Review: Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a mandatory game for comedy fans | Hacker News Reader

Review: Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a mandatory game for comedy fans

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190 pointsZaplanincan101 comments

"Stanley Parable" is, imho, a strong example of video games as a form of art.

Few are going to play this game for 10 hours or more. I topped out at about 3. But it's still one of the most impactful, thought-provoking digital experiences I've had the pleasure of playing.

Exactly - a responsibly made work of art conveys a message, a feeling, an idea in a reasonable window of time and let's you go back to your life.

This I think, is something the bigger 'industry' doesn't and will never fully aim for, because games like this don't drive the type of consumption that can deliver the kinds of profits which are to be expected with industrial scales of production.

Something similar happened in filmmaking in the 1970's, when tools for film production and distribution methods became gradually less expensive and more accessible. I think that we will see something very similar in the coming decades as game-design continues to develop as a mature artform.

The soundtrack is also amazing, regularly listen to it on yt.

The two creators continued the theme in their next works -- Davey Wreden's "The Beginner's Guide" is a 2-3 hour game and a powerful look at what it means to make art and how we interact with it through an epistolary-style series of nano-games ostensibly made by his friend Coda. It's the greatest game I've ever played.

William Pugh made "Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist," which is a goofy 30 min game where you arrive early to a game and must deal with that situation as it develops.

Both are absurdly creative, funny and/or touching, and obviously have the same creative fingerprints of Stanley Parable within them.

I quite liked "A Whirlwind Heist", if I'm not mistaken it's still free on Steam which makes it the perfect endcap to your weekend if you haven't checked it out already!

It's really interesting, because I have also really enjoyed "The Beginners Guide" and I think it's absolutely brilliant in its theme and delivery, but then I made my sister play it, and she said she hated every second of it - in her words "it's the most pretentious piece of art I have ever witnessed".

So....yeah, you're going to get strong reactions to this one I think.

The response to "The Beginners Guide" seems to be linked to how much of a "creator" you are. It did not vibe with me at all, but a friend who is a musician on the side loved it.

Well, this guess doesn't seem to apply here - my sister is a film maker by education and now works as a photographer, and nope, just really didn't like it. I'm a video game developer(programmer, not designer) and I love it.

It was very pleasant to be back in this game, almost like coming across someone you knew from grade school, saying 'hi!,' and then finding an excuse to carry on with your day. One thing that's impressive is that the game is under an entirely different engine. It's only noticable in certain places.

The additions do help with one thing I found sad about the original game, which is that it felt rather dead after completing everything. There's more of an emotional throughline now, even if it (intentionally) doesn't make much sense.

I never beat the original Stanley Parable but the baby ending is hilarious. It's far too tedious for me (you literally have to push a button for 4 hours to prevent a baby from crawling into flames) but it was still worth watching someone else do it: https://youtu.be/m7GAtSIy4-w

You can "beat" the original? I guess there's the field ending if you follow all of the directions.

I consider the credits roll ending as the canonical ending.

The fact that the black rectangle at the end was a bug is hilarious.

It's weird to me how there are things I really dislike but everyone else do like and they wonder why I don't like it even though I seem to be the targeted audience. From the top of my head:

    - Monty python
    - Mister Bean
    - Stanley Parable
    - Gris

And I enjoy these:

    - Rick and Morty
    - Star Trek lower deck
    - The Witness
    - Knytt/What happened to Edith Finch/Dear Esther

I played a bit of Stanley Parable on 3 occasions but found it empty and pretentious (same opinion on Gris). To each its own but there are some preferences I can't precisely tell why it clicks or not yet.

Mister Bean is slapstick stick/cringe comedy.

Monty Python is absurdist/surealism comedy

Stanley parable is a meta parody about video games narrative choice (or lack thereof)

Rick & Morty is high fantasy sci-fi comedy

The Witness is a environmental puzzle game with light environmental story telling.

Dear Esther is entirely environmental story telling.

(Only commenting on things I am familiar with)

There is nothing wrong with not liking things others like, but other than being in the nerd zeitgeist, I wouldn't say they are targeting the same thing.

