The Stanley Parable

Developer: Galactic Cafe
Rrp: £9.99 (Humblebundle and Steam)

The Stanley Parable will always be to me the pinnacle of what a mod can be. Sure there are the likes of Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2 but those lie within the realm of multiplayer and have themselves changed quite a bit since
their initial creation. The Stanley Parable though has remained extremely true to its original version, in fact I would say that the developers have taken great efforts to polish it up and improve it.

What is the Stanley Parable then? In a way its a Walking Simulator, although I don’t think that particular label applies very well to this game. Then again the other term I’ve heard for it basically covers any game (that being Interactive Experience), so I guess Walking Simulator will have to do.

Either way I can say with absolute certainty that this is one of the funniest games I’ve played in quite some time. The credit for that going to the script writers for creating such a entertaining and complex piece of work and to the narrator because his delivery was amazing. I truly felt sad for him sometimes and regretted some of my actions just simply because of the tone of his voice.

There are multiple endings that depend entirely on the choices you make, I believe in total there are nineteen (so my research tells me) I found about thirteen of them myself. Each run through of the game shouldn’t take any longer than ten to fifteen minutes to complete, although most only take about five minutes.

As I mentioned earlier this was originally released as a free mod for Half-Life 2, it was impressive at the time but since they’ve pumped some resources into the game the developers have been able to add a few things in and polish up the way it looks.

I have to love that this game mocks game design so thoroughly that it even extends to its achievements. There’s even one called ‘Go Outside’ which only activates when you boot the game up after not having played it for five years.

Honestly this is a brilliant game, I honestly couldn’t give this game much more praise.