Control

Although very visually impressive, Control is hampered by a foundation that isn't complex enough to fully utilize the media that inspired it (SCP, X-Files). A stunning world will have you looking into the background rather than at the main character and her story.

The first steps into the FBC are very cohesive & gripping. Armed with very little information and your service weapon, the architecture and layout of the Oldest House is, simply put, familiar yet otherworldly. Walk a few more steps however and it becomes much more mundane, like your morning coffee.

After a few hours Control's gameplay does grow rather dull. Even at its peak, when you're done spewing bullets and throwing objects at corrupted enemies from every direction you're left with a rather confusing set of RPG elements that feel needlessly tacked on. I personally stuck with the starter weapon form and slapped on the two weapon mods that fit my style of play the most. The lackluster RPG elements play a large part in how fatty and bloated Control feels. It wants to be a very linear, surreal action-adventure game but it also wants to chase the RPG carrot with resource management, character upgrades, weapon modifications, level scaling & side missions that simply shouldn't be there. They outright hurt the quality of the game more often than not. There are several side missions that give you more reasons to explore the labyrinth as well as giving you more backstory for the side characters, but even they feel unnecessary.

To be blunt, Control's narrative spends far too much time examining the main character, Jesse Faden, and her reason for being in The Oldest House than it does examining the why or how of Control's world. Jesse has a lot to say but not a lot of it matters. Neither does the dialogue for the side characters who just exist with little reason outside of giving you missions. That's the main issue with Control. It's the Jesse Faden game and not a game about the surreal & at times maddening world that it takes place in.

Even the ending misses the mark, with very little to say or do outside of being very ambiguous, leaving room for Control's two expansions and a potential sequel. If a sequel ever hits store shelves, Remedy will hopefully expand on the world of the first game and realize that's what makes this game so good and the lack of a focus on it is what makes it so disappointing.

Everything smells of.... *inhales deeply*.... s i g n i f i c a n c e

...and it's purposefully opaque and vague in an annoying and boring way. Its lore/tone puts it on the same shelf as LOST and Stranger Things in a lot of ways, which theoretically should make it more enjoyable/nostalgic for me, but... nah.

The main character (even if her voice wasn't a grating one) talks too much, about too little. All of the acting feels separate from the characters/animations in general, more than is normal even. Some of the FMV cutscenes are out-of-place and jarring. Not the 'Dharma Initiative' -style videotapes, I kinda love that stuff. It was one FMV sequence in particular where Jesse's having a mental break or something.

As much as I enjoy the combat (which is enough to more or less completely ignore the needlessly overwhelming and unclear upgrade menus, as they tend to kill momentum and flow), I don't think encounters should respawn every single time you re-enter a room you very recently completed. Especially since,

It's too easy to get lost, and find yourself backtracking by accident rather than for the purpose of exploration/progression.

Game crashed a time or two. Load times take too long, longer than other modern games it seems. Framerate drops often.

The haptics/rumble and sound/music design are pretty much top-notch. One of the things that keeps the game fun. INSIDE seems like another influence throughout the game, in more than just its music perhaps.

My computer (and probably yours too) just isn't new enough to get the absolute most out of this game. Despite its risks deserving some reward, I can't in good conscience let it waste away in the bottom of my Steam library for $20 or $30. I'll probably pick it up again for $5 or $10 bucks someday, when I've got a machine that plays to the game's strengths, and every last kink has been ironed out.

A really promising game with too much bloat to keep it from reaching greatness.
Running and gunning through the main game is fun for a bit. But every time the game asks me to go off on a side mission the whole experience often grinds to a halt. The combat is too repetitive and limited for all the side-biz and it often left me bored. It does not help that the main character has the most plastic, emotionless, resting-bitch-face ever. I could not care less about her or any other character and the story... no, let's not even go there.

There are also very fundamental issues with the main resource system. Let me explain.
Here's my idea of how game design should be done: every system you put in should work to increase the fun and entertainment of the experience. If a system encourages and rewards exploration and trying out new things; then it increases fun and is a good system.
In Control, the main resource system works in the complete opposite direction.
You loose a percentage of your main resource upon death, which meant that instead of repeating a particularly difficult side quest until I could eventually beat it, I just left it. It is actually better for my progression to skip that content and not die to keep the resources.
That is so incredibly backwards. The game should instead encourage me to try again, to become better, then reward me for the effort.

And it gets worse. You can also spend this resource to essentially re-spec ability points. But because this resource is so precious and volatile, I'm not incentivized to re-spec and try new builds. The game actively punishes me for wanting to try new things because it costs resources.
Do not put a cost on re-spec. You should encourage the player to try new builds.

Lastly, since upgrading weapons costs this resource, you are again best served by just choosing two guns and sticking to them the entire game.
The game should instead encourage you to swap between all weapons often as an actual viable strategy.
You know, like how having a limited ammo supply for each weapon means you'll eventually have to change. You then need to prioritize based on the situation.
In Control, just pick a gun and pew-pew forever.

The in-game solution to the resource problem is to grind out more random battles, which loops me back to the main issue: combat gets repetitive and boring. So the self-sustaining loop does not work for me.