Based on your stated games may I suggest looking at the following if you haven't previously

  - Tacoma
  - Braid
  - Fez
  - Quadrilateral Cowboy

Thanks, Tacoma and Fez are already on my to-play list, I played and enjoyed Braid when it was released and I haven't heard of Quadrilateral Cowboy so I will have a look.

May I add The Swapper to the list

Just to add to your comment:

> Rick & Morty is high fantasy sci-fi comedy

It's also full of meta commentary of the world and society from the perspective of the writer through the medium of sci-fi.

> The Witness is a environmental puzzle game with light environmental story telling.

It's also contains a lot of _ruminations_ about perception and the mind.

The first three are all British comedies, so maybe that's why.

I'm not a fan either, but I loved Gris. It was pretentious but also beautiful and fun.

To be fair, there is a monty python sketch that I like, the one with people arguing who had it worst as children and one of them was saying they used to live in a match box :D.

(This is the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, in case anyone is looking to search for it.)

And it’s technically not a Monty Python sketch. It was originally from ‘At Last the 1948 Show’, and was co-written by two people who would go on to be in Python, but also Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, and quite possibly Barry Cryer.

It was re-performed by the Monty Python team later. Possibly one of the only real comedy versions of a cover version being more famous than the original.

anyway, it suggests that if you like that but not Python, maybe you would be better off exploring the comedy of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ instead…

> anyway, it suggests that if you like that but not Python, maybe you would be better off exploring the comedy of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ instead…

Oh, thanks for the suggestion ! I think I have seen some random bits of it on meme sites, I'll have a look.

British:

    - Monty python
    - Mister Bean
    - Stanley Parable

American:

    - Rick and Morty
    - Star Trek lower deck
    - The Witness
    - What happened to Edith Finch

I’ve made comments about the dangers of yaml, primarily about truncation. I really don’t know how to parse Finch, or what the defaults would be for the missing data.

Much of Monty python is more accessible to someone with a British education or a so-called classical education.

It's mostly just silly, there are some British cultural references but it's not classics except Holy Grail being a long reference to the Arthurian legend.

Whilst you can enjoy most of Monty Python without a high-brow education, as you'd somewhat expect from a troupe made out of graduates of the two top universities in Britain, there are several sketches that are only funny if you have read Proust (summarize Proust competition) know some Latin (romanes eunt domus), or know the most famous English poems (ant poetry reading) etc.

They only ever use these things as set dressing from what I've seen - you could substitute Proust for any overly high-minded literature, the centurion is just being pedantic about the graffiti and so on.

Yeah, I have no idea who Proust even is, and the extent of my Latin knowledge is that I can usually spell "per se" correctly, but the centurion scene is still one of my favorites, and the Proust one is worth a few chuckles.

I think you just have to be willing to figure out the context from feel.

It's a sliding scale thing.

Even if you never heard of Proust, you can probably still get a chuckle out the choral society trying to summarize his magnum opus in 15s and never getting past the "Proust in his first book, fa la la". But if you find it already amusing knowing nothing about it, you'd probably find it a bit funnier if you knew that, on the one hand, In Search of Lost time is thousands of pages and takes weeks or months to read, and, on the other, isn't exactly action-heavy. And probably still more if you could relate the attempted plot summaries to the book(s).

And I don't think the ant poetry sketch would be funny at all to someone who doesn't recognize "Look on my feelers, termites, and despair" or any of the other lines and understands none of the Queen Victoria jokes.

I don't like the word pretentious. Pretending to be what? What I would agree to is that it isn't as deep as everyone recommending it making it out to be (I'm talking about the original, I haven't played the new version).

Typically people mean something that people engage with it not for its own merit, but to cultivate an image. So, people acting like Stanley Parable is great to look like they have depth of taste because on the surface it's not that great a game.

Of course it could be that you genuinely enjoy artsy comedic narrative games, which I'm sure is usually the case.

How is Gris empty and pretentious? Empty-ish, sure, mechanically it's a rather simple game, but pretentious? It's just an aesthetically beautiful and simple indie game, it's not something that tries to portray itself as being much "deeper" or more intelligent than it actually is.

Every people I have talked about it (IRL) portray the game as being deep though (n=3) and so did some reviews I read. I have the same opinion of Celeste and Oldman's Journey. Very weak story line, no subtlety in their outlook on humane emotions. Not deep enough to me or not deep enough for what matters to me I'd rather say.

