Control (2019)

I would praise the story as well if it had attempted to do anything interesting with the SCP-like setting, but they went for a good vs bad narrative at the end, which is almost antithetical to SCP.

I was hooked with the possibility to destroy pretty much everything around you at the beginning, but the game became repetitive very quickly. I used the launch ability for pretty much everything, and all the other abilities I only used when strictly necessary. I'm not very good at FPS's so some of that may be my fault, but the shield was a terrible, the dash was hard to use cause many times I couldn't see where i was headed, and it gave you no invincibility frames from what I could tell. Also, the game is dark as fuck, so I would constantly adjust the brightness depending on the area.

The main ending was incredibly underwhelming, and the game overall felt repetitive in it's missions and enemies. I think if there had been some more fun level design like they used in the maze or some more substance to the combat system this could have been a great game. I would say it's a 2.5, if you think the game looks cool and you like the idea you should buy it on discount.

I still stand by my earlier statements that this has a lot of missed potential, and is basically SCP mixed with Candle Cove inserts, but I have to admit it's fun to play - even with as generic as the enemies are - and the creature fights are awesome, and while the story feels like it's the sequel to a prior game that never existed, overall it's interesting and tonally cool and aesthetically neat. Control might not be perfect - hell sometimes it barely breaks greatness - but it's definitely one of the most intriguing and entertaining titles I've played this year just because of what it tried to do.

Sure narratively I couldn't give less of a rats ass about her brother and her, and sure I'll admit I was mostly interested in the game because of its connection to Alan Wake, and sure it runs kind of like dog piss on an Xbox One at times thank to unnecessary light blooms and particle effects that you can't turn down or off, and sure the setting is beautiful but completely empty and devoid of anything of substance, but otherwise it's so engaging and bizarre that I can't actively dislike it, even with all the things it does wrong, and boy it does a lot wrong.

Getting pretty close to the end, doing the AWE DLC right now before I continue the main path towards the conclusion and then I'll do the Foundation DLC afterwards, and I have to say it's definitely worth the trip simply because it's such a unique experience. Yes it's an incomprehensible mess of a story that lacks any sort of feeling of attachment and has never once made me feel urgency to actually forward the plot proper because the plot is so dull, but everything that surrounds it is worth investigating at least. While I do think locking most of the lore behind collectible documents is such a 2010 concept, and wish there were better ways to get that information across to the player, I'm willing to forgive it, if only because it just oozes coolness.

Remedy always tries to do something different, and usually does it well enough to be enjoyable, and the case remains the same here. Control is definitely worth the time, even with its faults.

Trying for a FOURTH TIME now to even get this remotely started, but by god is it challenging every last remaining nerve I have. Rise of the Tomb Raider might've sucked on every conceivable level, but at least it TOLD ME WHERE TO FUCKING GO TO PLAY THE GAME.

Sam Lake, I love you man. I really do. But this game absolutely reeks of a 13 year old screaming "I have ideas and they're cool!" but they're all super vague because they don't understand anything about what they have ideas about, and so it's all neat in concept, but even in concept it barely makes sense.

Sam. Sam. The fuck happened, dude? My guy? You okay? Please blink twice if someone is forcing you to be an edgelord at gunpoint. I sincerely wanna help you.

This is overhyped and incredibly underwhelming, not to mention largely incoherent. As a longtime fan of Sam Lake and Remedy, this is extremely upsetting, especially considering how it ties into Alan Wake in a way, but them's the brakes. Most "popular" titles are often the worst it seems. Smug and seemingly self important to the point of trying so hard to make the player think its intelligent, when really it's incomprehensible.

Oh well.

Getting back into this finally and boy is it nauseating how smooth it is. It's so perfect and clean and there's no jank or lag at all. It's like the video game equivalent of uncanny valley. Where's the roughness. It's all too well made. Games are supposed to be kinda shoddy around the corners here and there.

That being said, still fun lol

I'm truly sad about having to drop this because I was enjoying it a lot, but the continuous lag spikes as soon as the physics system had to do anything made this pretty much unplayable in combat :(

I hope I can resume it some day in other platform, as my computer slowly moves from "too old to play modern games" to "too old to play anything at all".

