I'm a sucker for any type of storytelling that gets meta, so The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe was like catnip for me. I had heard great things about this game, but had mostly avoided any details to hold onto the game's surprises. But then, I caught a few videos of what's going on here, and I had to finally start playing. Without spoiling this for anyone else, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is basically parodying everything about modern video games, from following orders to the simple act of having a jump button. There's no trope, no idea, no gaming concept that isn't lampooned.

While I hadn't played the original Stanley Parable, this updated version does a good job of taking you through the original game, before throwing in the new content. Even though I didn't know what was from the original game at first, the game itself made it very clear what was the "new content."

Just from a game design perspective, it's fascinating how every outcome has been considered. Whenever I thought I was doing something that the game wouldn't have an answer for, it found a way to upend my expectations. Who would've thought playing through an ending with a bucket in your hand would cause so many different conclusions?

I only have a few slight issues that are more personal preferences than anything wrong with the actual game. For example, at some point (or maybe as an option in the settings), I would've liked to see a tree of what options I was still missing. For quite some time, every playthrough offers some twist in the story, but after a bit, you start playing out the same areas over and over to make sure you aren't missing anything. While it might take away some of the mystery (hence why I sort of wish it was a setting), I would like to make sure I did everything the game has to offer. In fact, the two most hilarious endings I found were from my last two playthroughs, and that was through the help of an "all ending guide," which wasn't even comprehensive with what I had found.

Secondly, certain aspects of this game seem like more of a test of the players' wherewithal that I was curious to learn about, but didn't have the patience for. One part asks you to play a monotonous game for four hours, while one achievement you can only get if you don't play the game for 10 years. While I admire the joke of these types of missions, ain't nobody got time for that. Someone remind me if 2032 that I should boot up this game and get this achievement.

But The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a wild game that hits right in my wheelhouse of gaming humor, the type I haven't really seen since Portal 2. I can't wait to see what Crows Crows Crows does next, even if it is just The Stanley Parable 2 (or 3).

I loved playing through the original Stanley Prable back in 2015 and even though Ultra Deluxe looks like it's the same game, playing through this newer version managed to feel super fresh and fun at all times. The game is so creative and fun all the way through, and the slight little twists it has referencing the original are so cool to see.

The game is just a walking simulator where... not much really happens. The game is a satire about the concept of choice, and how You just walk around an empty office while listenning to the narrator say some silly stuff. On paper it sounds like a totally boring concept, however the incredible writing really makes it work. The comedy is incredible and the little details you can find around the office, like the mugs and posters, show how much the developers cared for this game.

Ultra Deluxe starts out the exactly the same was as the original stanley parable, with some added endings and fun stuff to do. However after playing for a bit a new door saying new content shows up out of nowhere, and this is where the real game starts. Out of nowhere, the game that you thought you had always known suddenly doubles in size. After this point every, and I mean every ending from the original game gets replaced with a different one, and they're all as unique and cleverly written as the originals endings were. If you were familiar with the original Stanley Parable, seeing the game expand this much is an experience like no other.

The ending is absolutely genius as well. The game stops for a bit and starts getting serious, taking you on a trip through memory lane that feels nostalgic, even when the game is about 6 hours long. It actually got me kinda emotional, especially with the easter egg where the bucket shows up if you save it during the escape ending.

Presentation-wise the game looks better than ever. It's been rebuilt from the ground up as a Unity game, and the new textures and models are very pretty. However, not everything in the game got remade, so every once in a while you'll stumble across a model of noticeably lower quality than the rest. The music is also incredible with so many memorable tracks, all of them fitting the mood perfectly. But I think the best part about the presentation is how well-constructed the world is. So many little details in every part of the game, so many background gags that show up only once, there's even jokes and easter eggs that you can't even see without hacking or glitching the game. There's so much content packed into this game that you'll probably never see, and I love the developers for that.

In conclusion: This game made me feel like I was playing through the original Stanley Parable for the first time, and I absolutely loved it. The writing is very clever all the time, and all the jokes land perfectly. It may not look like it at first, but there's so much new content packed into this new version of the game. There are a few jokes that might fly over your head if you never tried the original game, but if you did please buy this newest version and I'm 100% sure you'll love it. 10/10.

I put a decent amount of time into this a few months ago and never logged it because I didn't really feel like I "finished" it. Which, understandable. By the same token, I'm not sure that The Stanley Parable is a game you can finish? Maybe there's a "The End" that's happy, but it strikes me as a game where the journey is much more important than finding good credits. Today a video game content creator I follow on YouTube uploaded a video about The Stanley Parable and he, just through dicking around, made me realize how much I'd missed.

"Missed" is the wrong word. I knew I "missed." What I mean instead is the degree to which the developers predicted lateral thinking and created outcomes for that.