More than 10 years ago I played a little game that was developed (I think) over a week-end. A side-scrolling game, 4 block high, one spritey character that can only go forward and walk around obstacles (block of colours). The character gets older and older and always dies in the end. There are weird items you can pick up and seems to increase your lifespan but that's it. At some point you can meet another character and if you choose to walk with her then there are less path you can take. But if your character dies then you switch to that other character. The author said it was to show there are things you can't do or have to differently when you become a couple. The game was 2 minutes long, top and it was some kind of comment on life, nothing more, nothing less but I still think it had a deeper connection to the player than Gris, Celeste or Oldman's Journey could ever have (well at least it did with me). I think those games just scream to the player what to feel and when and I think it's less interesting. End of rambling ^^. I am trying to find the game back by looking at IGF festival archives but no lock so far.

I mean it makes sense that Gris (a game sold on vibes) would have detractors primarily by the people who didn’t vibe with it, and is beloved by people who did. Art is subjective, yknow? You don’t have to like art that you don’t like. If you fundamentally don’t understand where it’s coming from that’s a different question altogether.

> If you fundamentally don’t understand where it’s coming from that’s a different question altogether.

I think what you bring into the piece of art you are looking at/into (or rather immersing yourself into) matters as much as what the author put into it. So I do agree with you, "where it's coming from" is always interesting to follow. Sometimes it doesn't click on the level we want to click but that's okay, maybe it'll click later (sometimes you need to experience some things IRL to really understand what was going on with a piece of art that didn't click and sometimes what you experienced in real life will make it unbearable to look at some art evoking it).

Regarding Gris: yeah, the hype didn't help. But I poured 3-4 hours into the game on 2 different occasions and the game did bore me and I didn't find what I was looking at interesting, at least not enough to keep me playing.

You’re right in what the consumer brings to a piece matters just as much as the piece itself. But being able to process the piece at all is what I was trying to get at there, in a media literacy sense. It’s very easy to dismiss a piece of work due to a lack of media literacy (with caveat that it is possible to also be so up the ass of the institution that one makes art for which the only people who can find it comprehensible are other institution-saavy folks.)

The game was called Passage; I still remember it very clearly. If you chose to form a couple, you wouldn't be able to squeeze into certain spaces to get certain treasure chests. The "message" of that mechanic, that being part of a couple means you have to forego some opportunities in life, isn't particularly controversial or novel, but "feeling" it through the mechanic was really impactful. (And that was just one aspect of that tiny little game!)

Similarly, there was a game called Brothers that delivered its punchline through its mechanics in a powerful way. (I don't want to spoil it for anyone!) I'm not sure if it's art or whatever, but it's something interesting and distinct from what you get in other forms of media.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed both Gris and Celeste, but purely on a mechanical and/or aesthetic level, and not really a connection to any deeper message.

It's a cheap copy of journey.

I hated every minute of Journey. And I even fell in the mountain bug at the end of the game and started over to see if I really disliked it and yup. I thought Ico was way, way, way better at conveying the same kind of story.

The items in the latter section seem a lot more popular than the former section.

Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults?

"I like popular things" shouldn't seem weird to you. It's natural: They're made to be easy to digest. That's why they're popular!

That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet.

> Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults?

No, I am okay with that :). There are some niche things (the OA, Dishwasher vampire smile) I definitely like and some popular things I really dislike (GoT and Stranger things come to mind). On that note: no one around me (IRL) seems to like Rick and Morty :(.

> That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet.

Well, for what it's worth I am neither American nor living in the US :). At the moment I am into scifi german tv shows (Dark and Tribes of Europa) (buuuut also waiting for the new Star Trek Pike TV show while snobing Star Trek Michael).

Rick and Morty, and that whole genre seems like some warped form of trying to make comedy out of abuse to me.

What remains of Edith Finch was such a great game. I loved it. Firewatch is another one that I would add to that list.

I really liked Firewatch ! This is the game that made me remember to look into "walker simulation" every now and then.

Firewatch is one on my all time favourites. I played it with my significant other in one day and it just formed such a strong binding memory and shared experience :-). Beautiful landscapes and lovely human story.

You're the kind of person that needs a skip button.