So first of all, I must mention that this review is heavily impacted by me playing the cloud version (the only version available on the switch) which was nothing but a frustrating and game-breaking experience.

So I might start with why the cloud version is simply not recommended. It's not like I have a terrible internet connection either, I would say it is rather average. Nothing fancy but you can do everything that you want and I've never experienced any interruptions. Firstly, it took me about 15 min to start the game, every time, to make sure it got the game re-downloaded, and then anytime there would be a loading screen this could also take several minutes. It was like being back in the PS1 area again.

Secondly, anytime there would be a couple of enemies on screen the game wouldn't be able to handle it and would be rendered unplayable. Not to mention the extreme input lag. This left the game just feeling extremely clunky and sometimes nauseating to play. And finally, I even had to skip the ending sequence of this game because the game would just disconnect every time I try to get through it. This ended up with me watching the last hour of the game on youtube.

For the remainder of this review and including the score of 3(2) stars out of 5 I will try my best to not let the technical issues of cloud-play muddy the water of the actual game quality. So here we go.

I've been looking at playing this game for over a year or so since the demo for the cloud version dropped on the Switch. I absolutely LOVE games about psychic powers (Psychonauts anyone?) so I felt like I needed to play this as it seemed interesting overall. Having said that I have only played the demo beforehand and didn't know anything about how the game would progress. So I found myself quite surprised that this is somewhat of an RPG Open world-ish game with loads of side quest hustles and such.

The game really captivated me at first, being very mysterious and concise with the story exposition. And it got me really curious and invested. The first thing that I noticed is that this game is actually really difficult from the get-go. And way too hard for me... To be honest I tinkered with the options to give me more health and damage resistance just to make it through the first hours.

The combat quickly became dull, with me mostly using telekinesis to throw things at people repeatedly. There was no real variety in the enemies and it just started feeling kind of repetitive and annoying to have wave after wave of enemies pop up out of nowhere. The next thing that I lost interest in was the story.

It lost me somewhere along the way. Perhaps because of the lag of the voice lines coming 2 seconds after the intended lip-sync, or perhaps because it kept spiraling in an obscure manner, David Lynch-style but just poorly executed. I didn't feel like I cared much for the characters either, providing what felt like no real depth or development.

I must also mention that these kinds of games are not generally my cup of tea. There was a long time ago since I played such a fast-paced combat/3rd person exploration game and for a good reason. I do often find them repetitive and rather boring. I did not explore any of the side missions or rather did anything outside the main storyline. And with that, I did not take part in any of the world-building documents. Towards finishing the game I had 2 psychic abilities still to unlock, which felt a bit like a disappointment.

Summed up this is a pretty decent game which at times proves interesting and fun to play. However, it did eventually turn out to be rather dull due to repetitive combats and re-used segments. I do feel that to get the most out of this game you should probably play the story a couple of times to puzzle it together, play most of the side mission stuff, and be into open-world RPGs. And for the love of god, don't buy the cloud version unless you have a superspeed connection, anything else is a path towards suffering.

I would give this game a 2 star if it weren't for Ahti, the Finnish janitor, and by far the coolest and most interesting character of the game. Ahti alone made this game a 3 star!

Cheers

Not going to write much as there are so many on-point reviews on here but a friend recommended this game to me as he knew I loved Archive81 an oddball audio drama podcast which you can draw comparisons to this game.

I can't think of a game I have played that I hated the gameplay so much that I persevered only so I can see the story out. Excellent narrative weirdness that’s right up my street but the combat in the game is tiresome after the first combat, even with the immortality enabled in the menu I felt it was annoying. I thought this with their last game though, which I never finished, where I loved the Alan Wake oddball Stephen King weird town, haunted writer concept but the torch and gunplay over and over wore me out.

Beautiful looking engine, animation is impressive, with fantastic physics and lighting throughout but the actual gameplay in the game I actively loathed engaging with. Thank you PS+ for delivering this into my library gratis.

Unlike Archive 81, this is not recommended. A slog.

I recently went back and picked this game up again after letting it sit for over a year as I wanted to finish the story line. I must admit that I enjoyed it more than the first time (I got stuck) and had a great time with the main story and running down most of the side missions as well. The abilities you gain is what makes this game - and levitation is clutch! The graphics are spooky and cool - dare I say simple? And the monochrome-ness of it really makes colors pop when they are on screen.

