Warning: This article assumes you've played the game to completion, and it contains heavy spoilers. If you have not played the game, please read our previous article, give the game an hour or so, and then come back. Don't worry... we'll wait.

The Stanley Parable Half-Life 2 mod is over quickly, and it has only a few places where you're allowed to make a choice. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure book where you can stop and stare at the walls if you'd like. Multiple readers wrote in with their thoughts after simply watching playthroughs on YouTube, and it's hard to argue that they missed something in the experience.

On the other hand, the ability to walk around, to feel like you're in more control than you are... isn't that point of all video games? It's almost as if someone took the body of a larger game and boiled it down to remove the skin and fat, leaving only bones. The Stanley Parable is every single-player game you've ever played.

"After exploring some of the other avenues in the game, and the narrator chastising me for it, I thought about other games that allow you to break the game using the presented mechanics," a reader wrote. "One of the first examples I thought of was the Grand Theft Auto series. Though it doesn't work in nearly the same way, many buy games in the GTA series for the ability to cause mass chaos and do whatever it is they want. It's also one of the reasons there was slight disappointment among those who purchased L.A. Noire, with its lack of ability to do so."

In The Stanley Parable, there's no way to break out of the narrative that you're given. Each ending is valid, and each one makes you feel trapped and stupid for trying to do whatever it is you were supposed to do. Well, you are praised for following the narrator's directions to the letter and thus becoming "free," but how does that feel? You end the way you began, sitting in front of a screen, doing everything it tells you to do. The only "good" ending, and I use that term loosely, doesn't make you empathize with Stanley; it turns you into Stanley.

"To me, this felt like the game equivalent of a Sylvia Plath story, most specifically 'The Bell Jar,'" another reader stated. "Coming from a tradition of transcendentalist titles where participants feel like they have more free choice, control over personality and character details, and a just and right purpose, Stanley (Sylvia) comes along and says: you're just a player like everyone else, your choices suck, they all result in death, and the only 'winning move' is empty and hollow."

Other players didn't care for the experience at all. "This game relies totally on breaking the fourth wall, and that is not what I want from a game," a reader wrote in the comments to our original story. "When I play a game I know that I am following a carefully scripted path, but the point is to hide this as well as possible."

This fits with what I've said before: all story-based games are this primitive at their core. They just throw characters, weapons, battles, and all other forms of what we consider to be the "game" at you to hide the fact that you're simply choosing which door to walk through every few minutes.

If you were expecting something with more gameplay, the mod likely left you disappointed. This is pure narrative, told through the mask of a videogame. You move at your own pace, but that's all the control you're given until you reach one of the game's binary choices.

"Basically, it really is an art-game, in that there are a number of possible themes suggested that—were one so inclined—one would be capable of writing academic theses about. With that said, however, I don't go to an art gallery when I want to be entertained," another reader stated. "As a work of metafiction, this movie is a great game. As a game? It's a downer."

Of course it is; no one likes to be told their favorite hobby is nothing but the meaningless task of hitting buttons, and I certainly believe that gaming offers more than this bleak picture suggests. Still, The Stanley Parable makes you think—no bad thing.

And, on the upside, at least it doesn't tease you with a sequel.