I liked Soma. I you haven't played it, I would strongly recommend.

Thanks, I own the game but haven't played it yet :(.

An unusual case where the horror game parts actually hurt the experience of the game. Perhaps in another time it would have been an adventure game instead.

A few years after its release Soma got an update that introduced "Safe Mode". It pretty much transforms the game into an adventure with spooky visuals.

Yes, the horror felt a bit forced.

It's like they came from Amnesia, wanted to make something like it, but set in the future, but then their story was better than they hoped.

Oh man. I've always wanted to play Soma because the story was pointed out to me as being excellent, however anything with jumpscares just isn't for me.

Note that there's a safe mode where the monsters can't hurt you. The jumpscares don't go away but they lose all sense of danger. Personally for me it was exactly what I needed to play and finish the game.

I like

- Monty Python

- Stanley Parable

- The Witness

out of your list so I'm not sure what that makes me. Never heard of Gris or the last one in your other list.

Also, how do you get that formatting on hacker news? What formatting is allowed?

duo-space indent ⟹ monospace text

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

not weird, you're just a youngish american.

Aside from the other good recommendations in the replies, I would suggest 999/Virtue's Last Reward (if you can handle some Anime tropes) for a story-focused game with some puzzle gameplay (the third one is... bad, but skippable) and perhaps Nier or Nier Automata if you want something with a lot of robust (albeit not best-in-class) action gameplay paired with its story.

All of the above (except maybe Automata) can be finished in a dozen hours or less, and 999 has a port that removes the puzzles entirely if you dislike them. (I think the puzzles are a core part of the experience, personally.) For Nier Automata there is an 'easy automatic' mode that lets you have the game automatically control parts of the combat system for you if you really just want to plow through the story.

Also recommended: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

Outer Wilds--often see it recommended enthusiastically. Same publisher as Edith Finch, also won a bunch of awards.

Some other great games that people in this thread might like, but that were not yet mentioned:

  * Outer Wilds (not to be confused with Outer Worlds)
  * Talos Principle (especially the add-on Road to Gehenna)
  * RiME (warning: sad ending!)
  * Portal 1 & 2 (Yes, these are old, but maybe there is someone here from the happy 10_000)

I was recently one of the lucky 10_000 who first heard of the Portal Reloaded, and Portal Stories Mel mods for Portal 2.

I also recommend the Talos Principle (as well as Road to Gehenna) and Outer Wilds (which I'm currently playing. no spoilers!)

Ohooo, I am another 10_000 for Portal Reloaded and Stories Mel. Haven't even had time to play Portal 2 yet.

I enjoyed the Stanley parable and what remains of Edith Finch. Both were fun, interesting explore titles.

TSP is absurd. (The go outside award is for not playing the game for 10 years?)

Stanley parables self commentary I thought was pretty funny. If the humor runs you the wrong way it will be annoying. If you are looking for a nice ending or a completionist it can be frustrating.

I played a bunch and haven’t gone back in a while.

Mockumentaries, e.g. Spinal Tap. It seems like everybody loves these movies yet they give me migraines. The brain pain these movies cause me is so strong, I hesitate to even bring them up. Even thinking of them makes me wince. I didn't know "painfully unfunny" was a literal sensation until I saw Best in Show, and all subsequent mockumenaries I've seen have been just as bad if not worse. I now refuse to watch another for the rest of my life.

Curious in which list you would place Douglas Adams.

Hi, I would place it in the dislike list but for the wrong reasons: I have only seen the movie and read a chapter or two a loooong time ago and I am utterly fed up with 42 jokes so I am not going to get into it any time soon I think. I liked the reverse depressed robot in the move "I am so sad to inform you we are going to crash and burn \o/ :)".

The trilogy of books is very different from the movies and tv shows, so don't let that stop you from giving the books a try. I've haven't laughed out loud when reading any books besides HHGTTG.

Did you get the broom closet ending? The broom closet ending was my favorite!

I find this concerning.

If anyone is interested I highly recommend the review video by Leadhead. It fully covers the experience of playing, from a narrative evolution standpoint. It’s relatively short, <20 minutes, and since it’s about the actual analysis of the narrative escalation of the game and it’s ties back to the previous game it does contain spoilers. But it made me really excited to play it myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJxSssx5PqM

I find the video rather disappointing. It feels less like an analysis of the Ultra Deluxe edition and more like a plot summary. It should only be watched if you are more interested in knowing what it's about than interested in playing it.