The guns are cool and all the upgrades you can use to make them (and yourself) more powerful are spot on with other games that I enjoy.

There are two cons of this game, IMO. The first is the dialogue - there's a LOT of it. Like, original Metal Gear vibes here. I liked the inner dialogue the main character had, but going back and forth with the other characters seemed monotonous and a total grind. I ended up skipping what I could near the end.

The other con is sometimes the fights can get repetitive. Having said that, it's still a joy to launch items, speed across a room, create a shield, and near the end - levitate while doing both.

All-in-all, I'm glad I revisited it and it was a pleasure to play and finish.

Completed on Xbox Series S, 10 hours.

A game with incredible atmosphere and art direction, and also mediocre (sometimes terrible) gameplay. I found myself questioning basically every design decision. The combat is boring and repetitive, completing the sidequests is worthless, the game is poorly optimized to the point my console crashed 3 times during my playthrough. I also didn't care anymore about the collectables like 3 hours into the game.

Still, it's a unique game, beautiful in a twisted way. Check it out, but prepare for some disappointing gameplay.

That review title applies to every single Remedy game I've played. They know how to come up with a cool story concept, but don't really know how to take it any further.

Full disclosure, I've only played Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and now Control. I know they made Max Payne and Max Payne 2, which I hear are pretty highly acclaimed, but I haven't played them.

The idea behind Alan Wake sounded awesome and it ended up being okay, I guess. Was a bit disappointed by how it didn't really nail its concept but it's still probably the strongest of the 3 Remedy games I've played. I had high hopes for Quantum Break, but it ultimately disappointed me too. By the time Control came out, I knew better. I had no interest in this game, but I heard it was actually pretty decent. Still had no plans to buy it, but then I saw it on Xbox Game Pass, so I figured why not? I didn't actually have to spend money on it.

It took me less than an hour to figure out this was exactly the kind of game I've come to expect from Remedy. The concept and atmosphere are outstanding and the presentation was very good. And the gameplay is above average. It feels smooth and fluid, with the abilities adding a fun mix to the standard gunplay. But I quickly figured out the story was going to be a jumbled mess of nonsense.

And for a lot of people, good gameplay and good atmosphere are good enough. And great for them. Truly. I even enjoyed it to a small degree, especially since I didn't have to actually pay for it. But for a single-player game, I simply need an engaging story. If you don't have one, then at least don't take yourself so seriously. Be campy and silly. Instead we have a story that's constantly trying to convince you of how smartly written it is and that quickly becomes very tiresome to me.

As a Remedy fanboy, I only regret not to have played this game earlier. For me it's another masterpiece, while I didn't play Quantum Break yet. Love the concept of investigating paranormal events in a setting of the game with a changing environment which sounds very original to me. The soundtrack and the ambience with chatter of talking voices in background kept me on my heels throughout the whole game.

The storytelling is done with few cutscenes mostly in-between missions and side quests and the approach is very gentle. The rest of the story is brought to you non-invasively should you be eager to learn more by simply collecting documents which are place around the area, which gives you a glimpse on what you are currently dealing with or what is about to come. This pace of action, exploring and learning about the events fits me well as I could shift my attention towards different things and slowly put together the pieces of the puzzle.

There is no difficulty setting and you have a number of abilities that will help you defeat the enemies. I failed number of times after an exhausting battle, but took another approach next time and eventually I felt more satisfied. The deaths are sudden and once you catch your self in a crossfire or overpowered, it doesn't take very long for you to die. So even, if you defeated the main 'boss' in a fight, the battle might be far from over. Love the fact that there is a point health system and not some auto generating health. While enemies drop health points, you have to be strategic in the approach and the sense of urgency to flea, recover and come back, not just hide in a corner for the health to restore is what really spices up those battles. There is a checkpoint system, which saves your progress after you capture what is called 'Control Points' or just fast travel to them.

I must say this game really hit my sweet spot and is really a brave approach in an astonishing series of games made by this studio.

This get met and exceeded most of my expectations. I had an absolute joy going through this game and have very little negative about it (though, still will have some).

The play control was nice and didn't get overly repetitive. There weren't a lot of options around weapons and powers, but I didn't see that as a negative as that allowed me to get familiar with what I did have.

