WHAT A GAME
That was my filler text in the post until I was ready to write the review, but I think I will leave it where it is. Control is a game by Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Quantum Break. Their games have always looked interesting to me but outside of most of Max Payne 1 and an hour or so of Alan Wake (the review for which will follow this one shortly I am sure), I'd never given them much attention. But here comes Control with some very cool looking trailers showing off telekinesis powers and weird monsters and bizarre locales and that led me to do something I haven't done in quite a long time - purchase a game for 60 US dollars. Life is full of impulse decisions, and they often don't turn out very well, or at least as good as you hoped. Control however is definitely one of my best choices.
The game stars Jesse Faden (Fayden?), a young woman who has some mysterious incident involving her family and home town in her past that led to enormous amounts of death, and now she's hunting down the people who took her only remaining link to the world - her brother Dylan. She also talks to a mysterious entity only she knows about (who doesn't say anything back we can hear, only odd bright and swirling visual anomalies she seems to understand) pretty frequently, or we hear her thoughts about events and people she meets. I found her to be a compelling protagonist, with just enough relatable traits but also doesn't freak out every time something weird happens like a normal person (because the game would take 80 hours if so). Her growth through the story as a person and with her powers was one of the best parts of the story of the game, which is more interesting in concept than well executed.
The game is set in The Oldest House, a "building" in NYC, that on the outside is one thing, but on the inside is actually a sprawling extradimensional portal of sorts that the Federal Bureau of Control makes their home. This bureau finds all manner of paranormal and magical objects and tries to, well, control them. Ostensibly they say their mission is to contain, but as we learn through the story there is far too much dicking around with these objects of immense power to consider these folks safety oriented. Scattered throughout all the environments are HUNDREDS of notes, memos, pictures, short movies, etc. that talk about the various challenges and items the bureau encounters and how the people who work there deal with things. Each note you pick up is some combination of funny, interesting, or mysterious. They straight up lifted the SCP move of blacking out random nouns and verbs to make things spooky or funny, and it works damn well.
But how about the actual game itself? Oh yeah, that's a joy as well. At first you're limited to telekenis (awesome) and a regular semi-auto pistol (boring), but things mix up pretty fast with other powers and guns. About halfway through you gain the power of levitation however, and that is when shit officially Pops Off. Floating high above a battlefield and raining down missiles, debris, and the bodies of your foes upon those still unlucky enough to still live basically NEVER got old or boring. Environments are hugely destructible along with craploads of items that are able to be interacted with/manipulated. Neat artsy metal spheres in glass cases in a lobby? Grab them with your mind, yank them through the glass and hurl them through tables and chairs and watch all of it neatly fly up into the air and smash into concrete which shatters beaneath the weight of it all. Magnificent! Sadly I can't put gifs into these reviews otherwise you'd see twenty of those...
The last main topic to hit - the visual design. My god this game is gorgeous. Are the graphics great? Yes it looks amazing, but that's not what I'm talking about. The lighting, the cinematography, the layout of everything is just phenomenal. Almost every area that you walk into in this game is a visual feast which made exploration for its own sake a joy. Just look at all the fucking pictures I attached here, it is just stupendous and I feel like I'll never see anything great like this again. Which I suppose isn't fair, Dishonored 2 was only a few years ago and that was also amazing (but not Control amazing).
In the end, this is a fantastic game with only a few tiny niggles bringing it down. Jesse feels way too squishy throughout most of the game, there needs to be a few more guns/powers for offensive use, enemy variety is good, but needs to grow WAY past ordinary looking dudes (granted most of them can do weird shit, that is good), and the ending of the story doesn't really feel like an ending... But OH! It had a fake ending with fake credits!! I fucking loved that. Oh and the Ashtray Maze and when its special soundtrack kicks in and the game goes Doctor Strange/Inception on us...
That was my filler text in the post until I was ready to write the review, but I think I will leave it where it is. Control is a game by Remedy, makers of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Quantum Break. Their games have always looked interesting to me but outside of most of Max Payne 1 and an hour or so of Alan Wake (the review for which will follow this one shortly I am sure), I'd never given them much attention. But here comes Control with some very cool looking trailers showing off telekinesis powers and weird monsters and bizarre locales and that led me to do something I haven't done in quite a long time - purchase a game for 60 US dollars. Life is full of impulse decisions, and they often don't turn out very well, or at least as good as you hoped. Control however is definitely one of my best choices.
The game stars Jesse Faden (Fayden?), a young woman who has some mysterious incident involving her family and home town in her past that led to enormous amounts of death, and now she's hunting down the people who took her only remaining link to the world - her brother Dylan. She also talks to a mysterious entity only she knows about (who doesn't say anything back we can hear, only odd bright and swirling visual anomalies she seems to understand) pretty frequently, or we hear her thoughts about events and people she meets. I found her to be a compelling protagonist, with just enough relatable traits but also doesn't freak out every time something weird happens like a normal person (because the game would take 80 hours if so). Her growth through the story as a person and with her powers was one of the best parts of the story of the game, which is more interesting in concept than well executed.
The game is set in The Oldest House, a "building" in NYC, that on the outside is one thing, but on the inside is actually a sprawling extradimensional portal of sorts that the Federal Bureau of Control makes their home. This bureau finds all manner of paranormal and magical objects and tries to, well, control them. Ostensibly they say their mission is to contain, but as we learn through the story there is far too much dicking around with these objects of immense power to consider these folks safety oriented. Scattered throughout all the environments are HUNDREDS of notes, memos, pictures, short movies, etc. that talk about the various challenges and items the bureau encounters and how the people who work there deal with things. Each note you pick up is some combination of funny, interesting, or mysterious. They straight up lifted the SCP move of blacking out random nouns and verbs to make things spooky or funny, and it works damn well.
But how about the actual game itself? Oh yeah, that's a joy as well. At first you're limited to telekenis (awesome) and a regular semi-auto pistol (boring), but things mix up pretty fast with other powers and guns. About halfway through you gain the power of levitation however, and that is when shit officially Pops Off. Floating high above a battlefield and raining down missiles, debris, and the bodies of your foes upon those still unlucky enough to still live basically NEVER got old or boring. Environments are hugely destructible along with craploads of items that are able to be interacted with/manipulated. Neat artsy metal spheres in glass cases in a lobby? Grab them with your mind, yank them through the glass and hurl them through tables and chairs and watch all of it neatly fly up into the air and smash into concrete which shatters beaneath the weight of it all. Magnificent! Sadly I can't put gifs into these reviews otherwise you'd see twenty of those...
The last main topic to hit - the visual design. My god this game is gorgeous. Are the graphics great? Yes it looks amazing, but that's not what I'm talking about. The lighting, the cinematography, the layout of everything is just phenomenal. Almost every area that you walk into in this game is a visual feast which made exploration for its own sake a joy. Just look at all the fucking pictures I attached here, it is just stupendous and I feel like I'll never see anything great like this again. Which I suppose isn't fair, Dishonored 2 was only a few years ago and that was also amazing (but not Control amazing).
In the end, this is a fantastic game with only a few tiny niggles bringing it down. Jesse feels way too squishy throughout most of the game, there needs to be a few more guns/powers for offensive use, enemy variety is good, but needs to grow WAY past ordinary looking dudes (granted most of them can do weird shit, that is good), and the ending of the story doesn't really feel like an ending... But OH! It had a fake ending with fake credits!! I fucking loved that. Oh and the Ashtray Maze and when its special soundtrack kicks in and the game goes Doctor Strange/Inception on us...