Control (2019)

While it was fun in the beginning, as you progress you realize the game is kinda stale.

The premise is basically SCP Foundation, which is interesting, but the story is boring. Everyone you encounter is an emotionless brick wall, even the MC. Every time it pans to us talking to someone, her face is so blank and her eyes are staring daggers into whoever is in front of her. Other times, her eyes arent even focusing on the person. Her animations and voice acting isnt helping in convincing me she cares about her brother that she is here to save.

The gist of the gameplay is fetch quests and running around like a headless chicken trying to pick up health points as youre bombarded with 20 enemies everywhere you go. The supernatural abilities after launch are tedious to use, as is weapon upgrading. You need to grind the materials, as they drop randomly.

After being away from my computer for a while, I realized I was pushing myself just to finish this game. While the premise is interesting, everything else is either boring or tedious. Sadly, I did not finish it and dont see myself ever finishing it.

FINAL THOUGHTS.

After all is said and done, I still stand by my overall statements. "Control" is style over substance, mostly because the substance is based on a pre-existing internet website, and what "story" they created for the plot is mundane as hell. That doesn't mean the game isn't worth the time, however. Despite all my irritants with it - its vagueness, its bugginess, its overall refusal to lead you anywhere at all - it was certainly a unique and interesting ride that nothing else will ever come close to, and that's what Remedy does best.

The Alan Wake DLC was a dream come true, but that's just because I'm the worlds biggest Alan Wake fan. The Ashtray Maze might be one of the single coolest things I've ever seen in a game and I cannot for the life of me fathom how they did that. And, above all else, Casper Darling is hands down the greatest thing to come out of this game. Every single second watching that man was a joy. Love my boy.

But...even within its good moments, they aren't often enough to block out the bad, and it is a lot of bad. Like I said the other night, "Control" is the video game equivalent of the TV show "The Walking Dead", in that it's very very mediocre, but it's very very good at making you think it's better than it is. Unlike The Walking Dead, however, Control is worth the time, even with all its faults and flaws. It was a fun ride, I still have a lot of cleanup, and I still have The Foundation DLC to do to wrap it all up, but all in all I'm glad I played it, even if I didn't really enjoy it.

However, I am happy it exists because its success means Remedy will make better games, like Alan Wake 2. God I cannot wait for Alan Wake 2.

Remarkable. That's the only word I can use to describe this game, but perhaps not the reason you're thinking. It's remarkable to me that a game of this caliber, from a studio this established, can win so many awards and attain so much hype when it's so fundamentally game breaking broken in so many ways that render it almost outright unplayable at times.

There's so much I wanna like about it, but it is testing every nerve of my patience, and on the whole, I think my ultimate review will be "Control is a bad game that should've been good, and is very good at tricking you into thinking it's not as bad as it is."