The pacing was right on for someone like me who doesn't get large extended periods of time to play, and the saving and checkpoints were just fine and respectful of my time available to play.

The downsides to this game were the absolute atrocious in game map. This is somewhat mitigated by the in game signage that led you from location to location, but trying to use that map for anything other than large scale location was useless.

The only other downside to playing this game was that my computer was just a bit too old for it, and the load times were mildly annoying. That's not a knock against the game per-say, but more about my computer I guess.

Overall, I very much enjoyed my time with this game and did more than just the mainline and the two DLC. I did most of the side quests in the game as well. I stopped myself from going through and achievement hunting, but I did consider it because it was fun. Ultimately, I just have too much of a backlog to play through for achievements to justify it.

I hope someone reads this and decides to play it and enjoy it as much as I did.

~David.

Control is an interesting game. It has a lot of ideas, some of which are left-overs from Remedy's past projects that they've simply executed better, and yet it feels so rote and plain.

To begin with the good, the visual tricks are interesting. The Ashtray Maze in particular sticks out. But even some of the smaller things, the weird ways that rooms are corrupted and misshapen, when you find a hallway that looks like it's the inside of a wrung out towel, or rooms filled with clocks, these visual designs are really great.

The puzzles surrounding the augmented items are also interesting, though sometimes obvious or easy they still have a bit of wow factor at times. The little game of Stop-Go you play to remove the corruption from an intersection light, or the pulsating hallway you need to navigate to reach a haunted flamingo lawn decoration. Also an incredibly aggressive refrigerator.

Jesse's powers are pretty interesting and, at times, satisfying to use. Levitation is huge, I love using this power for little things like navigation and also during combat. The shield is a little boring but the utility is great and, of course, throwing things can be super satisfying when it works out as planned.

The weakest points of the game are particularly glaring in some of the design choices. There are moments during hectic combat where your glide ability could save your life if only they hadn't decided that it actually only lifts you off of a jump. If you're in an area with a ledge you accidentally step off you can hit jump but it won't save you. You'll only drift slowly to your death, because levitating only works when you jump first, I guess?

Visual design also has some weaknesses. There is a mission that requires you to find mold growths which are colored similarly to the mold around them. Or, spoiler alert: the final act which is so blindingly red that it is painful to look at and also obscures enemies and makes for a frustrating finale. Pair this with a lack of colorblind settings and I can't help but wonder why the folks are Remedy aren't thinking about accessibility?

Combat ends up becoming incredibly repetitive. There are very few enemy variances and many of them are simply annoying. Flying telekinetic enemies that instantly dodge your projectiles and take little damage from your gun due to their shields spring to mind. That said, besides them, almost every enemy can be dealt with entirely by throwing objects. You COULD use your mind control, or float around and shoot in your various gun modes, or use your shield explosion, but none of those are nearly as efficient as just throwing stuff.

And while throwing stuff is fun it can also be a headache. It was not a negligible amount of times where there are intriguing objects scattered around the arena and I would target them, let's say a forklift or an exploding barrel, and Jesse would decide that a random rock from the environment was what I was looking at. Or, more frustrating, when she would grab nothing but it would still consume my energy meter. I thought the idea was that there was always something?

The story is scatterbrained and maybe if you feel like digging through the literally hundreds of memos and voice recordings you could piece some of it together but it comes across as a worse written Stranger Things, and I don't mean the good first season.

Finally, while fights get really repetitive and boring as they drag on with nothing to add besides larger numbers of the limited enemy list, some of the unique encounters are horrendous. Spoiler alert, boss discussion: The Anchor is fine, and the big eyeball haunting the fridge, but esseJ is terrible. I wasn't aware that one of Jesse's powers was infinitely spamming rockets? Did I miss something in the tutorial? The fight is just abysmally bad. Also, the final act is really bad. Just wave upon wave of the same enemies, nothing new.

It's a fine game. It's playable, if you can get it on sale some of the cool stuff is worth seeing, but honestly a Let's Play or a stream would be much less frustrating and trying. For all the positives, Control left me with nothing but disappointment.

