Control (2019)

Credit where it’s due: except for There Is No Antimemetics Division, Control is the most faithful, expansive, high‑quality SCP‑inspired story you can jump into right now. For that alone, I’m grateful. The Oldest House—an ever‑shifting, endless maze of Kafkaesque boardrooms and office spaces built at the altar of bureaucracy—is fascinating, visually stunning, and sadly the only part of this game I found appealing.

The writing is dreadful: obnoxiously abstract, overly expository, and overwrought, determined to use whole paragraphs where a single sentence would suffice. The combat doesn’t fare much better, with bullet‑spongy bosses and random encounters that quickly shift from novel to tedious, turning traversal through the Oldest House into a chore.

Ironically, the worst parts are those that feel most like a videogame—the insistent combat, the endless meaningless upgrades, the clunky plot devices. It’s as if Remedy wrote a novel brimming with abstraction and existential horror, then forced it into the mold of a triple‑A videogame, complete with all the bells and whistles expected from a big‑budget studio. The result is an indie game parading as something bigger and more marketable.

On a happier note, I just jumped into Alan Wake 2—and my God, now thats what I’m talking about.

This game has incredible vibes. Which is way more vague than I usually am but it's the best way for me to put it.

If you're someone who needs to understand exactly what is going on I don't know if you are going to enjoy this too much but if you're up for just going for the ride and letting pieces fall into place possibly hours after they first come up then there's a ton here for you.

Gunplay is pretty simple but the mix of power use and shooting feels super satisfying and the effect of the environment around you being destroyed and thrown and blasted really pumps up the combat, even if the enemies are fairly repetitive.

4 / 5 Stars

Control was a fun game and an enjoyable story journey. A lot of the characters were interesting and had meaningful dialogue. The story line and the quests were relevant and encouraged exploration of the map. The music was alright for most parts, amazing for few others.

The combat system was very fun to use. Simple but effective and and versatile arsenal allowing for different approaches. The number of enemy types was sufficient for the game content, and when different types in different areas where combined, a different approach is made possible. However, I feel that the game failed to tap on this concepts full potential but not adding a difficulty option. After some upgrades to few skills, you can steamroll most of the mobs you encounter without a challenge, hence I could see how an addition of a harder difficulty mode could have kept the combat fun and dynamic in the late game. You could also encounter some bosses on side quests after ending the game, and their difficulty is leagues harder than the final story mission. I had to skip those side quests because the enemy mobs composition was pain to deal with even with almost fully upgraded weapons and skill tree as I was getting one-shot by an invisible enemy, not to mention that the loading screen timer made dying more punishing and would sometimes drive me to quit the game.

One aspect I also want to discuss about this game is the lore and the references this game made. While I really enjoy when a game dives into building a world with deep and intricate origins, I can't really enjoy it if the game does not reveal hints about that role to the exploring player. An example is a famous psychiatrist from the early 1920s who was a heavy influence on the game world and character building, whom I would have never heard of or linked to the game if I didn't watch a dedicated game theory video regarding the game lore. This was one example of many I found, but I won't mention them to keep from spoilers. I personally enjoy exploring and finding references and explanations to the world building hidden in the game, and feel rewarded when I find any pieces. Therefore have the player to look them up themselves outside the game is a huge wasted potential.

Last note is about professor Darling, he is a character that appears in the game frequently . He alone almost made me rate the game 5 stars. What a legend.

Just started playing this today after I finally picked up the platinum trophy in Nioh.

I'm loving the overall vibe so far: the '60s aesthetics mixed with sci-fi technology, the dialogue, the combat.

Everything's clicking right now, so I'm expecting this to be another one of my favorite games this year, and it's certainly a nice change of pace from Nioh.

Who’s up for trying out the streaming version of Control on Switch?

Update: in case anyone is curious, it works fairly well. Graphics mode looked pretty good, complete with raytracing so reflections and light looks great, but performance mode was pretty smooth, especially for Control. Although performance mode lacked the shiny perks of raytracing, playing Control at 60fps felt pretty good.

Anyone playing the demo should be warned, you have a limited time to play. I logged into performance mode first and played just past the first tutorial section for the gun object of power before switching to graphics mode. I then played the same section in graphics mode. When I went to switch back to performance mode for one last comparison I was locked out due to my time having expired. Altogether I only played about 30 minutes or so.

There is also apparently a queue to play the demo, but I didn't experience a waiting period.

Finished this up the other day. It was a solid experience but I really felt that for a story-driven game it needed a difficulty setting so people could play and just enjoy the story.

I don't feel I was particularly bad at the game but some sections were absolutely brutal and seemed to really punish curiosity as you went off the beaten path.

Jesse Faden's face doesn't render right in elevators, and that's fine, because once she gets out of the elevator and enters some new space filled with shifting brutalist architecture, she can tear off pieces of that architecture and throw it at her enemies, and then blow them up with a rocket, and that's what counts.

There's just something incredibly satisfying about navigating the Oldest House, engaging in fast-paced combat where you actually use all of your abilities, and occasionally pausing to observe some oddity or read some paradoxically mundane inter-office memo. The game really encourages exploration—some of your abilities come from side missions, not the main storyline, so it really pays to go through every door and pick up every piece of paper.

Though it is arguably a horror, it's more creepy than scary, and there's nothing especially gruesome either. And it has a sense of humor that's not unlike some of the best X-Files episodes.

All in all, a very fun game with a compelling story and, if you play the "Foundation" expansion, an intriguing set-up for a possible sequel that I'm very much looking forward too.

The Control Ultimate Edition debacle continues...

Control’s PS4 owners get — then lose — Ultimate Edition granting next-gen upgrade: Launch date gaffe on PlayStation Store makes a fishy explanation even fishier

Excerpts:

Owners of Control’s Digital Deluxe Edition on PlayStation 4 reported Thursday that they briefly had access to the game’s recently launched Ultimate Edition — which contradicts an explanation publisher 505 Games gave in August for why Digital Deluxe owners could not be upgraded to Control’s version for the next-generation consoles.

Users in a couple of ResetEra threads first noticed the access early Thursday morning, around the time of Control Ultimate Edition’s midnight Sept. 10 launch. One commenter reported that PSN told them they owned Control’s Ultimate Edition, and after deleting it from their console in order to test what would be re-downloaded, found that the console was receiving the Ultimate Edition and that the game’s Deluxe Edition was gone from the store.

“So it seems like it’s not even a different SKU it’s literally the same bundle as what was previously offered,” wrote ResetEra user eZipsis. “It would be pretty shitty if base game + season pass holders are left out of this ‘upgrade.’”

About 12 hours later on the PlayStation Store, someone “flicked the switch to prevent access that they previously allowed,” said ResetEra user Chaserjoey.

“If you’re going to insist I buy it again, 505, at least give me a new trophy list to complete,” said commenter Billfisto, pointing out another way in which the Digital Deluxe and Ultimate Editions are basically the same thing on PlayStation 4.

Control’s Ultimate Edition to include free upgrade to Series X and PS5 ports, current owners not included

Anyone who buys Control Ultimate Edition will get a free upgrade to the next-gen version of the game when it comes out later this year. According to the Control website, the free copy of the game will be a “digital upgrade” to the next-gen version of the game for players that buy the Ultimate Edition on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. Players who already own the original version of the game won’t be eligible for the free upgrade. (via Polygon)