I'm going to use an example early in the game where I could have done the exact same thing the content creator did, but lacked the sight to do so: Door testing. So the game plops you into a stock standard office environment. When you first leave your office there's a short hallway with a couple of closed doors that leads to an open work area with more closed office doors. And I—like, I'm sure many players before and after me—tested a lot of those doors and heard the rattle of a locked door and moved on. Standard environment development: You want an area to look normal (a normal office space has office doors) but don't actually want to waste resources creating interiors for these areas. So you "lock" the door or otherwise make it impassible. I mean, it's not even a door; there's nothing beyond it to see. If you glitch through it all you would see is the same blank nothingness you'd see if you glitch out of any video game level. My guess? Most players treat the doors exactly as I did: The first time in that part of the office, try a few doors then never think about them again. That's how non-functioning doors work in every video game. But this content creator took those rattling locks as a challenge and started rapidly clicking the doors. And the game's narrator noticed. It became a thing. And I was floored. Not because the game noticed the clicks—it could have just popped an achievement for rapid door clicking and called it a day—but because the devs programmed an event around it. They put the time and effort into something only a small percentage of players would even find.

And that entire video became representative of that. There are nooks, crannies, and things in The Stanley Parable I wouldn't have even begun to fathom. I knew I had "missed" stuff from my various treks through Stanley's Parable. Now I know that I didn't "miss" anything, I completely lacked the vision to find a lot of the game's most interesting content.

Maybe that's what The Stanley Parable is really about: It's a game that gives the player what they put into it. If you play it like a normal walking sim, you'll enjoy it on those terms. But for players who can think outside the box, there's a level of discovery within The Stanley Parable that's mystifying.

This is a game that is hard to talk about without mentioning a couple of key revealing aspects, but because it will always be best experienced in a blind playthrough I’ll keep it spoiler-free from start to finish, and tag the things that could even be construed as mild giveaways.

When I think about it, The Stanley Parable was one of my most curious gaming experiences this year. Not because it was one of the games I’ve enjoyed the most, but because of how vastly my feelings towards it changed over one single playthrough, especially considering we’re talking about a couple hours of runtime. It started off incredibly, immediately luring me into its mystery and surroundings. I legitimately wondered what the hell was going on, I felt somewhat creeped out, I gravitated towards that narrator hard - first over its voice, then over its humour, and finally over questions of how reliable he actually was -, I felt shocked by the game’s first fourth wall-breaking moments, and I genuinely loved the first couple endings I got. Humour aside, the first hour with The Stanley Parable reminded me so much of Shane Carruth’s Primer that I could not shake away the comparison between the two (in concept, not focus), nor did I want to, because I really liked that film.

The game was, and still is, incredibly unique to this day, there’s no disputing that. But as I carried on playing it, the novelty started wearing off. As creative as it is in the ideas it puts forward, I eventually started asking myself this question: had I been too patient a gamer? If they are good, I almost never have any issues with playing games from ages ago, even when they feel quite dated. But I genuinely wondered how much harder this would’ve hit me had I played it closer to release, almost a decade ago. Because towards the later stages I was ready to be done with it, which was symptomatic of how much my feelings had shifted since the beginning of my short playthrough. The initial, somewhat uneasy vibe is absolutely fantastic, but once you realise most of what is going on, you quickly become too emotionally ‘comfortable’ in that world because a big part of its mysterious allure dissipates. Due to its nature, this game is understandably repetitive in some moments. The main issue here, I found, is that a lot of the times you kind of need a certain order in your outcomes for your progress to feel ‘perfectly’ fluid and logic, but as a player, I try to experiment with as many options as possible. The game does a great of accounting for this, which is further aided by the fact that you can get from A to B rather quickly. But you often need to retrace the exact same steps in order to try out something you hadn’t yet, which eventually leaves its mark in terms of pacing and repetitiveness. This was also the main reason why, as much as I recognise the effort put into all the content added to this edition, I quickly fell off it in terms of engagement, even though I did finish it.

Overall, I would still definitely recommend The Stanley Parable. I will always stand by unique concepts, and even if the game starts feeling a bit repetitive as it goes on and stops hitting as hard, it is still fascinating to observe as a direct participant. However, I also feel this is one of the rare, very rare instances in which I wish I had played it closer to its release. I think I would’ve absolutely loved it then, as opposed to ‘only’ liking it now. 7.5/10

A super interesting meta game, where you take control of Stanley and have to explore your empty office, after all your colleagues disappear. Although it is not truly empty, as you will have The Narrator with you. That is how far I will go about the game, since I do not wish to spoil anything.

I am a big fan of meta videogames and this has to be one of the best I have experienced. Never played the original version, but I feel like the Ultra Deluxe edition adds very interesting content, while keeping with the spirit intended originally. Honestly, some of my favorite parts are from the new content. So, if you played the original one and enjoyed it, do try this enhanced version.

It does not receive a perfect score because the formula at some point does get repetitive and it was easy for me to just lose track of what I had done or not, and just repeat a bunch of the past experiences. Not saying that is bad per se, but after the initial stellar hours, the final hours experience felt lacking.

But, as I write this, I realize that might have been part of the goal of the game. It has brilliant, some more direct than other, takes about videogames, gaming culture, games as an art form and the why and how we consume games.

HOWEVER, if you are looking for a more generic videogame with tight gameplay, 4k graphics and (artificial) feelings of accomplishment, this game is not for you. But please, do give it a try.