NEED TO KNOW
What is it? The Stanley parable rebuilt in the Unity Engine, but with much more of itself.
Expect to pay: $ 24.99 / £ 19.49
Developer: Crows Crows Crows
Publisher: Crows Crows Crows
Reviewed it: RTX 2080, Intel i7-9700K, 16 GB RAM
Multiplayer? None
Link: Official Site
I never thought much about the “skip dialogue” button in a video game, but after playing The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, I can not help but think about it. The button (it’s a physical button in the game world, so you have to stand in a certain place to use it) is just one of several new features you can take a trip to in the “extended reimagining” of 2013’s The Stanley Parable. Once again, stepping into Stanley’s shoes transforms the act of playing a game into a fun, surprising and at times deeply thought-provoking study of games and game development, players and player selection, and yes, even the consequences of pressing a button.
I get this out of the way early: It feels like a trap to review The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, given that part of this extended version takes place in a museum of memories, where the narrator reads aloud from several reviews of the original game . Not just professional reviews from Destructoid and GameSpot, framed and hanging on walls and lit by candlelight (PC Gamers own 90% review missing, I noted with some disappointment), but also Steam user reviews dumped in piles and scattered around a rainy yard, including one that suggested a jump dialog button was needed because the narrator was talking a little too much. It really gives you something to think about while pressing the new jump dialog button because the narrator is talking a little too much.
Back to my point: Reviewing a game that is so willing to shed light on its own reviews seems a bit like stepping on a trapdoor that is clearly marked “trap door”. On the other hand, going into traps you’ve been warned away from and doing things you should not do until you find out that the game really wants you to do them is how you play The Stanley Parable. So why not review it? Maybe it ends up framed in The Stanley Parable relating to– reissued one day.
But what even is Ultra Deluxe? It’s not just a remaster, though the original first-person game has been so faithfully rebuilt that it took me several hours to realize that it was no longer in Source Engine, but in Unity. You can play through it again, while office worker Stanley, who one day realizes he’s the only one in the building, sits down to discover what happened to his colleagues, while a gentle tale in the history book guides him through the empty corridors. The simple act of not obeying your instructions and making your own choices leads to numerous branching paths, a series of reactions from the narrator, multiple endings, and the sheer joy of doing something unexpected and discovering that the game fully expected you to do so. .
But at some point, while the new version of the old The Stanley Parable is playing, the new content of Ultra Deluxe begins to intrude. It’s not a subtle introduction – a door labeled “New Content” pops up in the familiar office corridor that you’ve already walked down a dozen times. Step through it and a lot of new features are busy waiting for your approval. For example, there is a bucket that Stanley can pick up and carry around with him.
Buckets of fun
That is it. It’s just a bucket, a little joke based on the idea that some players found the original game confusing, and therefore this “Reassurance Bucket” can now be carried around as a companion to ward off any feeling of discomfort or insecurity. But of course, a simple joke in the hands of developer Crows Crows Crows (the studio founded by one of The Stanley Parables’ original creators) never stays simple for long. The bucket draws new comments from the narrator, which made me wonder if anything else changed when I wore it. What if I climbed out of a window with the bucket, or carried it to the boss’s office, or took it with me to one of the original game’s many endings? What if I started the game over with the bucket and then brought the bucket back to the place where I originally got the bucket? could I get thaw bucket?
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe does a brilliant job of anticipating anything and everything a player can do while playing The Stanley Parable while holding a bucket, and the reward for experimenting is more humor, confusion, absurdity and well-thought-out explorations of game design and player selection.
Had I been legitimately emotionally attached to the bucket?
At one point, I decided that I would try to get rid of the bucket, a lengthy task that rewarded me with a “replacement bucket”, which I stubbornly also got rid of, after which I restarted the game and found out … I had no longer the bucket.
And as silly as it sounds, I have to admit I really felt a bit panicked. Had I been legitimately emotionally attached to the bucket? No no. It was just that carrying the bucket around with me had unlocked a number of new endings (and bucket-based revisions of the game’s original endings), so I was worried that without the bucket I could end up missing a secret ending , a bit of a narrative, or one of those silly or thought-provoking moments that are the collectibles of The Stanley Parable experience.
(Ultra Deluxe, by the way, adds literal collectibles. I definitely suggest you collect them all, even though you’re repeatedly told that there will be no reward for collecting them. And it’s true, there is not. But then again, there is.)
I finally got my Reassurance Bucket back, and hell no matter how silly it feels to say this, I felt reassured to grab it once again. That’s really the genius of Ultra Deluxe: it makes you laugh at a joke and makes you so slowly realize how much truth lies in that joke.
There’s far more than just a bucket in Ultra Deluxe – I just do not want to spoil the rest of the new features or even reveal how they are revealed because it is almost perfect for a video game about video games. I’ve been playing for about 10 hours and I’m pretty sure I still have not revealed all the Ultra Deluxe tricks and treats.
As with the original game, there is some fruitless wandering through parts of the office you have been through many times before, trying to discover something new where there is nothing new to find. And there are still a few patience-testing moments where the narrative just goes on for a little too long, and I found myself restless to keep exploring instead of standing in place and listening. (I certainly do not think there is a need for another jump dialog button. One is plentiful.)
But for the most part, Ultra Deluxe is an adventure full of wonderful surprises and sharp, funny observations about games, how we play them, what we expect from them, and what they expect from us.