“The Stanley Parable” has very little to offer as far as innovation in game play. As long as you have a functioning W key and a mouse, you can play this game the whole way through. Well, kind of. “The Stanley Parable” excels in presenting choices to you and throwing consequences of your choices directly in your face. When presented with two doors, the narrator will instruct you to pass through the left door, but nothing is stopping you from trying the right door, and you keep making choices until you get to the end.

“The Stanley Parable” is incredibly well-written, and every piece of narration is fantastic. You play as Stanley, a man in office No. 427. One day, all of Stanley’s co-workers disappear. That is all for the story.

There are enough endings to last for at least six hours of play, maybe more. I have yet to find every ending but I enjoy every new one that I discover. You will walk through corridors, choose doors, even annoy the narrator on your way to just having a pleasant experience.

The graphics of “The Stanley Parable” are at best boring. Textures are fairly muddled, and details are not very well defined. The game never tried to sell its graphics engine, however, and the game can handle a lot more than it is displaying. The perfect example is during a portion of the game when the narrator makes you play “Minecraft” for a bit and the textures look extremely close to “Minecraft” on decent settings.

I do not have a section dedicated to the soundtrack of this game, but I just want to say that the few songs that do show up here and there in the game are really good at setting the tone.

Here is where I will stop praising the game. While I do enjoy the game a lot and am OK supporting the company who made it, I don’t think I get enough hours out of this game to justify the $15 price tag. The game is available on Steam which means eventually it will go on sale. I recommend that you try the free demo that is available on Steam which does a very good job of preparing you for what the real game will entail. If you love to play the game, then you will just have to pay the fifteen bucks. If you just have a passing interest, wait until it goes on sale.

4/5