Crows Crows Crows have brought back the classic office backdrop and sarcastic narration to set the scene for the first-person adventure game, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, an updated version of the original 2013 classic.
I’ll admit when I heard that the Ultra Deluxe version was being released, I was excited, having played The Stanley Parable many years ago and never having quite found another game like it, I was curious to see what the new instalment would bring.
For those of you who haven’t played the original, you are Stanley, otherwise known as Employee 427, an office worker whose job is to push buttons on a keyboard. But everything changes when one day Stanley receives no commands.
Here is where you embark on the quest to find out what happened to your co-workers. Your only companion is the voice of The Narrator, who attempts to guide you on the journey.
In essence, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a game about choices .On your quest you can either choose to follow the words of wisdom from the narrator guiding your every move, or ignore them.
Except, each choice you make, it feels as though the game is one step ahead of you. As a player it feels like you’re being welcomed to irritate the narrator and retrace your steps to find as many endings as possible.
Whilst for some, the idea of searching for multiple endings may sound tedious, the gameplay is fun and entertaining, in fact, at some points I genuinely burst out laughing at how absurd some parts of it are.
Without spoiling too much, for those of you who have played The Stanley Parable before and are worried it will be too similar to the original; there are multiple endings purely dedicated to buckets, and if that doesn’t entice you, I don’t know what will.
It almost feels as though The Stanley Parable:Ultra Deluxe scratches the itch I know I’ve had of not wanting to do what a game is telling you to do. I’ll admit that most of the time I get distracted by completing side quests, trying to find one more easter egg or searching for that last stone of Barenziah.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is self aware, through the narration the game makes observations about gaming, choice and The Stanley Parable itself, which, when put like that, sounds very meta. I would say it breaks the fourth wall, but it doesn’t feel like the wall is there to begin with.
Overall The Stanley Parable : Ultra Deluxe is asking you to click on that button one more time, see what is behind that door you didn’t open or walk back into the same room whilst clutching your bucket of reassurance – it’s a game full of secrets that you want to find.
4/5 stars.