One thing I hate about some video games is that you are required to read collectable documents to understand the story. If I wanted to read, I'd pick up a book. I don't play video games to read shit. I don't mind collectable readings so long as they are exclusive to expanding the world building and not necessary to understand the plot. Games like God of War, Bioshock Infinite and recently Final Fantasy XVI did this excellently in my opinion. I understood the plot, themes, character motives and develop without needing to read a single thing. Control is the opposite. Right from the beginning, I was confused. Right from the start, Jesse Faden is made director of the FBC and is looking for her brother Dylan who is somewhere within the Oldest House. Dylan is locked here because he and Jesse encounter a slide projector as kids that gave them superpowers. Right from the jump, there is no context. How did they get their hands on this slide projector? How did Jesse avoid capture? How did Jesse get clearance to even get inside the FBC? I was so confused, I had to look up if this was a sequel to another game. It isn't. These questions are illusively answered later through dialogue. Why not have gameplay sections that explored the past of Jesse and Dylan? Or even a short cutscene? One thing about this game is that there are very few cutscenes altogether. If you hate excessive amounts of cutscenes then you might enjoy this more than me. Me, I prefer cutscenes. There's more substance in cutscenes than there is with Jesse sitting in a chair talking to Pope as they both have no facial and vocal expression. I don't even think they blink.
Story is very weak because of how confusing it is. And I'm not just talking about the little context given. What's the theme here? Why does the name "Control" have nothing to do with the game? What's being controlled? What are we trying to control? Who's in control of what? This game's narrative doesn't make sense!
So the story's pretty shit, but what about the gameplay? After all this is a video game. The gameplay is actually pretty fun and it's definitely what saves this game from being a dumpster fire. It's very fast pace action. The different variants to the Service Weapon are cool. My favorite being the Scatter/Shotgun variant. Attaching the damage boost mod allowed me to almost always one shot non-armored enemies which made for some really up close and aggressive combat. Playing this way reminded me of Doom: Eternal and I loved that game. The "Jedi" powers are also really fun to use and work well with the play style I adopted.
Control has no difficulty option, but is still very easy. There are a few annoying enemy types and bosses, but once you get the hang of their attack pattern, they're easy to deal with as well. One thing to note is that, like Mass Effect 3, there is no final boss. Just a few waves of the enemies you encountered a dozen times that for some reason die really easily. Once you cleared, all the enemies, you hold square of Dylan's noggin and the credits roll. I was so confused I genuinely didn't think that was the ending, but it was. The fast paced nature of this game definitely favors the gameplay tenfold more so than the story.
What really took me out of the fast paced action is the long load times when fast traveling or respawning at a control point. The game would also lag pretty horribly after unpausing the game even if it was only for 3 seconds. I guess that's what I get for playing the free PS4 version that came out on PS Plus two years ago.
The one thing I hate about this game more than it's terrible story is the lack of navigation. Where am I going? Where do these stairs lead? How do I get to that room? There is no overworld compass to lead you where you're going. It doesn't help that the map is also designed confusingly. After playing a while, you will get the flow of where you're going, but I really didn't like having to frequently use YouTube to know how to get to the next mission.
One neat thing I did like the game are the Alan Wake references. Funny thing is that I played Alan Wake Remastered before playing this. I had no idea they were in the same universe so the references definitely took me for surprise. A welcome one at that.
Another thing I like about Control is how easy and simple the platinum trophy is. I'm a trophy hunter and I like me some easy platinum trophies. I earned Control's platinum without ever needing to look up a trophy guide and in only 18 hours of gameplay. I like it when you can earn a game's platinum trophy simply by playing the game. There's no elaborate, stupid trophy like kill x amount of Hiss in one shot of the Charged service weapon.
In conclusion, Control's face paced and aggressive CQB along with its really easy platinum trophy more than makes up for it's terrible storytelling and lack of proper direction. As such, I feel giving it a rating of 5/10 is appropriate. I like a lot about the game, but also despise it a lot. So it balances out 50-50.
Story is very weak because of how confusing it is. And I'm not just talking about the little context given. What's the theme here? Why does the name "Control" have nothing to do with the game? What's being controlled? What are we trying to control? Who's in control of what? This game's narrative doesn't make sense!
So the story's pretty shit, but what about the gameplay? After all this is a video game. The gameplay is actually pretty fun and it's definitely what saves this game from being a dumpster fire. It's very fast pace action. The different variants to the Service Weapon are cool. My favorite being the Scatter/Shotgun variant. Attaching the damage boost mod allowed me to almost always one shot non-armored enemies which made for some really up close and aggressive combat. Playing this way reminded me of Doom: Eternal and I loved that game. The "Jedi" powers are also really fun to use and work well with the play style I adopted.
Control has no difficulty option, but is still very easy. There are a few annoying enemy types and bosses, but once you get the hang of their attack pattern, they're easy to deal with as well. One thing to note is that, like Mass Effect 3, there is no final boss. Just a few waves of the enemies you encountered a dozen times that for some reason die really easily. Once you cleared, all the enemies, you hold square of Dylan's noggin and the credits roll. I was so confused I genuinely didn't think that was the ending, but it was. The fast paced nature of this game definitely favors the gameplay tenfold more so than the story.
What really took me out of the fast paced action is the long load times when fast traveling or respawning at a control point. The game would also lag pretty horribly after unpausing the game even if it was only for 3 seconds. I guess that's what I get for playing the free PS4 version that came out on PS Plus two years ago.
The one thing I hate about this game more than it's terrible story is the lack of navigation. Where am I going? Where do these stairs lead? How do I get to that room? There is no overworld compass to lead you where you're going. It doesn't help that the map is also designed confusingly. After playing a while, you will get the flow of where you're going, but I really didn't like having to frequently use YouTube to know how to get to the next mission.
One neat thing I did like the game are the Alan Wake references. Funny thing is that I played Alan Wake Remastered before playing this. I had no idea they were in the same universe so the references definitely took me for surprise. A welcome one at that.
Another thing I like about Control is how easy and simple the platinum trophy is. I'm a trophy hunter and I like me some easy platinum trophies. I earned Control's platinum without ever needing to look up a trophy guide and in only 18 hours of gameplay. I like it when you can earn a game's platinum trophy simply by playing the game. There's no elaborate, stupid trophy like kill x amount of Hiss in one shot of the Charged service weapon.
In conclusion, Control's face paced and aggressive CQB along with its really easy platinum trophy more than makes up for it's terrible storytelling and lack of proper direction. As such, I feel giving it a rating of 5/10 is appropriate. I like a lot about the game, but also despise it a lot. So it balances out 50-50.