That was a lot of text to basically just say: not all games need RPG-elements. Control would have been a better and more focused experience without all the side-missions, upgrades, resource management and other bloat. Why do the enemies need to have increasing levels? Combat does not become more fun because you have to shoot the same guy three times in the face instead of one.

It could have been a more classic style game where you find new abilities, guns and strategies naturally as you play through the game. It would shorten the overall playtime and maybe even encouraged a second playthrough.
The level design also falters because you mostly see the same thing over and over again, in the same god-damn grey color, over and over again.
So yeah, this could have been some of the best 6-8 gaming hours in recent years but it drags on needlessly.
When the sepia scene started after the "credits" and I was asked to do office chores I just hit ALT+F4 and uninstalled the game. I don't even want to know what happens next. There was 0% will to continue at that point.
Ugh, what a waste of potential.

Control is a fun "New Weird" adventure game saddled with making good on its large budget by being as largely marketable as possible, and that means making it a explosive third-person shooter with a skill tree.

The best part of it are the various in-universe documents you find lying around, the audiotapes and inventory entries and the various

It's the SCP Foundation and X-Files and Lovecraft short stories and one-man cult Youtube horror series.

It absolutely shocks me this game does not see the praise that Max Payne and Alan Wake receive because to me it might be better then those games (maybe not Max Payne but they're close). I think the thing that grips me the most about it is how it tells its story. Between audio logs, videos, pages you find on the ground, cutscenes, and most importantly the events you engage in. The Objects of Power lead to some really cool gameplay sequences which continue to shock you throughout the game, some making you laugh and other times making you feel a sense of dread. The environmental storytelling is also great here as you piece the world together. Remedy's unique blend of story and action is at an all time high here.

As for the gun play, it's your typical fun as hell Remedy gunplay combing aspects from all three of their previous third person shooters, while adding some other crazy features. You feel powerful as all hell between shooting, holding up a shield of rocks, whipping stuff around, floating etc. The amount of tools at your disposal and how to use them against different enemy types is amazing. Same goes for which weapons to have equipped as each one is better for dealing for certain situations. I feel some people stuck with one gun the whole game and didn't experience how fun it can be to mix it up and why mix it up. My only complaint combat wise is the upgrading kind of feels unnecessary, but this is a minor issue.

I understand how games like Killer7 might not be for everyone but this is a case where I'm genuinely confused at the criticism some have put out for this game. The atmosphere is amazing and fits perfectly with the story and gunplay. There is a mystique about the world never perfectly explained that keeps drawing you in. And the combat is fun as hell. I think a lot of people have understated how ground breaking the combination of the elements are to keep you on your toes, always experiencing something new. If you liked any of Remedy's other works, give this one a go, it's everything and more.

"Control" is a refreshing combination of elements already seen in other games. The art direction is what makes the game so fascinating, with the brutalist architecture-influenced Old House building acting as the absolute protagonist. Once a typical office and research facility, it keeps being distorted and bent by some unknown forces from another dimension. It is our job to bring order back by taking down "corrupted" employees and molding the architecture back to what it used to be. Spending a whole game inside the same building can get boring fast, but the level designers made sure to differentiate the mood of each area by playing with different lighting and color palettes. Yet, the overall atmosphere is so recognizable that you can instantly tell you are playing "Control" just by looking at the environment. While the game is supposed to be taking place in 2019, the offices and equipment have a somewhat vintage sci-fi look that kind of reminded me of shows "The X-Files" and the likes. Live-action cutscenes also contributed to giving an old-school feel typical of the games from the 90s, but the art direction and editing keep everything fresh and personal.

The gameplay might feel derivative at first, but the real fun begins once the reality-bending psychokinetic abilities take over the basic third-person shooting dynamics. Combat is intuitive, fast-paced, and incredibly satisfying, as you can potentially destroy everything that surrounds you and even use it against your enemies. The abilities are also added gradually so that mastering each one of them does not become too overwhelming. After a few hours, fighting the same enemies and traversing the Oceanview Motel becomes a little boring indeed, but for a relatively small studio like Remedy, I think they did what they could to differentiate the gameplay as much as possible within their budget.

My only major complaint is that the map is extremely tough to navigate until you have memorized all the areas of the Old House. I am sure the game designers did want us to get lost, but as you are continuously forced to backtrack, it might get a little frustrating.

The plot initially engages but tends to rely too much on text, live-action footage, or stiff in-game dialogues instead of fleshing out visual storytelling or interactive sequences. Cutscenes only teach you the most essential information, while the rest of the plot is to be reconstructed by finding case files, staff correspondence, and audio recordings disseminated on the game map. It was fascinating at first, but I eventually had to give up as you have to literally stop every couple of minutes to read through walls of text or listen to tapes. I am aware that this gameplay element is one of the things that make "Control" what it is, but I wish developers would think about pacing a little more before dumping so much information into collectibles (of which, honestly, only about 20% is needed to understand the plot).

The ending was also a little disappointing, as it just felt like the end of a regular mission rather than a wrap-up of the whole story. A lot of mysteries also remain unexplained to keep the path open for a sequel.