There are way too many people who mistake summarization for analysis. Thanks, YouTube!

Recently I've been watching Severance on Apple TV+ and it reminded me of The Stanley Parable all the time. It's a pleasant surprise to see they made a new edition.

The writer of Severance specifically mentioned the Stanley Parable, so that's quite intentional: https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/severance-apple-tv-plu...

I just bought it because a friend hasn't experienced it yet. When you can't re-experience a blind playthrough of the game, the next best thing is to watch a friend play through it at your house.

I played this game after hearing so much about it and… it is quite boring to be honest. It is an experience for sure but I’m the kind of gamer who gets _extremely_ bored if there is no interesting gameplay. Another example is undertale which is critically acclaimed but is just unplayable for me.

This is why I typically refer to it as 'digital art' more than 'game'. (See my other comment on that).

It's not a roller coaster park, it's a museum exhibit or a gallery opening. That's not an insult- lots of people really like museums and art galleries. But have you ever witnessed someone dragged to one of those when they clearly have no interest in being there?

I didn’t like the Stanley parable. Undertake had bullet hell gameplay. That seems hugely different? I found it’s aesthetic to be kind of annoying personally.

The bullet thing felt more like a gimmick than actual gameplay tbh

I'm not a big Undertale fan myself (and certainly not a big Toby Fox fan), but I think the bullet hell gameplay was anything but a gimmeck. Traditional RPG combat simply wouldn't work in Undertale, it would be immensely more boring had there been such a low skill ceiling for a pacifist playthrough. Not sure what traditional RPGs you're playing, but Undertale is anything but boring. Unfunny? Sure, it heavily depends on your sense of humor. Kitschy? Indeed, it inherits that from it's roots in Homestuck. But calling it boring doesn't quite line up, in my head at least.

One thing about TSP is that even if you think it's not the best treatment of a game that talks about itself out loud, it is the only game that talks about itself out loud. If you weren't looking for such a game in the first place, then that's another matter.

(Bastion sort of does, but on an object rather than meta level.)

Fun game, but the humour feels straight out of 2013 internet culture. Also, half the new content is exactly the same as the old content except the narrator comments on an object that you’re holding.

I just finished it, and keeping things as spoiler free as possible, there's a bit in the middle which is just incredible... and then it goes nowhere with it. Instead choosing to serve up a permutation of the original game. I want to play a whole game that's just that bit in the middle, missed opportunity in my opinion. Honestly I'm not sure I'd recommend this version to someone who's played the original, but if you're new to TSP please give it a go.

Stanley Parable always reminded me a little of Starship Titanic. Anyone remember that game? I remember it was like a funny Myst.

Sure do, Stevedave. The lead up was more fun than the game, though, IMHO. Especially the email updates.

It's interesting to see this after the discussion higher up about British humor, since Starship Titanic was written by Douglas Adams.

Yeah, that's why I asked that particular poster about how they would place Douglas Adams in their two lists :)

Starship Titanic was creative and humorous. The character personalities were very detailed and interesting too, that stands out the most to me. They all had depth despite being machines. The crew is usually unhelpful and sarcastic and sometimes outright hostile.

The puzzles were extremely cheap and annoying though. You pretty much required a guide for it. That’s why I can’t truly say it’s underrated.

Not if you want the 10 year achievement badge!

Its a separate game, so you can play this version without resetting the clock on the original

I'm a couple months out from the 5 year and my son is super keen on making sure I get this achievement, lol.

I bought it and refunded it. Just felt too much like the first game and ended up getting bored pretty quickly from walking around and hearing the same thing.

It’s not a sequel, were you expecting a sequel?

yeah

Did you ever get to the new content?

yep, got to enjoy a recreation of Rocket League and some other popular games.

There's some other new content in the game after completing a few endings from the original game. You'll know it when you see it.

I could play it again maybe, but the price feels bit steep for not that much new content.

A new Stanley Parable!!?? Well I know what I'll be doing for fun today. That's an automatic buy for me.

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