 2 sequence.
And this is where the Ultra Deluxe content really demonstrates what it is trying to do.
The game starts riffing on sequels, expanded editions, new content, and the idea that a game can sell you essentially the same thing again while insisting that it's bigger and better.
It is a joke about video-game sequels.
It's a joke about DLC.
It's a joke about remasters.
It's a joke about the game you're currently playing.
And, admittedly, that is pretty funny.
The problem is that The Stanley Parable is so determined to show you how clever it is that eventually the cleverness becomes the entire experience.
But Is It Funny?
Sometimes.
There are absolutely jokes that landed.
There are moments where the game's self-awareness is genuinely entertaining.
There are sequences that made us laugh.
And the Narrator's delivery is excellent.
But humor is subjective.
And ours apparently has a finite tolerance for prolonged philosophical commentary delivered by a British voice while walking through an empty office building.
That tolerance was exceeded.
Repeatedly.
Is It A Game?
That's another question.
Calling The Stanley Parable a walking simulator isn't really an insult.
That's basically what it is.
You walk.
You look at things.
You make choices.
You listen.
You walk some more.
Sometimes you can collect a bucket!
There aren't traditional puzzles.
There isn't combat.
There aren't enemies.
There isn't really a conventional objective.
The game is the act of interacting with the environment and seeing how the narrative responds.
Again, that's perfectly valid.
It's just not necessarily exciting.
And for us, the lack of traditional gameplay made the pacing even more noticeable.
There wasn't much happening outside of the narration.
So when the narration didn't grab us, there wasn't much else to keep us engaged.
The Palette Cleanser That Wasn't
This is where our expectations really hurt the game.
We didn't approach The Stanley Parable expecting an action game.
We didn't expect explosions.
We didn't expect puzzles.
We didn't expect murder.
We expected something interesting.
Something we could play for a little while, laugh at, think about, and then move on to our next mystery.
Instead, we found something so deliberately dry and repetitive that one half of our reviewing team was unconscious before we'd gotten very far.
The irony isn't lost on us.
A game about the absurdity of video games managed to become the game we were most eager to stop playing.
Perhaps that is the ultimate Stanley Parable ending.
Perhaps we were the joke all along.
🚨 MANNEQUIN WARNING 🚨
There are no mannequins.
There are, however, some mannequin-adjacent objects and deliberately strange things that might make you question what exactly you're looking at.
But no traditional creepy mannequins.
So Amanda's mannequin alarm remains silent.
For once.
Should You Play It?
Here's where we're going to be somewhat controversial.
If you've heard everyone rave about The Stanley Parable and you're genuinely curious about it, watch somebody else play it.
Seriously.
Find a good video playthrough.
Let somebody else walk through the office.
Listen to the Narrator.
See the different endings.
Experience the jokes.
And then decide whether you actually want to spend your own time wandering those halls.
Because we suspect that watching somebody else discover the game's tricks might actually be more entertaining than discovering them ourselves.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Not every highly regarded game is going to work for every player.
We can recognize what The Stanley Parable is doing without enjoying the experience of doing it ourselves.
Final Verdict
We went looking for a palette cleanser.
We thought we'd found one.
Instead, we found ourselves walking around an empty office while a narrator repeatedly explained the fundamental nature of video games to us.
Amanda went to sleep.
Bradley continued.
He found multiple endings.
He found the Stanley Parable 2.
He kept looking for the point where the game would finally say:
"Okay, you're done."
It never happened.
The end was never the end.
The next ending was never the last ending.
And eventually, after enough wandering, enough narration, enough choices, enough resets, and enough Stanley, there was only one way to make it stop.
We uninstalled it.
And, honestly?
That was the most satisfying ending we found.
Maybe that's the joke.
Maybe that's the point.
Maybe The Stanley Parable successfully demonstrated the ultimate truth about video games:
Sometimes the most meaningful player choice is choosing to quit.
Whatever the intended lesson was, we won't be returning to find out.
If you're curious, watch someone else play it.
It'll probably be more exciting.
🔎 THE MYSTERY CARTRIDGE VERDICT
CLOSE THE FILE — NOT RECOMMENDED
Story: ★★★☆☆
Comedy: ★★★☆☆
Commentary: ★★★★☆
Gameplay: ★★☆☆☆
Pacing: ★☆☆☆☆
Replayability: ★★★★★
Desire to Replay: ★☆☆☆☆
Ability to Actually End: ★☆☆☆☆
Nap Potential: ★★★★★
Mannequins: 0/10
The Case: Never actually closed.
The Ending: There isn't one.
The Real Ending: Uninstall.
Would we recommend it?
No.
But if you do play it, we're pretty sure the Narrator will have something to say about that.
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