Mediocre in -nearly- every sense. Solid acting, good writing, but just... the loosest of stories that reminds me why it is I don't like David Lynch or, really, anything that's weird just for the sake of it. I'm always left wanting more—more connective tissue, more reason why, more purpose. As it is, these are character sketches not fully realized in any sense—just surrealist archetypes.

The telekinetic abilities are fun, but the combat is never anything more than standard run-and-gun crap and gets old -very- quick. The look and feel is unique enough, but not terribly engaging. Really, only the ashtray maze stands out as making the experience worthwhile. Apart from that, it's a lot of -excellent- mood and atmosphere, but not much more than that once you scratch just the tiniest bit beneath the surface.

This is a solid B- or C-tier game that aspires to be triple-A but cannot pull it off. Would've been an incredible three-to-five-hour indie adventure game, but as it stands is a slog of bland action and combat encounters that feels bloated far beyond what's necessary.

Also, that has to be the worst and most ineffectual map I've ever experienced.

I'm not a "reviewers are paid tools of the industry!" conspiracy asshole, not by any stretch, but I do find the high praise this received to be a bit confounding. At its best, it's a five or six out of ten, but it doesn't maintain its high moments nearly enough. If I could give half stars I would, but I can't and in this case feel more comfortable rounding down.

A solid 7/10. It was good enough to spend the 20-something hours required to finish it (which is a strong compliment from me, because I drop games often).

But I didn't fall in love with it; I have no plans to ever replay it, and have no desire to look into any of the DLCs. The ending's vagueness left a sour taste in my mouth. Spoiler:Never meeting Dr. Darling, or even learning what truly happened to him - when his story and research had been teased in videos throughout the entire game - was very disappointing. And I had to research later how it was that Polaris died but was then "reborn" because it wasn't clear enough in-game. Her death was clear, and the fact that she never never shimmered/sparkled again in response to Jesse's comments (like she had constantly throughout the earlier parts of the game when she was alive) made me believe she was dead. But then Jesse spoke directly to Polaris in the final moments of the game, as if she was alive. So it was all very confusing.

I also didn't like the abruptness of the ending. The final gauntlet of Hiss monsters you fight before shutting off the Projector was disappointing. It felt exactly like one of those randomly generated "Bureau Emergency" side quests. Just clearing out an area of Hiss monsters I'd seen a hundred times before. I would have expected (and loved) The Hiss to defend themselves in their last stand with an epic boss fight instead. Also, the Hiss never used the possessed-Dylan to fight Jesse (and from the moment it was revealed the Hiss had infected Dylan, I was looking forward to a boss battle against him). A single button press was all it took to cleanse Dylan, turn off the Projector, and end the game. Very anti-climactic.

The developers absolutely nailed the atmosphere and tone of the game though. I felt uneasy constantly, it was a great psychological thriller. Combat was fun, abilities were cool. 7/10 game.

The combat is much better here than in there last game. I enjoyed getting into shootouts because the sound, visual effects, and feel around the weapons and powers were so satisfying.

The Division of Control can be fun to run through because of the trippy visuals and changing environments. It's all pretty delightful.

The side missions were fun to do for the most part. At first, doing a side mission would lead to a new ability. The abilities come from items that have a story behind them. Documents for the items provide information about what they do, where they were found, and out the Division of Control collected it. Some of these stories about how the items were retrieved would be funny. Going through these missions would lead to fights and some fun changing environments. I really dug them, but eventually, the side missions changed into boring fetch quests. One quest later in the game wanted me to collect different types of mold. The quest didn't give point to me where they could be found on a map, they just said it can be found in bathrooms, on corpses, etc. At this point, I started skipping side missions. It just feels like work.

This game is full of documents to read that contain information about the Division of Control and the Hiss. Some of these documents exist just to explain what different enemies and weapons are, but some are fun stories about how the Division of Control is run. The documents were worth reading, but there were just too many in the game. I would get 1 or 2 new documents to read every 5 minutes or so. Stopping to read these documents just killed momentum, so I eventually stopped.

The central story of Jesse searching for her brother didn't really grab me, and the ending wasn't all that satisfying. Jesse becomes the new Director of the Division of Control at the start of the game because she finds the Director's gun. From there, she's helping the Division get the building stable. It's really the world of the Division that shines while playing the game more than Jesse's story.