For a little context, The Stanley Parable is, according to it's wiki page, "an interactive fiction modification (mod) built on the Source game engine".
I've heard a lot of buzz and excitement surrounding this game. With some video game reviewers claiming The Stanley Parable to fulfill their incredibly easy job of pointing out all the superficial features, and attaching a number to it. So I decided to do... Just that.
Using the word "gameplay" to describe The Stanley Parable, is controversial, at the very least. Especially since... It isn't even a game. People generally have issues defining what exactly makes a video game.
"An interactive system with a set of implicit and explicit objectives and win states."
"An interactive piece of software designed with the purpose of entertainment."
These are both obviously incorrect. As what is, and what is not, a video game, can be very easily defined.
Can you make it jump?
Unique to video games... Is the ability to jump. Popularized by Super Mario Bros. in the late 1300's. There is no other medium to make someone, or something, jump.
Go on. Try to make a tomato jump. I'll give you 10 seconds.
...
It doesn't matter how many buttons you press, It will just sit there.
Therefore, video games should be defined solely by this unique feature... Can you jump, or can you not jump? For example!
Is Call of Duty a video game?
Yes!
Is The Walking Dead (Telltale series) a video game?
No!
Is Mass Effect a video game?
Eh... Well, you can't jump. But you can vault over walls. I suppose it counts as a visual novel.
By this metric, we can assert that The Stanley Parable is, in fact, not a video game. It is merely an interactive "walking aimlessly around an office" simulator. So deep.
The worst part is, it doesn't even have a multiplayer mode. Zero out of ten.
The game has music... It occasionally plays. Some other times, it doesn't play.
I like music. So this aspect gets a ten out of ten!
But graphically, it looks like a Half Life 2 mod. Come on Gabe, step it up. Zero out of ten.
The Stanley Parable has been praised by its critics as having outstanding commentary, exploration, and subversion of various video game design concepts and cliches, such as overly simplistic level design, the illusion of choice and free will within a video game. With the level of praise that has been placed on the game, I expected a masterpiece that would surpass such works of art, such as Memento... The Prestige... Or Inception.
...Or Batman Begins.
...Or The Dark Knight.
...Or The Dark Knight Rises.
fuck you Christopher Nolan
I received a letter from one of my fellow colleagues. It reads as the following.
This intellectual observation of immeasurable caliber, however, failed to take into account, that he is... Heh... "Playing" an interactive experience pretending to be a video game, pretending to be a movie. So of course it can contain anything of inflectional merit. No video game ever has, or ever will.Pretentious douchebag writing for Kotaku or any other shitty video game journalist website wrote:"...The Stanley Parable is a work of genius in video game storytelling, it is so Kafkaesque. The diegesis of the game and the profound deconstruction of video game tropes truly amplifies the feeling of synaesthesia between actor and character, in such a way as to bring this paradigm into question. The interaction and agency or lack thereof that I, the player, exerts over Stanley prove that he is as much part of me, as I am to him. This monounitenthesis (being a graduate from Cambridge University has provided me the means to make up entire words to elevate myself even further, a word that I shall explain in a later context) is what contextualized and drove the narrative struggle between the player and the narrator throughout this wonderful experience."
If I wanted a story, I'd go read a book! So... "Playing" The Stanley Parable can pretty much be summarized by... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
There are no meaningful moral choices.
There are no grand plot twists.
No beautiful romances that makes me, in my heart, have a feeling so complicated.
No revenge, no resolution at the end.
It was nothing but pretentious nonsense trying desperately to be meaningful, while not appealing to my preconceived notion as to what exactly a video game is.
Zero out of ten.
(Hey Veilan can you pronounce "monounitenthesis" for me)
