EDIT: The game is out now for about 11 USD (a discount from the apparently usual 14 USD). I've just got done playing it, and well... you'll see in my post in a moment.


Originally a Half Life 2 Source Mod of pure genius (if you have HL2 on your computer or laptop, download it and play it, then return!), the creators of the first game now are making the "HD Remix", and are about to release it. The HD Remix will have more content, stuff, and a "fresh coat of paint".

For those of you that don't have HL2 and want an idea of what this game is like without having to watch a Let's Play (since this game is best when you've never seen it before), there's a Stanley Parable Demonstration free for download on Steam. It is seriously THE BEST demo I have ever played in my twenty years of gaming.

And in 4 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes, the HD Remix will be available on Steam. Thoughts? Because this is some of the best experiences of gaming ever. If you like visual novels, this is sort of a western approach to it.

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Absolutely love this game. I'm not sure if I've done everything yet, but I've done a lot of poking around, and it is FUN. Completed all original games, and I'm fairly sure I've found most (if not all) the new ones, though I'm still trying to pry some easter eggs from this thing. It's gonna be awesome to show this to my family.

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I watched the Yogscast play this and I think it's the coolest thing! It's quite like Portal, IMO (to be expected) but it's so refreshingly different and has the darkest humor. I'll have to check it out for myself some time.

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Yeah the concept is derivative of Portal's narrative, but it takes the concept of player vs. omniscient to a whole other level. I like it a lot, and I feel like it's a much-needed issue to highlight in these days of the gaming industry where games start railroading the player much more than they have done in the past. The point of this game I guess you could say, is that as long as you're playing a game you're constrained to work within the boundaries of someone elses work and even if you're seemingly given freedom to play around you're still within the confinement of this game-world.

I really hope this opens up some eyes for some of gaming's bigwigs because as much as I like all the cinematic gaming, I want more games to be more open to player-input instead of constantly trying to make games realistic and restricting things in the process. In older 3D games you can exploit a lot of things to play the game to your liking. Sometimes weakness in poor geomitry worked to the game's favor in making it less restricted and such. Take Super Mario 64 for example, which has a lot of seemingly "unfinished" geomitry. In the end it's not a weakness in the game, it's rather something the developers were careless about but as a result it's more fun to play with than when everything is just closed off and there's only a set of ways to proceed in the game's world.

We need choices in games that go beyond what the developers thought. Strategy games offer this kind of freedom a lot, but I feel like more and more games in other genres are forgetting it.

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It also talks about a lot of player expectations, too. About what we expect from games, and that games are, by nature, somewhat linear. To be able to do literally anything would require probably decades of initial work, more memory than a football field of computers combined, and near constant updates for every thing that comes into existence.

But developers take the other extreme in many AAA titles- by offering very little freedom, by constraining it to the point of having little agency at all.

It also goes into the narrative style of most games- the power fantasy. And while the power fantasy will always be popular, it seems that other narratives are put to the way-side. The Stanley Parable's genius is its narrative of helplessness, of futility, of playing a game where relinquishing control is a hollow happiness, but trying to take control leads to the destruction of Stanely and/or The Narrator as well. It's a battle where all victories are Pyrrhic and temporary, and Stanley's only power- choice- is only that of what The Narrator gives him.

So it's not that the power fantasy of many games like The Elder Scrolls, Mega Man, even Ace Attorney (wherein the underdog attorney creates the improbable turnabout) are bad. They're still great, and should be lauded. However, it would be to the benefit of the industry to take risks in other narratives.

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